i am fond of you. well said. a lot of people were rushing toward the bonanza just a year and a half ago. corporate ass kissing and atrocities were disgusting.
the world love to see arabs fail in everything. a good reality check for gulf to see who their real friends are.
dubai world is different than the government of dubai. it's sort of like the quasi-public development wing of the emirate with holdings all over the world. absolutely idiotic blog post - confusing and doesn't explain a thing. there's not really much to discuss based on that piece o' crap writing. why i hate blogs in general.
my aunty showed off to me last february saying she bought an island there... i told her that "really? didn't know u like to live at "deserted" place"... hope she knew what i meant^^
fondue.
how do you know that any of the people commenting here are white? let alone all of them? everyone has been goin to dubai to try and cash in...not just white people.
take it with a pinch of white salt
oh i just know...
1- non-whites are paid less and do not have the safety net of their home countries socioeconomic stability to fall back to . they, therefore, do not have the luxury of either taking advatange of others or being bloodlustfully gleeful when these others fall back on their behind.
2-people that know what its like to be denigrated ,are ...hopefully...less likely to denigrate others. this is not always true of course...maybe more of a wishful thinking.
and yes, i'm equating the "white person" with the western world. minorities in the west or white people in the middle/east/south are not in the equation. therefore, the salt
right... so "whites" like to gleefully laugh at the poor "non-whites" who, in this case have pumped insane amounts of cash in totally crazy developments that now fall apart out of their impossibility.
A bubble is something that has no substance - it does not matter if it is a puffed up white bubble (florida) or a puffed up brown bubble (dubai) - there is something healthy in getting back to a solid "ground level" in things...
-
Commenting on Dubai, one way or the other, is not necessarily a race thing - if anything is, it's your (F&FoY) suggestion that non-whites have a greater capacity for empathy than whites. Now, that's crazytalk.
i was disgusted and entranced by dubai for some time. now i am merely saddened by it. don't care if people in dubai or anywhere are white black or pink. the fact of matter is leaders of that nation squandered great wealth making horrible architecture and possibly disastrous city. and they did it all for what? there was not even a dream behind it except a utopia filled with moneyboats that seem to be stranded underwater...
abu dhabi seems to be heading in more responsible direction. masdar city is remarkable even if it only half works. buildings like louvre by nouvel seem actually worth visiting.
am very interested in seeing how it all falls out.
economy-workin friends are saying they wonder if banks will be even less happy to lend from now on, making credit even harder to get....possibly this is not small event in the end, though i am hoping my buddies are just being bleak, not prescient...
Dubai is a symptom of Bush and his oil buddies bloody thirst for money. No no not profits, money. They span the globe creating their bubbles and in the process indebting us all. Dubai will become profitable only after the secret elites buy up every last property cheap.
The problem with Dubai is the way it was financed.
In the US, we have a very interesting concept that was intended to bring back both fiscal accountability and the reintroduction of government as a business competitor.
I am talking about of course Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990. While mildly ironic that a concept was born from a Republican administration to increase to power and size of government, it does so in a non-tax money grubbing way.
The CFO Act obviously translated down all the way to state and local levels by giving both a legal precedent and framework for it to exist especially within managing (passive) agencies versus executive (active) agencies.
The basic gist of all of this is that this act, along with many other pieces of legislation and suggestions, allows government to return to pre-1930 methods of generating revenue through private-public and public enterprises.
Essentially, various governmental organizations are given the ability to use money from general and specific funds as collateral to extend their credit to invest in ventures to generate economic and social growth.
This moves away from the pure bond paradigm commonly found throughout much of the 20th century-- meaning money from special tax collections and the general fund had to be siphoned off indefinitely to repay a bond.
While a city may have the ability to profit enormously off of such instances, it holds them at a much larger liability than floating a regular bond because it puts the general fund up as a financial liability. This basically meaning that guarantors of public-private investments have the right to siphon money directly out of the revenue stream.
When you get into an instance as Dubai, where the typical "Western" and even "Far Eastern" rules do not apply, you run into serious problems.
While Dubai World is not purely a government entity, the government holds a pretty substantial liability in this public-private partnership.
Especially since Dubai World's main revenue stream comes from Dubai's nearly tax-free Entrepot scheme.
And Dubai's Entrepot industry is really the only pure profitable industry from a governmental standpoint since Dubai has a very limited and minimal tax structure.
