A Bit More Detail

• Philip Jones at Open Democracy makes a case for renters' unions in the United Kingdom, here.


• Guardian Cities considers the potential for maglev trains in world cities.


• Birds in urban habitats engage in intense competition over food and territory, the National Post reports.


• JSTOR Daily contrasts and compares the heavy urban footprint of Dubai versus the light one of Manhattan. What did planners do differently in the two metropolises?


• Ankita Rao at VICE looks at how cities have been designed in ways that encourage loneliness, and at how some city planners are trying to overcome this.

Turkmenistan, which ranks up with Burma and North Korea as one of the most appallingly totalitarian countries on earth and which only recently opened its doors to foreign investors, is building Avaza, a $5 billion resort complex on the Caspian Sea. Set for completion in 2020, a goal that's remained intact despite the global recession, Avaza will include high-rise hotels, sports facilities, conference centers, and, of course, a man-made island (which, when seen from the air, will resemble a crab--President Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov's zodiac sign). As the project was just getting started in early 2008, a government press release outlined the vision for Avaza's opulence:

Pleasure boats will furrow the river with the original bridges thrown across. Restaurants, cafes, sports grounds and footpaths will be constructed on the river banks. The river and lakes will be located in the natural hollows blended well with the local landscape. The lakes will surround the cozy beaches and when the gale will rage throughout the sea tourists can swim in the calm lakes.

Similarly, Kazakhstan is building Aktau-City, which will cost $38 billion and, like Avaza, will be completed by 2020. Construction of hotels and shopping malls is currently underway, and the complex already boasts, interestingly, an academic showpiece: Caspian State University of Technology and Engineering, which opened earlier this year.

So how do Avaza and Aktau-City seem to be faring thus far, in the less-than-stellar economic climate? Not well.

Avaza had trouble filling guestrooms after the first hotels opened this summer and fall. “[T]he ministries in Ashgabat received orders to select staff to be sent to spend a few nights in the five-star hotels. Some had to pay the hotel bills from their own pocket,” Farid Tuhbatullin, the head of the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights, recently told Transitions Online, a news website that covers Central Asia. It doesn't help that Turkmenistan also has short summers--meaning, beach-going in February won't work as well as it does in Dubai--and an archaic visa process, or that it borders those havens of stability, Iran, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan. And Aktau-City has some, er, environmental hazards to consider: According to the website Eurasianet, "[R]adioactive waste from Aktau’s disused Chemical Ore Mining and Smelting Complex has gathered [nearby]." What's more, in attracting investors and tourists, both Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan must contend with bad international reputations--the former's being worse than the latter's--on human rights, corruption, and other governance issues.

Global stock markets, commodities and emerging market currencies retreated sharply Thursday after state-owned investment conglomerate Dubai World asked for a six-month reprieve on its massive loan repayments.

The company is burdened with $59-billion (U.S.) in debt.

The debt standstill marks the end of Dubai's credit-fuelled real estate explosion, which spurred construction of scores of ostentatious infrastructure projects, including the world's tallest building and sprawling palm-shaped tourist resorts built on sand foundations.

It also raised the spectre of the largest sovereign default in nearly a decade and prompted fears of financial woes spreading to other economies just as the global recovery strives to take root.

The Dubai crisis could hit emerging-market sentiment and investor tolerance for risk, which have both helped drive the global economic recovery this year, Scotia Capital currency strategist Sacha Tihanyi warned.

[. . .]

“The thing that would make anyone nervous is the fact that this is a financial-sector shock. It was financial-sector shocks that played such an intensive role in the recession and financial crisis,” Mr. Tihanyi said in an interview.

Indeed, shares of banks with exposure to Dubai World debt or holdings in the United Arab Emirates, including HSBC, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland, fell sharply on the news. European markets suffered their largest one-day decline in seven months, dropping more than 3 per cent. Emerging-market currencies and equity markets sank. Brazilian shares dropped more than 2 per cent and Mexican stocks lost about 3 per cent. Commodities, including oil and base metals also lost ground. Even gold, which has surged to record levels in recent weeks, sold off as investors reined in their risk exposure.

