These remarks are based on interviews and articles Michael Schindhelm gave to i.e. "financial times", "washington post", "der spiegel" and others, and on his book "dubai-speed". we were asked by several people to answer these interviews and articles and to show our point of view about the situation in Dubai at the moment. its not about a struggle, its more about the same experiences people have when they come to this country and its different interpretation.
Michael Schindhelm in his apartment at
Sheikh Zayed Road
Many things about Dubai could be read in the last weeks in the german press. Especially the former director at the “Dubai Culture & Arts Authority” of the Emirate, Michael Schindhelm, mentioned a lot of things regarding his work and his failure as the director of this institution in german media. In general the question could be asked,
what qualified Schindhelm, a graduated chemist, author, movie-director and theater-manager for this position. Otherwise i have a very relaxed relationship to the item “lateral entrant”, unlike many of my colleagues in academia worldwide.Without any doubt, the mistake of Schindhelm consists in his statements, which seem to be logical and clear for non-insiders, but for those which are concerned with this country since many years his reports lack on depth and of missing dispute with the real challenges of this country. Many of those things Schindhelm is writing about are known and not new, hence he scratches the surface. Furthermore he is simply wrong in what he is saying. For example his statement, saying that people are forced to follow the decision of the ruler to carry out the process of modernization. Most of the people here, especially the younger ones, which are partly involved in the decision-making-process, enjoy the development of this country. They are proud and they hope things will go the way they experienced in the last 15 years.
For sure Dubai can be compared with feudalistic structures, especially if seen with western eyes (what Schindhelm did). For sure decision are based on the ideas and the vision of the ruler of Dubai. In general these decisions are not contrary to his concepts. For sure it did not always work to involve different panels as self-responsible and autonomous units into the process. But this is part of political structures like the one in Dubai. So what? The reason for those problems are diverse, but for sure they are not based on political structures. Also Schindhelm,s term of feudalism has to be questioned. It needs a look into the cultural and traditional developments of tribal structures and Nomadism, which will lead to a different and more sophisticated view on the political situation and on the development of this city.
One has to imagine, what happened in this country in the last 15 years. Remember, we are talking about a time frame in which the german unification was already 5 years old. H.H. Sheickh Mohammed, had a vision for the city which he began, with great ability on all levels, to turn into reality, pursuing the work of his ancestors. Dubai as we know it today, is one of the most fascinating cities in the world, all this happened within 1.5 - 2 decades. And one has to concede this development and its people involved, a time of learning and growing. Its not about the final perfection, this comes later. Its about the transformation of an idea, to make a vision real. And this needs bravery. And this is what H.H. Sheick Mohammed and his team did. Now we reached a point, when the Dubai-speed gets slower. But not for the reason of wrong decisions. But for the reason of a worldwide crisis which was released in the US and effected social and political structures worldwide. Especially those being “under construction” and had a strong relationship and dependence on the movement of globalization had been hardly effected. The crisis in Dubai, if there is a crisis at all, is not a homemade on. Its the result of developments with a high global complexity, from which also countries, which should be more crisis-proved as the Emirates, suffered a lot. In Germany for example the economy shrinked by 5 %, the jobless quote in January 2010 was 8,6 %, the government debt amounts to 1.050 billion euros and raises with 4.400 euros. Per second.
The challenges of Dubai are less in the political system, but even more in questions which are to do with the society. App. 162 Nations are living together peacefully in the Emirate. In the future one of the main questions will be, how can it be managed, that these people understand Dubai not as a situation, but as a city. The challenge will be how Dubai suits as an example of an urban development which is different from traditional, i.e. european models, and how Dubai succeeds with that. Its nothing less then the sustainability of an operative, artificial system.
The challenge of how to get the people to identify with the city is maybe the biggest one. So far, urban planing in Dubai seems not to be the result of scenarios which are anticipating the planing afterwords, but more about the economical goals of developers. Which worked well in the last years. So far, the the development was based on the assumption of the approximate to the disfavor of the precise and geometrical anticipation of the event itself.
