Dubai Sci-Fi

[alanajoli]

The more and more I read about Dubai, the more it strikes me as a city straight out of science fiction. The most recent article was this 60 Minutes segment hosted by Yahoo news. The Sheik decided that they should double the coastline of the city, and so they built an island that looks kinda like a spider, so that each of the arms could have beach-front condos on it.














I don't know if the look they're going for over there is the futuristic, or whether that's just what's happening, but Dubai looks like where it's at for science-fiction styled architecture and man-made islands.

Edited to add a photo that appeared in the NYTimes a few weeks ago, but that I couldn't find online. Luckily, I'd saved it. :)

Comments

[stargatedragon.livejournal.com]

I saw this show - it's mindboggling when you think about the amount of time and money that went into it...

mind you, he didn't have to worry about enviromentalists making a fuss, obviously... but it'd be a cool place to visit!

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think that's the only part that keeps it from being really futuristic--because we *like* to think that in the future, we'll all be concerned about the environment, and creating biospheres that are just as good for us as for Mother Earth... ;)

But despite that lack... I'm just impressed. And continually amused.

[oneminutemonkey.livejournal.com]

Dubai rocks. I was there earlier in the year, and right now, it's an intriguing blend of old and new, Western and Arabian. On the one hand, you have the old-fashioned cultural heritage-type places, and then you have the presence of every Western brand/chain known to man. Many buildings have two towers to them, just so they can have a name (like Rolex, or Marriot) posted first in English letters, then in Arabic script.

And yeah, the newer buildings are out of this world. Cutting-edge, dynamic, creative, and -different-. From the ultra-fabulous hotels to the manmade island resorts, Dubai's reinventing itself for tourism... after all, they want to be prepared should the oil money ever run dry.

I love Dubai, and want to go back eventually when the Palm Islands and the World are closer to done.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

It looks like a really mind-boggling place to visit--and a great setting for some urban fantasy, maybe. Whenever you have a juxtaposition of cultures, it seems like it's ripe for epic fiction to happen in the midst of it all.

Did you notice how the cultural atmosphere was in regards to women? When I was in Turkey this year I noticed how much more open women were in public than six years ago--far more liberal than it had been in 2001 (as far as apparel was concerned, at the very least).

[jeff-duntemann.livejournal.com]

Dubai looks oddly like many mid-Fifties visions of the City of Tomorrow, and I think the reason it does is that it's what a city would look like if there were near-infinite money to spend on it, and no objections from obstructionists. Western culture has chosen to spend its money in other ways over the past half-century, and we've given mind-boggling power to anyone who stands up and says, "I don't want you to build that."

Dubai is the product of an almost unthinkably rich autocracy, but it's a good thing to study for anyone contemplating future SF societies. It's possible (if depressing to contemplate) that Western democracy is a passing thing, and the sort of semi-benign tyranny you see in Saudi Arabia and China may be the way of the future.

Most tyrannies fail because they are corrupt, and there is no inherent check on their corruption. An inherently honest autocracy is a scary concept, and rich fodder for SF writers.

[dragonladyflame.livejournal.com]

Whoa, those towers are excellent.