Basically, it boils down to the fact that Dubai's port and drydocks are fundamentally dead. without a movement of cargo, the government ceases to make money. And with no cash on hand, the ability to do international business is severely crippled.
While I appreciate Dubai's very unique approach of government, spending the money of your only money-making industry on shoddy real estate investments is a pretty bad move.
Until the government of Dubai unloads assets to pay off their debtors, the movement of goods will dry up.
jump i was disgusted and entranced by dubai for some time. now i am merely saddened by it.
this coming from a phd ( in urbanism as well? the irony)student who is taught to research fact-based complexities prior to making rationally deduced decisions rather than melodramatic, cliched ego-centred judgemental histrionics. and, frankly, i find abu dhabi's marketing of culture far less characterful and fun than dubai's babylonian exuberence. you would not understand that because obvously you have neither lived in the region nor do you understand it.
re:white people. i really wrote all i had to say above and if you didn't grasp that my assessment was based on actual differences between western i.e. "white" people (i have also explained my usage of the word) and others in the region (i live and work in the uae) and that it is not based on essentialists point of view...as you are obvoiusly prone to read...then you can simply simple-mindedly continue assuming what you wish.
as for actual observations on the actual situation here, it is perhaps only expected that such a hyper-city built itself beyond its means. this is the paradox that is dubai: the Dubai brand, which is or was the main impulse behind the market, pushed the exuberence beyond what the market could accomodate. the egg grew larger than the hen within the hen. but this should not form a reason to damn or condemn the emirate (i don't see these same people focusing their hateful glee on las vegas - i think if you look into your judgemental attitude you'll see a bit of latent insidious racism despite your claims) but should be seen as a natural symbiosis between dubai's endemic characters and the influences of the market..and should be seen as part of dubai's maturity in the longer term.
and i agree with the theme that the financing of the city was problematic. but keep in mind how young this country and its systems ... that it adopted uncritically. the ability of bein critical does not arise out of opportunism (the call of the pre-crisis era) but out of difficulty and hardship (the current). hence a necessary step towards maturity.
there will definitely be a dubai-like base on the moon at some point. people will swim in the 1/6 gravity wave pool, golf on a 10 mile long driving range
Other than h3, there is no reason to be on the shithole that is the moon.
With that said, Dubai was a great experiment in trying to establish a concept of government... but they failed to heed the warnings of others or to seriously evaluate the effectiveness and successes of such public-private partnerships.
It's kind of sad to see a 100 billion dollar experiment turn out to by a hyper vertical Jersey suburb.
my ignorance about urbanism is enormous. i understand specific issues of sustainability with ridiculous authority but that is all. in the end phd means i know enough to ask deeper questions. that is about all.
as far as it goes i was fascinated by the power to create, and by the willfulness of un-sustainable urbanism the place represents (represented?) but disgusted by the labor conditions and the uneven-ness of the social system. nothing to do with race or gender or religion, just class. with all that money i felt a more equitable system could have been built.
i am saddened because dubai does not have the oil reserves to power their way out of this in easy way, and they are also not going to have much clout in the future. so yeah, saddened by a missed opportunity.
but lets see how it falls out. perhaps something interesting will happen.
the uneven-ness of dubai's social (or more pointedly, socioeconomic) system is a reflection and a consequence of the fundamental uneven-ness and injustice of the socioeconomic condition of the world at large.
here's a thought for you: it was much easier for a foreigner to find a job in dubai that pays far better than jobs in her/his homecountry than it was finding a job in the states and europe given the xenophobic immigration laws.
so be as disgusted as you wish with dubai...at least they let people in.
listened to the bbc's world have your say call in show. they had dubai's woes as a topic. one point that was made by the callers, many of whom lived in and/or had worked in dubai is that it is a crime to bounce a check there and several people called saying they had been thrown in jail because they bounced checks because Dubai World didn't pay them what was owed to them.
i agree fondue. it is very telling that many will move to dubai and endure hardship because they think they are going to better place than home. for some it probably was better. for many it was a scam and they were trapped. trapped by a system that gave them the dangerous oddness vado brings up. i see it here in tokyo quite a lot too, mostly with prostitution and construction immigrants. while it is hard here, from what i have read it is nothing as bad as dubai...
the lack of sustainability is a long-term problem. it is hard to fathom the logic that brought them to this point (much like rest of the world really). will they become like tokyo and suffer 20 years of depressed economy? i hope not.
