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.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-10-18 09:14 pm (UTC)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.