The Final Entry

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 20:46:19 +0400

I began this blog to share my search and discovery of the Dubai landscape...in real time...while I have been in Dubai from 2006-2008.

I define landscape in a traditionally broad sense, including an historically deep social and cultural dimension and a geographically broad physical dimension. Who are the people? How have they used this piece of geography in the past? How is it being used now? And what are the definitive physical components of this land?

This final blog entry draws conclusions.

This entry defines the Dubai landscape, grasps historical cultural keys, interprets the need for a vibrant public realm, and then translates it into a user-driven network, a green system of multiple use and multi-layered connectivity, linking every neighborhood in the city with the next, the fertile medium for its regional, multi-cultural population.

There are several theories as to how Dubai was named. One theory is that the word Dubai is a combination of the Farsi words for two and brothers, the latter referring to Deira and Bur Dubai. Others believe that ‘Dubai’ was so named by people who considered its souq a smaller version of a thriving market named ‘Daba’.

Another possibility is that the name came from a word meaning money - people from Dubai were commonly believed to have money because it was a prosperous trading centre.

In the Gallery, This is the Dubai Landscape, Figure 2, you can see how Dubai sits both as a municipality and also as an Emirate in the United Arab Emirates(UAE). The UAE is a federation of seven sheikhdoms located in the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula. Bordered by the Sultanate of Oman and the Gulf of Oman to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south and west, and by the Arabian Gulf to the north, the total land area, including 20 islands, is 83,000 sq km (32,278 sq mi). The seven emirates are Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Qaiwain, Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah.

The UAE was formerly known as the Trucial States or Trucial Coast. From 1820 onwards, Britain established its presence in the region with the signing of several agreements including a maritime truce, which gave the area its name. In 1968, having maintained its presence in the Gulf for well over a century, Britain declared its intention to withdraw by the end of 1971. On December 2, 1971 the flag of the UAE was raised for the first time, marking the beginning of a new era.

The present Ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, is committed to his father's dream of making Dubai one of the foremost cities in the world, as are his brothers, Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Deputy Ruler of Dubai; and Deputy Chairman of Dubai Police & Public Security Major General Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.(These last five paragraphs are from Sheikh Mohammed's web site)

In the Gallery entitled, This is the Dubai Landscape, I summarize my analysis. In the Gallery entitled, Dubai 21st Century Public Realm, I hypothesize the evolution of the Dubai landscape from halophytic coastal plain to an excellent city that provides the essence of success and comfort of living, a pioneering global city bursting with vibrance and creativity... ...an environment where living and working is a pleasure, attracting the best minds and the most successful businesses.

Pedestrian Realm

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:55:59 +0400

This is not about quaint this and quaint that. It is about understanding true pedestrian scale in the city. A thing for which we in the United States have no real experience and very little, even useless as it is, book learning. It is something that must be felt, that must be IRL(in real life) experienced…otherwise it is a quaint thing dealt with best in tourism articles and books.

It is not about what you buy in the shops or who is selling the goods. It is about the spaces and connections between the shops, the movement from one shop to the next…the shops and proportions of those pedestrian dominated urban movements.

Recently, I have had the opportunity to discuss Dubai landscape with people whose profession is studying these things: Carys Swanwick, Professor of Landscape at Sheffield University, and Tim Kennedy Assistant Professor in Architecture and a landscape architect at the American University Sharjah. Tim was part of the organizing and technical committees for the recent conference here entitled Instant Cities: Emergent Trends in Architecture and Urbanism in the Arab World.

Carys studies landscape character and its interface with urban green infrastructure. She queried the cultural roots of the Dubai landscape identity when historically there was not enough water here to even sustain a human population?

Tim uses multimedia to study landscape identity from the perspective of historical naming of places in the landscape to explain their historical and cultural value as held by the public. Just after I returned from Morocco, he took me on a walk through the Bastakiya and Deira Districts of Dubai, demonstrating how the history of place names reveals the identity.

All that identity and character stuff aside, what struck me most was the raw visual 3D and 4D experience of the physical place (the width of the floor, the paving, the height of the adjacent walls, the labyrinthine procession through those and the changing quality of light due to the changing of the overhead enclosure).

What struck me on that walk here in Dubai was the structural similarity of the pedestrian realm in Dubai with the pedestrian realm in the Tangier and Meknes medinas which I had recently walked while on vacation.

What I find unique and particularly attractive is the human scale of these places, these cities these urbanizations. By human, I mean scale in the classic sense of Vitruvius, Alberti, DaVinci’s Vitruvian man and Le Corbusier’s Modulor.

There is no magic here, just something sentient and content about urban places with human scale rocking the place.

Naysayer snippet...what about emergency services vehicles, what about fire codes...well, what about them? Why do we scale our cities to accommodate vehicles larger than a Hummer into every nook and cranny? And utility infrastructure? What about those health, safety and welfare easements and setbacks? C’mon, it is the 21st century, materials and technology advances impel that we no longer have to offer obeisances to 19th century engineering standards.

I actually think that there is a basis for sustainable contemporary architecture and sustainable contemporary cities in these medinas(cities) and their dars(houses)...just needs to be deduced out, to an archetype, wrapped in modern technology, measured in smart code, and hey, Bob’s your uncle. Who among the readers has not walked a medina without being entranced?

Actually, looking again at the image of the Dubai Bastakiya above, I wonder if all those roof scuppers are really a smart use of the scarce fall of rain? Credit for that image goes to Andreas Hauser and his Awareness in Work and Life, blog.

The Pedestrian Realm Gallery contains images from Bastakiya, Deira, Tangier and Meknes.

Dubai 2006-08

The Final Entry

Pedestrian Realm