but you know at least japan had and has a production economy and was/is not just based on moving numbers and selling a single product like petroleum. now the gas is drying up how do they dig out of the hole? back to obsurity? or worse?
maybe they will be lucky and the future will play out differently than most expect. i hope so.
no, not only for some but for many. i've chatted with people from construction sites i work on to taxi drivers to nannies...etc. they all say they make/made much more money than in their home countries. yes, the living conditions are not on par with what you yourself might expect (they are sometimes as dubious as living conditions in their homecountries). let me be clear, i am very uncomfortable with the underlying class-nationality (rather than ethnicity) discrimination here- but its a fact that many do/did profit. there is also abuse, of course, but the way you groundlessly amplify it over all else that it just comes across as rhetoric for its own case. i don't really understand your absolutely condemning altruism. is more rhetorical than empathetic.
So, wait... you're essentially arguing that someone leaving their country, having their passport taken away, forced to live in squalor, sign a 3-5-10 year contact and essentially held at gun point or faced with a prison sentence to make 5 dollars a day versus 3 dollars a day is better?
That segment of society makes up about 40% of the population. And let's not forget about the sex workers and outright indentured servants.
That may explain a similar situation for the wealthy not liking it not so much either.
In the first 4 months, there were 2500 cars abandoned at the airport. If we multiply that by 3, that's 7500 this year.
Assuming a $25,000 average price tag on those vehicles, that's $187,500,000 worth of cars. Or roughly ~%.1 of their gross domestic product (2008).
That's not really much but since the government of Dubai is technically the largest financial entity of Dubai -- who is also offering 0.0% loans on automobiles at the moment-- that's really 1,875,000,000 worth of assets due to the money multiplier affect that allows banks to consider loans as a liability and therefore fit as collateral.
Meaning, those cars are currently a financial liability (and therefore loss) of ~%5.2 of GDP.
Dubai claims a growth of GDP at %3 but in all reality... it has more than likely lost around 10% of GDP.
According to some "insider" information and rumblings from British publications (Daily Mail et al) Dubai hasn't defaulted on just a 3 billion dollar loan, it has defaulted on $79 billion.
$80billion debt for Dubai is nothing, couple of wealthy Sheiks will just use their spare money to pay it off, they won't even ask the government to do it for them.
from what i understand dubai's backers (by Dubai i mean the few people who are actually in charge) have been told they are aren't getting more money because it would take many times more than the numbers above to fix the mess...maybe that is just rumor to make the negotiations drift in the right direction. guess we will all see soon enough.
interesting, fondue. i would like to believe you are right and it is most or many who were doing well there. i remain doubtful. not sure what to say about your critique beyond that. i understand the issue is nuanced. rhetoric, not empathic? i wouldn't agree to that, but respect your point of view.
Dubai was driven by speculation of the worst kind in 2006-2008, I'm still amazed at how few architects seemed to have grasped they were a part of that speculation. I guess I'm wondering how many of us in the profession were lucky to have work, jobs, etc based on the known risk that firms took in doing business in Dubai, with the known adverse effect that it wold all come to nothing at somepoint, i.e., we would all lose work, jobs from taking on the risk of working in Dubai. Or is that simply the nature of the profession, the proverbial boom-bust cycle, taken to its logical absurdity in Dubai?
this isn't really news... if you've been working for a firm that had any inkling of work in the UAE you would have known this last December.
Jayness, I couldn't agree more...
my two experiences:
a large firm in Atlanta was hired to work on one of the "obscene architectural monstrosities" in 2005. the Prince who was in power of the project demanded to the firm's board that they devote an entire studio to his project. being promised/contracted for large fees, of course, the firm extended and hired an additional +/-100 people as a *studio* for his project. the Prince demanded fast-track timelines, regularly made insane demands on the project (things which the firm had no control over, such as development of infrastructure in the area), etc... if this had been any other client it would have been abusive, the client would have been let go- but the powers-that-be in the firm decided it was worth it because of the payoff of large fee.
fast forward to february 2009... project comes to abrupt halt after a few weeks of silence. the entire studio, including a few in other studios, was laid off. not only did the firm not receive payment (international contractual relations in terms of architectural contracts are very very sensitive- and usually if it gets to this point, firms take a loss- at least large firms do- because otherwise they risk future projects), but had residual layoffs because of the domino effect this project had on the entire business model of the firm.
