[LINK] "Scattered thoughts about the Dubai project"

[rfmcdonald]

Daniel Drezner is in Dubai now, and he's somewhat skeptical about the city-state's prospects.

Ever since I arrived, I've been trying to figure out the best way to explain Dubai. Here's what I've come up with: If Stanley Kubrick had an unlimited budget and was making a movie about Las Vegas glitz, Dubai would be his set.

What do I mean by this? Well, like Kubrick's films, Dubai is underpopulated in an odd way, and the lack of people gives the place a very odd feel. There are shiny hi-tech malls, stores, and skyscrapers galore, but there isn't much else. From a citywide perspective, looking from the top of the Burj Khalifa, one sees all the new skyscrapers, a few blocks of the old part of town, and then... desert.

Even in the shiny parts of the city, there just aren't enough people to fill up the space. Everywhere I looked, there were way too many workers per customer. The Dubai Mall, for example, is truly massive, with every western brand name that still exists and a few (Rainforest Cafe, Benetton) that I thought had gone under. There was an entire wing of racy lingerie stores. I don't honestly if there's sufficient demand to keep these stores afloat, however.

Lest one think this is criticism, it isn't. I'm rooting for Dubai to succeed. If enough people come to the place, I think the Kubrickian oddness will wear off (though, not, perhaps, in the Armani Hotel. The hotel literature informs me that "every detail has been personally chosen by Armani to reflect his passion for stylish comfort and functionality." To your humble blogger, it seems like Mr. Armani has expended considerable sums of money to bring back the tacky wood finish of late 70's American suburbia, combined with the creeping isolation of Kubrick's The Shining). Any country that embraces the service sector with the same vengeance of North America is fine by me.

Drezner no longer thinks, as he did in 2008, that Dubai can stand as a model for general economic development in the Middle East, even among the Persian Gulf's microstates, since he thinks there's only room for one entrepôt--"Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Kuwait" will have to come up with some other model.

Thoughts? He asked specifically for people from Dubai to come and comment over at his blog.