In the traditional arabic and oriental urban fabric, we have a segregation of different uses. In Dubai the segregation is transformed into non-spatial connections. The upcoming density for that reason is not a materialized one, its non-materialized and makes an important point of the fascination Dubais. Density in Dubai is to do less with the physical condition of the city, but much more with the identification of its people with the situation, the number of nationalities and the multicultural experience within.
The population of Dubai is, as mentioned, extremely mixed. The population separates into 3 groups : a) the locals with a percentage of app. 14 %, b) those expats with a good salary and c) the workers in the field of production and service. The groups b) and c) share their temporary stay in the country. This stay is in terms of urban developments to short to create a polis in a societal manner. Over and above that, the group c) is, due to their salaries and their money-transfer into their home-countries, not able to take part in the activities of the other groups. Whether it is, as Schindhelm says, necessary to build a bridge between these groups is anyone’s guess. Dubai functions and fascinates via the neighborhood of different cultures as well. An approach, which will try to maintain this situation and to accept it as a basis for the development of the urban fabric in the future, could be a highly interesting one ad could give a new meaning to the item city.
Understanding the public space as an important, cultural part of a city, Dubai has to be seen against the background of traditional, nomadic structures which are for an identity-establishing public space not very appropriate. If one looks into the process of the control and penetration of urban settlement areas into the nomadic form of life, then we find out that these processes determined the urban developments in the last 100 years, not only in this part of the world. For sure Dubai represents in this relation an exception within the last 20 years. This short period of time is, with some other issues, causative for the partly artificial appearance as we can see it now. Homogenous, urban growing had been replaced by strategies which aimed to a high economical success.
If one considers now the developments and behaviors mentioned above and relates them into the context of the technical capabilities of worldwide digital networks, and if we establish consequently a link with local characteristics and global structures, then we can see in the result the missing of the content- and conceptual debate regarding Dubai.
Within the period of time mentioned above, Dubai tried to separate from its surrounding and other metropolitan cities in the world. To reach this goal, many things had been tried which could not be found and recruited in the own country. A conglomerate of ideas and projects accrued, carried in by other cultures, which had not been so much interested in the development, but more in participating in the countries prosperity.
First of all it is about to shape a society, which develops its own identity against the background of multicultural complexity to create a awareness of developing the country and its city into a sustainable direction. The local population has to take the leading part to reach this goal. For this strategy of surviving people have to be sensitized in the families, the schools, the universities and working places. The challenge will be the temporal placement, especially in the middle of a discussion related to Emiratisation and sustainability. When then taking this discussion into the society, this discussion will shape and characterize the form of the society in the Emirates in the future. And it will have an influence on the marketing-strategy of Dubai in a positive sense. This is, what Schindhelm should have known. It is not about the physical cultural-mile, it is about the debate of an urban- and society structure, which then can result in cultural facilities and architectural projects within. Hence its not about walls and buildings for culture, its about the non-materialized space in and around these walls.
If one takes this factors into consideration, an urban model can be established which is sustainable and highly economical successful as well. We have to accept the existing realities and facts and understand them as just partly influenceable. This will direct into a planing which is based on the abstraction of common characteristics of the existing. The result is an adaptive city which constantly matches its surrounding under different circumstances. Dubai gets the status of constant change and modification. Complexity gets tangible via flexibility, the city gets system and place, the city mutates into a kind of a hybrid. This could be done for example by using characteristics of System-biology models which are turned into mathematical formulas. The result would be an architecture and an urban fabric in which the event as urban model would lead to a new strategy of planing to sustain the artificial situation as a strategy of surviving.
Such a development will take time, it will not happen from today to tomorrow. At the same time it shows, that Dubai, and Abu Dhabi as well, will be worldwide the most interesting cities in the world. I am convinced that H.H. Sheikh Khalifa and H.H Sheikh Mohammed know very well about their responsibility regarding the development of the Emirates in a globalized world. And as they did in the past, they will also do it in the future.
Michael Schindhelm had the chance, especially at this time in which clocks tick slower, to look into all these issues. Our experience in the Emirates, in the academic and in the ecological field shows, that the people in this country like to listen and are interested in the discussion about their and other cultures as well. Schindhelm did obviously not use this chance. Maybe it was the missing cultural debate with himself. For sure , this is a suspicion. Only Michael Schindhelm can answer this question.