i personally worked on a high-end luxury resort in a different emirate... same conditions- very abusive client and ridiculous timelines, without control of infrastructure, etc. then in january 2009 the *big* development company shut it's doors- literally- in all three locations: Dubai, Mumbai, and their office in the emirate i was working with. we did receive partial payment, luckily, and the only communication we received was a three line email that they were sorry but the project is canceled because they were broke. contract off.
my firm had 5 rounds of layoffs. mostly resulting from the lack of payment from these projects (even after months of work was submitted), and the fallout of projects from the whole area. this has affected architectural firms FAR more than people realize. i'm sure though that in a few years we'll all forget... and the same thing will happen again.
the issues of dubai's overbuilding speculative and unneeded buildings really is an exclamation point for the architecture/construction industry worldwide. how many needless lifestyle centers, condominiums, housing developments, strip malls, did you all work on over the last few years and how many are now standing partially finished or completely finished and completely empty? the build it and they will come mentality has to change and perhaps it will until the money starts flowing again. of course, if we continue to have huge missed payments or defaults every few months the money won't start flowing again and most of us can start looking for different careers.
So where does all this leave real estate in the world?
I wonder if anyone has done the math - how many people vs. how many new homes/condos. Dubai just seemed ridiculous from the start. Sure, it will be a business center as it is half way between financial hubs, but beyond that (and the lavish Las Vegas style supporting functions)?
Hopefully, Abu Dhabi will just buy up everything (or continue financing) and the mess won't leak into European banks.
In fact, Dubai World’s largest creditors are domestic banks in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
Still, one concern is that some British banks with large credit exposure to the United Arab Emirates are already troubled. Royal Bank of Scotland, majority-controlled by the British government, was one of the largest lenders to Dubai World, having secured $2.3 billion worth of loans to it since early 2007, according to a report by J.P. Morgan. Standard Chartered and Barclays were also large lenders to the region, with more than $10 billion between them, analysts said. HSBC has $17 billion exposure to the United Arab Emirates.
This is what was in the NYT today. Oh ya and for Liberty the article also mentions Brad Pit.
we also had several clients with two very large masterplanning projects in Abu Dhabi. both projects were canceled- both made no payments - and both had schematic design level documents given to them... in the end all for free.
so basically, american and british architects (we were teamed with a british firm) are suckers because we'll work months through endless demands and give all the conceptual designs they want for free, even in the midst of our own destruction.
i can only speak from my personal experience. yes, many poor people made far far more than 3 to 5 relative to their homecountry salaries, if they were even able to secure jobs there . again, their immediate living conditions can be dire. i am neither praising nor condemning the uae; merely pointing out the fact that people come here for the money..knowingly. they aren't drugged into signing contracts and enough people travel back to their respective home countries to either relate their recommendation, hence the influx, or pass on their warnings. they are knowingly sacrificing a lot to be able to support their families back home. i do not see civil unrest or inclinations thereto (keep in mind the larger percentage of the population is foreign) and i see that there have been some improvements in protecting their rights by passing crucial laws but much more needs to be done...i agree.
and as stated before, the miseries in dubai are a symbiotic extension of miseries worldwide. i do not see people lampooning iceland. what iceland has going for it is that most people who live there, being icelanders, don't have the luxury of abandoning the country. although i am not aware if they also throw bankrupt people into prisons for defaulting on paying off their loans to buy a porsche they can't afford.
+i ... it seems that it wasn't only the americans and the brits who were suckers but also nearly everyone else. you have that, at least, to console you.
and you people with maxed out credit cards and loans you took out for silly silly things...why don't you also blame yourself for your own stupidity instead of externalizing this phenomenon you call the "Crisis".
Dubai is officially broke.
Discuss. Also, abandon your car at the airport.
good riddance
somehow reassuring: there is some sense in the world after all.
if there would be any sense in the world the US would have been officially bankrupt long ago, although technically they already are of course...
the us still has the most powerful military. that's kind of like bankruptcy insurance.
ok, please start your smug self righteous insidiously hypocritical Dubai-bashing now...oh sorry, it started already
i am fond of you. well said. a lot of people were rushing toward the bonanza just a year and a half ago. corporate ass kissing and atrocities were disgusting.
the world love to see arabs fail in everything. a good reality check for gulf to see who their real friends are.
and these very same white people who hate dubai are now LOVING abu dhabi.
reminds me of that self-disgusted britney song "gimme more gimme more gimme".
and by the way...HAPPY EID
and i must say, for a broke city...Mall of Emirates was absolutely packed today!
indeed, HAPPY EID to you too. thank you!
dubai world is different than the government of dubai. it's sort of like the quasi-public development wing of the emirate with holdings all over the world. absolutely idiotic blog post - confusing and doesn't explain a thing. there's not really much to discuss based on that piece o' crap writing. why i hate blogs in general.
