Dubai's Strange Development Pattern Spreading
The economic downturn has halted many projects in Dubai, but the show's not over in the elaborate emirate. In fact, its patterns of development may even be spreading to other cities around the world.
Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne examines the unique type of development going on in Dubai, where mini-cities within the city stand as self-contained and separate urban imitations.
"Dubai's new neighborhoods, by contrast, have been colonized by builders simply pushing out into virgin desert -- or, in the case of the emirate's now-iconic island developments, into the gulf. That makes Dubai -- its neighborhoods unburdened by history, its developers unconstrained by zoning codes, preservation battles or community activism -- an unusually pure, unfiltered example of what new cities look like in the age of globalization."
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Published on Sunday, June 21, 2009 in
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