LOL thats true. U.A.E. has huge employment issues. Half of those engineers and construction workers were outsourced. And some of the construction workers were not allowed to see their family members until they finished the project, not to mention they are getting paid about 4 dollars a day. Guess thats the magic out sourcing.
Basically, there are no construction unions of any sort yet but they are working on it. Meanwhile, the way Architects, Engineers, and contractors have been able to avoid international trade bans, is by developing local subsidiary firms under the banner of "consultant." Since the Gulf countries are all about their public image this entire issue about cheap/slave labor has really thrown mud in all their faces so now they are scrambling to repair some of the damages. But the UAE in particular has been having a rough time doing so. Only about 10% of the country's population is indigenous, the rest have come from India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and other Arab countries. The native people are very rich, very spoiled, and very lazy. The government has really been desperate to fix this problem, but it has been a problem since the countries founding. The moment there was oil wealth, the country became a welfare society like Saudi Arabia. In other words, the country's wealth was distributed among the people just as long as they supported the absolute monarchy. These people were all uneducated and unskilled, but they became very rich and extremely lazy (who wouldn't, if they were just given a lot of money?). Realizing that they had no population resources to do all the blue collar jobs, they had to import help. So waves and waves of poor people came and took up pretty much 99% of the jobs out there. Even the white collar jobs are now headed by foreigners. I'd say the only jobs headed by native people are the police/judicial forces to ensure that the monarchy reins supreme. And what do the poor foreign blue collar people do when they have nothing to lose? They fuck a lot and produce a lot of children much to the chagrin of the establishment. But ruling establishment can do nothing about it except produce the same kind of pre-civil America condition there.
Everyone kept calling Dubai a "melting pot" but I beg to differ. Very few people spoke Arabic. And if English is your only true language, you can live your entire life there and not speak a word of Arabic. So consequently, there is a class system for the natives who are basically first class citizens, and the 1st generation foreigners who are second class, and the recent immigrants who have gone through a process of residency as third class. None of this is official, but this is how I and many others who have spent excessive amounts of time there have established. You have to keep in mind that while there is this boom to build pretty buildings there, they are also trying to keep up with it by establishing a new infrastructure that never existed before. Too keep everyone in line, lots and lots of fun stuff like malls, skyscrapers, parks, and shopping centers have been built to keep everyone in a state of manufactured consent.
thanks for the post archmed. I really do find the idea of this utopian society built off the backs of an exploited and largely invisible workforce to be hugely disheartening. I would like to go to Dubai and see for myself, but I'm afraid i may turn completely marxist upon visiting.
actually, back to what FOG was saying, how the fuck do you pour concrete that high, because i know its all poured in place. Can you even pump it that high?
burjdubai
officially the worlds tallest building
Do my eyes deceive or it that formwork up there?!?!?! It's all poured in place? Yikes!
I designed a building that looked just like this when I was eleven years old.
Sevensixfive, you should sue them like that kid and the freedom towers.
I'm looking into my options, got some people on retainer, you know how it goes ...
you need Jackie Chiles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Chiles
It looks like the building from the Towering Inferno...
The world's new mecca for base jumpers.
Goddammit! I'll get it right one of these days.
amazing what you can do with slave labor...
LOL thats true. U.A.E. has huge employment issues. Half of those engineers and construction workers were outsourced. And some of the construction workers were not allowed to see their family members until they finished the project, not to mention they are getting paid about 4 dollars a day. Guess thats the magic out sourcing.
I was just in Dubai.
Basically, there are no construction unions of any sort yet but they are working on it. Meanwhile, the way Architects, Engineers, and contractors have been able to avoid international trade bans, is by developing local subsidiary firms under the banner of "consultant." Since the Gulf countries are all about their public image this entire issue about cheap/slave labor has really thrown mud in all their faces so now they are scrambling to repair some of the damages. But the UAE in particular has been having a rough time doing so. Only about 10% of the country's population is indigenous, the rest have come from India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and other Arab countries. The native people are very rich, very spoiled, and very lazy. The government has really been desperate to fix this problem, but it has been a problem since the countries founding. The moment there was oil wealth, the country became a welfare society like Saudi Arabia. In other words, the country's wealth was distributed among the people just as long as they supported the absolute monarchy. These people were all uneducated and unskilled, but they became very rich and extremely lazy (who wouldn't, if they were just given a lot of money?). Realizing that they had no population resources to do all the blue collar jobs, they had to import help. So waves and waves of poor people came and took up pretty much 99% of the jobs out there. Even the white collar jobs are now headed by foreigners. I'd say the only jobs headed by native people are the police/judicial forces to ensure that the monarchy reins supreme. And what do the poor foreign blue collar people do when they have nothing to lose? They fuck a lot and produce a lot of children much to the chagrin of the establishment. But ruling establishment can do nothing about it except produce the same kind of pre-civil America condition there.
Everyone kept calling Dubai a "melting pot" but I beg to differ. Very few people spoke Arabic. And if English is your only true language, you can live your entire life there and not speak a word of Arabic. So consequently, there is a class system for the natives who are basically first class citizens, and the 1st generation foreigners who are second class, and the recent immigrants who have gone through a process of residency as third class. None of this is official, but this is how I and many others who have spent excessive amounts of time there have established. You have to keep in mind that while there is this boom to build pretty buildings there, they are also trying to keep up with it by establishing a new infrastructure that never existed before. Too keep everyone in line, lots and lots of fun stuff like malls, skyscrapers, parks, and shopping centers have been built to keep everyone in a state of manufactured consent.
thanks for the post archmed. I really do find the idea of this utopian society built off the backs of an exploited and largely invisible workforce to be hugely disheartening. I would like to go to Dubai and see for myself, but I'm afraid i may turn completely marxist upon visiting.
Great article by Mike Davis on architecture, fantasy, and late-capitalist labor problems in Dubai: link
Okay, I was digging through some old drawings today, and I found this:
I didn't only design the Burj when I was eleven (check out how mine has the monorail winding around it), I designed all of Dubai!
I've been talking to Jackie Chiles (thanks for the refferral, cadalyst), and he thinks we've got a really solid case!
I mean really, it's kind of embarassing:
... and the thing is, mine wouldn't have been built by underpaid immigrant labor, mine was gonna be built by robots.
when i was a small child i designed a series of mechanical arms with sticky hands to help me pick up my dirty laundry.
the whites.
i hear they shipped mexicans over there for work. apparently cheaper then the locals.
actually, back to what FOG was saying, how the fuck do you pour concrete that high, because i know its all poured in place. Can you even pump it that high?
eastcoastarch. no mexicans are there that I know of. And there are no such things as "Dubai locals working for cheap labor."
You use a really powerful Putzmaster pump. For real.
http://www.putzmeister.com
its tall
but this week its actually not the tallest
stick to the Shiek
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