Now if only NASA was officially baroque too.
NASA is awesome! the new moon base is going to be incredible.
my aunty showed off to me last february saying she bought an island there... i told her that "really? didn't know u like to live at "deserted" place"... hope she knew what i meant^^
the next big thing in Dubai will be the demolition of all that crazy architecture, and the rise of conservation groups
fondue.
how do you know that any of the people commenting here are white? let alone all of them? everyone has been goin to dubai to try and cash in...not just white people.
take it with a pinch of white salt
oh i just know...
1- non-whites are paid less and do not have the safety net of their home countries socioeconomic stability to fall back to . they, therefore, do not have the luxury of either taking advatange of others or being bloodlustfully gleeful when these others fall back on their behind.
2-people that know what its like to be denigrated ,are ...hopefully...less likely to denigrate others. this is not always true of course...maybe more of a wishful thinking.
and yes, i'm equating the "white person" with the western world. minorities in the west or white people in the middle/east/south are not in the equation. therefore, the salt
right... so "whites" like to gleefully laugh at the poor "non-whites" who, in this case have pumped insane amounts of cash in totally crazy developments that now fall apart out of their impossibility.
A bubble is something that has no substance - it does not matter if it is a puffed up white bubble (florida) or a puffed up brown bubble (dubai) - there is something healthy in getting back to a solid "ground level" in things...
-
Commenting on Dubai, one way or the other, is not necessarily a race thing - if anything is, it's your (F&FoY) suggestion that non-whites have a greater capacity for empathy than whites. Now, that's crazytalk.
ja ja, that sounds truthful to me helsinki.
i was disgusted and entranced by dubai for some time. now i am merely saddened by it. don't care if people in dubai or anywhere are white black or pink. the fact of matter is leaders of that nation squandered great wealth making horrible architecture and possibly disastrous city. and they did it all for what? there was not even a dream behind it except a utopia filled with moneyboats that seem to be stranded underwater...
abu dhabi seems to be heading in more responsible direction. masdar city is remarkable even if it only half works. buildings like louvre by nouvel seem actually worth visiting.
am very interested in seeing how it all falls out.
economy-workin friends are saying they wonder if banks will be even less happy to lend from now on, making credit even harder to get....possibly this is not small event in the end, though i am hoping my buddies are just being bleak, not prescient...
i think for the first time that i am actually interested in visiting dubai
Dubai is a symptom of Bush and his oil buddies bloody thirst for money. No no not profits, money. They span the globe creating their bubbles and in the process indebting us all. Dubai will become profitable only after the secret elites buy up every last property cheap.
The problem with Dubai is the way it was financed.
In the US, we have a very interesting concept that was intended to bring back both fiscal accountability and the reintroduction of government as a business competitor.
I am talking about of course Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990. While mildly ironic that a concept was born from a Republican administration to increase to power and size of government, it does so in a non-tax money grubbing way.
The CFO Act obviously translated down all the way to state and local levels by giving both a legal precedent and framework for it to exist especially within managing (passive) agencies versus executive (active) agencies.
The basic gist of all of this is that this act, along with many other pieces of legislation and suggestions, allows government to return to pre-1930 methods of generating revenue through private-public and public enterprises.
Essentially, various governmental organizations are given the ability to use money from general and specific funds as collateral to extend their credit to invest in ventures to generate economic and social growth.
This moves away from the pure bond paradigm commonly found throughout much of the 20th century-- meaning money from special tax collections and the general fund had to be siphoned off indefinitely to repay a bond.
While a city may have the ability to profit enormously off of such instances, it holds them at a much larger liability than floating a regular bond because it puts the general fund up as a financial liability. This basically meaning that guarantors of public-private investments have the right to siphon money directly out of the revenue stream.
When you get into an instance as Dubai, where the typical "Western" and even "Far Eastern" rules do not apply, you run into serious problems.
While Dubai World is not purely a government entity, the government holds a pretty substantial liability in this public-private partnership.
Especially since Dubai World's main revenue stream comes from Dubai's nearly tax-free Entrepot scheme.
And Dubai's Entrepot industry is really the only pure profitable industry from a governmental standpoint since Dubai has a very limited and minimal tax structure.
