Earth's Shifting Centre

Over the New Year, I was lucky enough to spend an extended break in Dubai with my daughter and her husband. It was lovely to have all our kids together in one place for a week, a rare treat nowadays. It was a joyful time in every way, as well as a great opportunity to read, observe and reflect.

Dubai has truly become a global village. What I love the most about living in Queens is its stunning diversity – within fifteen miles I can find almost any culture or cuisine on the planet, and we are all tightly packed and creating new fusions all the time.

But I think Dubai has Queens beaten on the diversity front. Walking around the packed fountain outside the Burj Khalifa, I heard more languages and observed more skin tones and dress styles than I typically do in Queens, and somehow the blending seemed even stronger there than here. And I think the diversity is more complete and more representative. In Queens, we have everything, but with whiter and western cultures rather over-represented. In Dubai, the mix more accurately reflects the global population, with a lot more Chinese, Indians, other Asians and Africans than the pale skinned. Of the continents, only South America seemed less present, and, as any Riskplayer will tell you, South America has a smaller population than most other continents.

In Dubai, they have worked out what a Global Village they have, and, true to form, exploited it in the form of a recently opened huge leisure area that is actually called Global Village. Think of Disney’s “it’s a small world after all”, multiply it by a hundred, take away the US-centricity, add in shows and displays, and include stall after small of naked commercialism and you can picture the Global Village. The commercialism was jarring, but I had to admire the ambition and execution – it was a fine day out for young and old, rich and poor, and it was the commercial aspect that made it affordable.

I had been a bit taken aback by some attitudes of Americans when I said I was going to Dubai. There was a bit of “why would you want to go there” in some reactions, which I found a bit surprising. I could only assume that there had been some subtle putting down of the place in some shows or TV or just popular chat.

It was only after spending time in Dubai and thinking about it that I reached a hypothesis to explain the negative attitudes. Perhaps more than anywhere else, Dubai exposes the great US delusion that it is the centre of the world. Dubai does everything the US does, only better.

How tired I get when some lazy sports commentator in the US claims that the world is watching some minor game in a sport that nobody else even plays. How angry I get with Time magazine when they publish a list of the world’s 100 most influential people, claiming over half to be from the US. This same delusional arrogance extends to claims about Times Square neon and fireworks, or Las Vegas glamour.

Forget about it! All of those claims are humiliated by Dubai. It is larger, grander, smarter and cleaner in all dimensions. Everything is sparkling, functional and exciting. Our son is training as a civil engineer and I could see his eyes light up and his brain start to whirr: why should I spend the next forty years patching up tired infrastructure in the US when I could work in Dubai? It is a fair question.

I think that is why there is some denial about Dubai. It is OK to accept that London, Paris or Rome has the edge for culture, history or romance, but the American psyche still needs to own bigger and grander and gaudier. And such a claim is no longer tenable.

Of course, everything that Dubai is today is likely to be China tomorrow. China is developing fifty Dubai’s. While in Dubai, I read and Fareed Zakaria’s The Post American World, which only supported what I was observing with my own eyes in Dubai. The book felt a little dated even though it is only eight years old, and of course since then the US has taken all the responses suggested in the book and done precisely the opposite.

Dubai is still growing at an incredible speed. Everywhere you look in all directions you see cranes and construction. There is a cycle of supply over-responding to demand that leads to rebalancing every so often, and just now rents and occupancy are down because too much has been built too quickly, but there is no denying that the mid-term trend is for more growth.

It is the finest embodiment I have seen of the strategy of “build it and they will come”. At first blush, who would want to come to the boiling desert where nothing grows? Well, create infrastructure and attract commerce, and come they will, and keep coming. My daughter and son-in-law have a fine life there, and countless others can improve their prospects there too.

Dubai is an interesting case study in a human-envisioned paradise, having developed with few constraints or legacy. I am impressed by the urban planning and focus on leisure and communications. I am a little depressed by all the shopping malls, but then perhaps it is like Global Village; build it and they will come, but add in lots of advertising and commerce to make it affordable.

It would be good if Dubai could showcase the way forward in some new areas. I would love to see more care for the environment, and more in the way of education and culture (the Louvre in Abu Dhabi I a fine building with a reasonable collection, but hard to appreciate amidst the crowds of selfie-takers). 

An example of innovation could be in how the world uses unmanned vehicles. For me, they are a great opportunity to re-envision mass transit. Dubai has a fine metro system, but it has only two lines, so people choose to drive unless they live and work very near the stations. So why not have unmanned pods, on the ground or floating, doing milk rounds from the stations to nearby apartment blocks? It is feasible already, and Dubai has everything needed (space, technology etc.) to make it work.

Another way to look at Dubai is as a place only for the agile, in my agile-rooted model of humanity. Everybody goes to Dubai to make something more of their life and to provide for their families. It is hierarchical - Filippinos provide human services and Indians heavy construction work – and while conditions for those groups can be seen as exploitative, the net result is usually a better life than they came from with more opportunity.

A place with only agile tends to optimistic and forward-looking, and that is an important part of the economic model. There is little need for welfare, or elderly healthcare, because the old simply don’t live there. In Long Island it seems almost every business is about keeping old people alive. That is hardly an engine for development.

Finally, the Zakaria book and some time in Dubai pose questions about political models. It hardly warms a liberal heart to see giant posters of an unaccountable sheikh everywhere and to understand that criminality is low only because anybody can be deported, anytime. But we also must recognise that our liberal hearts are challenged in the west too, with politics for sale and rigged, failing markets. I am not sure we can claim anymore that our way is always best for development and innovation: the story of Dubai and the emerging story of China rather give the lie to those claims.

The centre of humanity is shifting, and it is exciting, and plain for all to see in places like Dubai. A China with twenty Dubai’s (and, one day, an India too) might seem a frightening prospect, but we might also see it as a wonderful one, if we learn to embrace it and help to shape it as benevolent supporters of humanity rather than sit bitterly on the sidelines with our denial, arrogance, military belligerence and pointless protection. I for one say – bring it on.