At this point, I am of course simply trying to get an overview like the rest of you and not least deciding whether it will have any far reaching repercussions beyond today's theatricals. However, in case you did not turn on your Blackberry today, they story is that the Dubai government has requested investors in the debt of the investment company Dubai world whether they wouldn't be so nice as to accept a wee postponement of the payment of their debt. Especially, a payment due already the 14th of December in the form of $3.52 billion of bonds from property unit Nakheel PJSC looks as if it is near dead in the water.

The price of Nakheel’s bonds fell to 70.5 cents on the dollar from 84 yesterday and 110.5 a week ago, according to Citigroup Inc. prices on Bloomberg.“Nakheel is now standing on the brink of failure given the astonishing amount of cash Dubai would have to inject on it in order to see the enterprise survive,” said Luis Costa, emerging-market debt strategist at Commerzbank AG in London.

Obviously, announcements of delay of debt payments smells an awful lot like default and with $59 billion worth of liabilities at Dubai World many a financial institution and investor are exposed here. Naturally, and apart from the internal mess this is likely to cause in the Middle Eastern region, I am looking closely at the notion of European banks being sucked in here too.

in George Bush's words 'this suckers going down'. well it may be.....this is a potential mutiple default scenario. The 'implied support' by the emirates for the companies they own when no guarantees are in place has been the basis for credit ratings across the region. That is, that the sovereign would not default. That the federal government has allowed this to come into question demonstrates a very real hazard for investors, It is something it would avoid at all costs. Its about cash. There just isnt enough of it

The Airbus A380 is a double-deck, wide-body, four-engine airliner manufactured by the European corporation Airbus, a subsidiary of EADS. The largest passenger airliner in the world, the A380 made its maiden flight on 27 April 2005 from Toulouse, France, and made its first commercial flight on 25 October 2007 from Singapore to Sydney with Singapore Airlines. The aircraft was known as the Airbus A3XX during much of its development phase, but the nickname Superjumbo has since become associated with it.

The A380's upper deck extends along the entire length of the fuselage, and its width is equivalent to that of a widebody aircraft. This allows for a cabin with 50% more floor space than the next-largest airliner, the Boeing 747-400, and provides seating for 525 people in standard three-class configuration or up to 853 people in all economy class configurations.[7] The A380 is offered in passenger and freighter versions. The A380-800, the passenger model, is the largest passenger airliner in the world, but has a shorter fuselage than the Airbus A340-600, which is Airbus's next-biggest passenger aeroplane. The A380-800F, the freighter model, is offered as one of the largest freight aircraft, with a listed payload capacity exceeded only by the Antonov An-225. The A380-800 has a design range of 15,200 km (8,200 nmi), sufficient to fly from Boston to Hong Kong for example, and a cruising speed of Mach 0.85 (about 900 km/h or 560 mph at cruising altitude). It is the first commercial jet capable of using GTL-based fuel.

"This is the only city in the Americas that Emirates is flying the 380," explained Philips. "We do an awful lot of exporting of manufactured goods, IT goods, many of our architects, our engineers, our legal, our accountants are working in Dubai."

"The only constraint in our growing relationship is probably capacity to work together, so I want to just add our voice to many other voices in convincing the federal government that perhaps we do need more than three flights a week."

When we asked him why he seemed frustrated, Councillor Kyle Rae was more blunt: "They're flying in three times a week, and they want to fly in five times a week. The federal government won't give them permission. There's a six-month delay getting cargo onto this flight. It is an economic engine, it is an important opportunity for international trade, and the federal government—because this is Toronto—is not giving them landing rights. This is interference in the marketplace and it has to stop."

Federal Tourism Minister Diane Ablonczy was also in attendance and all smiles, but found fingers pointed at her. Said McCallion: "Madame Minister, [the airport] needs a little more cooperation from the federal government. We are the largest airport in Canada, but other airports get a better deal than we get."

The urgency is rooted in the increasing importance and influence of Dubai on the international scene, especially as it relates to tourism. Formerly a tiny desert community of 183,000 people, the population has ballooned to 1.5 million in only three decades, only 10% of which are now Emiraties. One of the world's most audacious skylines has appeared only relatively recently with the explicit intention of attracting affluent westerners to the "Vegas of the Middle East," where many of the rules of this strict Muslim society are relaxed for the sake of tourism.