Basically, it boils down to the fact that Dubai's port and drydocks are fundamentally dead. without a movement of cargo, the government ceases to make money. And with no cash on hand, the ability to do international business is severely crippled.
While I appreciate Dubai's very unique approach of government, spending the money of your only money-making industry on shoddy real estate investments is a pretty bad move.
Until the government of Dubai unloads assets to pay off their debtors, the movement of goods will dry up.
jump i was disgusted and entranced by dubai for some time. now i am merely saddened by it.
this coming from a phd ( in urbanism as well? the irony)student who is taught to research fact-based complexities prior to making rationally deduced decisions rather than melodramatic, cliched ego-centred judgemental histrionics. and, frankly, i find abu dhabi's marketing of culture far less characterful and fun than dubai's babylonian exuberence. you would not understand that because obvously you have neither lived in the region nor do you understand it.
re:white people. i really wrote all i had to say above and if you didn't grasp that my assessment was based on actual differences between western i.e. "white" people (i have also explained my usage of the word) and others in the region (i live and work in the uae) and that it is not based on essentialists point of view...as you are obvoiusly prone to read...then you can simply simple-mindedly continue assuming what you wish.
as for actual observations on the actual situation here, it is perhaps only expected that such a hyper-city built itself beyond its means. this is the paradox that is dubai: the Dubai brand, which is or was the main impulse behind the market, pushed the exuberence beyond what the market could accomodate. the egg grew larger than the hen within the hen. but this should not form a reason to damn or condemn the emirate (i don't see these same people focusing their hateful glee on las vegas - i think if you look into your judgemental attitude you'll see a bit of latent insidious racism despite your claims) but should be seen as a natural symbiosis between dubai's endemic characters and the influences of the market..and should be seen as part of dubai's maturity in the longer term.
and i agree with the theme that the financing of the city was problematic. but keep in mind how young this country and its systems ... that it adopted uncritically. the ability of bein critical does not arise out of opportunism (the call of the pre-crisis era) but out of difficulty and hardship (the current). hence a necessary step towards maturity.
1990
?
there will definitely be a dubai-like base on the moon at some point. people will swim in the 1/6 gravity wave pool, golf on a 10 mile long driving range
guaranteed to be an alcohol ban....
Other than h3, there is no reason to be on the shithole that is the moon.
With that said, Dubai was a great experiment in trying to establish a concept of government... but they failed to heed the warnings of others or to seriously evaluate the effectiveness and successes of such public-private partnerships.
It's kind of sad to see a 100 billion dollar experiment turn out to by a hyper vertical Jersey suburb.
fondue i understood your point about race.
my ignorance about urbanism is enormous. i understand specific issues of sustainability with ridiculous authority but that is all. in the end phd means i know enough to ask deeper questions. that is about all.
as far as it goes i was fascinated by the power to create, and by the willfulness of un-sustainable urbanism the place represents (represented?) but disgusted by the labor conditions and the uneven-ness of the social system. nothing to do with race or gender or religion, just class. with all that money i felt a more equitable system could have been built.
i am saddened because dubai does not have the oil reserves to power their way out of this in easy way, and they are also not going to have much clout in the future. so yeah, saddened by a missed opportunity.
but lets see how it falls out. perhaps something interesting will happen.
the uneven-ness of dubai's social (or more pointedly, socioeconomic) system is a reflection and a consequence of the fundamental uneven-ness and injustice of the socioeconomic condition of the world at large.
here's a thought for you: it was much easier for a foreigner to find a job in dubai that pays far better than jobs in her/his homecountry than it was finding a job in the states and europe given the xenophobic immigration laws.
so be as disgusted as you wish with dubai...at least they let people in.
listened to the bbc's world have your say call in show. they had dubai's woes as a topic. one point that was made by the callers, many of whom lived in and/or had worked in dubai is that it is a crime to bounce a check there and several people called saying they had been thrown in jail because they bounced checks because Dubai World didn't pay them what was owed to them.
lovely old world.
i agree fondue. it is very telling that many will move to dubai and endure hardship because they think they are going to better place than home. for some it probably was better. for many it was a scam and they were trapped. trapped by a system that gave them the dangerous oddness vado brings up. i see it here in tokyo quite a lot too, mostly with prostitution and construction immigrants. while it is hard here, from what i have read it is nothing as bad as dubai...
the lack of sustainability is a long-term problem. it is hard to fathom the logic that brought them to this point (much like rest of the world really). will they become like tokyo and suffer 20 years of depressed economy? i hope not.
but you know at least japan had and has a production economy and was/is not just based on moving numbers and selling a single product like petroleum. now the gas is drying up how do they dig out of the hole? back to obsurity? or worse?
maybe they will be lucky and the future will play out differently than most expect. i hope so.
jump for some it probably was better.
no, not only for some but for many. i've chatted with people from construction sites i work on to taxi drivers to nannies...etc. they all say they make/made much more money than in their home countries. yes, the living conditions are not on par with what you yourself might expect (they are sometimes as dubious as living conditions in their homecountries). let me be clear, i am very uncomfortable with the underlying class-nationality (rather than ethnicity) discrimination here- but its a fact that many do/did profit. there is also abuse, of course, but the way you groundlessly amplify it over all else that it just comes across as rhetoric for its own case. i don't really understand your absolutely condemning altruism. is more rhetorical than empathetic.
So, wait... you're essentially arguing that someone leaving their country, having their passport taken away, forced to live in squalor, sign a 3-5-10 year contact and essentially held at gun point or faced with a prison sentence to make 5 dollars a day versus 3 dollars a day is better?
That segment of society makes up about 40% of the population. And let's not forget about the sex workers and outright indentured servants.
That may explain a similar situation for the wealthy not liking it not so much either.
In the first 4 months, there were 2500 cars abandoned at the airport. If we multiply that by 3, that's 7500 this year.
Assuming a $25,000 average price tag on those vehicles, that's $187,500,000 worth of cars. Or roughly ~%.1 of their gross domestic product (2008).
That's not really much but since the government of Dubai is technically the largest financial entity of Dubai -- who is also offering 0.0% loans on automobiles at the moment-- that's really 1,875,000,000 worth of assets due to the money multiplier affect that allows banks to consider loans as a liability and therefore fit as collateral.
Meaning, those cars are currently a financial liability (and therefore loss) of ~%5.2 of GDP.
Dubai claims a growth of GDP at %3 but in all reality... it has more than likely lost around 10% of GDP.
According to some "insider" information and rumblings from British publications (Daily Mail et al) Dubai hasn't defaulted on just a 3 billion dollar loan, it has defaulted on $79 billion.
That's %219 of GDP.
$80billion debt for Dubai is nothing, couple of wealthy Sheiks will just use their spare money to pay it off, they won't even ask the government to do it for them.
from what i understand dubai's backers (by Dubai i mean the few people who are actually in charge) have been told they are aren't getting more money because it would take many times more than the numbers above to fix the mess...maybe that is just rumor to make the negotiations drift in the right direction. guess we will all see soon enough.
interesting, fondue. i would like to believe you are right and it is most or many who were doing well there. i remain doubtful. not sure what to say about your critique beyond that. i understand the issue is nuanced. rhetoric, not empathic? i wouldn't agree to that, but respect your point of view.
Dubai was driven by speculation of the worst kind in 2006-2008, I'm still amazed at how few architects seemed to have grasped they were a part of that speculation. I guess I'm wondering how many of us in the profession were lucky to have work, jobs, etc based on the known risk that firms took in doing business in Dubai, with the known adverse effect that it wold all come to nothing at somepoint, i.e., we would all lose work, jobs from taking on the risk of working in Dubai. Or is that simply the nature of the profession, the proverbial boom-bust cycle, taken to its logical absurdity in Dubai?
this isn't really news... if you've been working for a firm that had any inkling of work in the UAE you would have known this last December.
Jayness, I couldn't agree more...
my two experiences:
a large firm in Atlanta was hired to work on one of the "obscene architectural monstrosities" in 2005. the Prince who was in power of the project demanded to the firm's board that they devote an entire studio to his project. being promised/contracted for large fees, of course, the firm extended and hired an additional +/-100 people as a *studio* for his project. the Prince demanded fast-track timelines, regularly made insane demands on the project (things which the firm had no control over, such as development of infrastructure in the area), etc... if this had been any other client it would have been abusive, the client would have been let go- but the powers-that-be in the firm decided it was worth it because of the payoff of large fee.
fast forward to february 2009... project comes to abrupt halt after a few weeks of silence. the entire studio, including a few in other studios, was laid off. not only did the firm not receive payment (international contractual relations in terms of architectural contracts are very very sensitive- and usually if it gets to this point, firms take a loss- at least large firms do- because otherwise they risk future projects), but had residual layoffs because of the domino effect this project had on the entire business model of the firm.
i personally worked on a high-end luxury resort in a different emirate... same conditions- very abusive client and ridiculous timelines, without control of infrastructure, etc. then in january 2009 the *big* development company shut it's doors- literally- in all three locations: Dubai, Mumbai, and their office in the emirate i was working with. we did receive partial payment, luckily, and the only communication we received was a three line email that they were sorry but the project is canceled because they were broke. contract off.
my firm had 5 rounds of layoffs. mostly resulting from the lack of payment from these projects (even after months of work was submitted), and the fallout of projects from the whole area. this has affected architectural firms FAR more than people realize. i'm sure though that in a few years we'll all forget... and the same thing will happen again.
the issues of dubai's overbuilding speculative and unneeded buildings really is an exclamation point for the architecture/construction industry worldwide. how many needless lifestyle centers, condominiums, housing developments, strip malls, did you all work on over the last few years and how many are now standing partially finished or completely finished and completely empty? the build it and they will come mentality has to change and perhaps it will until the money starts flowing again. of course, if we continue to have huge missed payments or defaults every few months the money won't start flowing again and most of us can start looking for different careers.
maybe we can retire that freakin' 'field of dreams' line forever, then?
So where does all this leave real estate in the world?
I wonder if anyone has done the math - how many people vs. how many new homes/condos. Dubai just seemed ridiculous from the start. Sure, it will be a business center as it is half way between financial hubs, but beyond that (and the lavish Las Vegas style supporting functions)?
Hopefully, Abu Dhabi will just buy up everything (or continue financing) and the mess won't leak into European banks.
In fact, Dubai World’s largest creditors are domestic banks in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
Still, one concern is that some British banks with large credit exposure to the United Arab Emirates are already troubled. Royal Bank of Scotland, majority-controlled by the British government, was one of the largest lenders to Dubai World, having secured $2.3 billion worth of loans to it since early 2007, according to a report by J.P. Morgan. Standard Chartered and Barclays were also large lenders to the region, with more than $10 billion between them, analysts said. HSBC has $17 billion exposure to the United Arab Emirates.
This is what was in the NYT today. Oh ya and for Liberty the article also mentions Brad Pit.
we also had several clients with two very large masterplanning projects in Abu Dhabi. both projects were canceled- both made no payments - and both had schematic design level documents given to them... in the end all for free.
so basically, american and british architects (we were teamed with a british firm) are suckers because we'll work months through endless demands and give all the conceptual designs they want for free, even in the midst of our own destruction.
WMD = Weapons of Mass Drafting
Who you gonna call?
Yup, I will never understand that architecture/contractor world where you do work without getting any money down, but that's another discussion.
jump,
i can only speak from my personal experience. yes, many poor people made far far more than 3 to 5 relative to their homecountry salaries, if they were even able to secure jobs there . again, their immediate living conditions can be dire. i am neither praising nor condemning the uae; merely pointing out the fact that people come here for the money..knowingly. they aren't drugged into signing contracts and enough people travel back to their respective home countries to either relate their recommendation, hence the influx, or pass on their warnings. they are knowingly sacrificing a lot to be able to support their families back home. i do not see civil unrest or inclinations thereto (keep in mind the larger percentage of the population is foreign) and i see that there have been some improvements in protecting their rights by passing crucial laws but much more needs to be done...i agree.
and as stated before, the miseries in dubai are a symbiotic extension of miseries worldwide. i do not see people lampooning iceland. what iceland has going for it is that most people who live there, being icelanders, don't have the luxury of abandoning the country. although i am not aware if they also throw bankrupt people into prisons for defaulting on paying off their loans to buy a porsche they can't afford.
+i ... it seems that it wasn't only the americans and the brits who were suckers but also nearly everyone else. you have that, at least, to console you.
and you people with maxed out credit cards and loans you took out for silly silly things...why don't you also blame yourself for your own stupidity instead of externalizing this phenomenon you call the "Crisis".
and those of us that pay our credit card off to 0 each month and live within our means, do we get a trophy?? Or at least a shiny ribbon?
I do thank my parents for instilling the 'do not live outside of your means' and 'don't buy anything (beyond a home) on loan'.
you get peace of mind...is that not enough?
i personally wouldn't even buy a house on loan.
admittedly, i wouldn't even buy a house.
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