Learning from Dubai: behind an urban show

In the global imaginary, Dubai represents a fascinating and glimmeing young city projected to the future. Many proposals of urban planning attempted to govern its very rapid growth: in 1972, one year after the formation of the United Arab Emirates, George Candilis, a former collaborator of Le Corbusier, proposed a masterplan for Dubai where some proposals such as the ‘Dubai Tower’ and the ‘Deira corniche’ seemed to follow Le Corbusier’s maxim, that «the materials of city planning are: sky, space, trees, steel and cement; in that order and that hierarchy». Other proposals of urban planning, such as the work of British architect John Harris to the one of Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis, quickly became outdat ed because of the city’s fast overwhelming growing. Quickly sprout up from the desert, the glittering led lights that animate Dubai’s skyscrapers at night present common analogies with the «decorated sheds» of the other similar city that Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour analysed in 1972 in their book «Learning from Las Vegas». But what is concealed “behind the scenes” of this outstanding urban spectacle? The very fast and bursting expansion of the city of the recent past led to phenomena of urban sprawl and to the proliferation of junkspaces. In between high-density zones, large unbuilt empty spaces and desertic areas generate in many European expats coming from countries with a different culture of urban space, a sensation of disorientation that seems to evoke Walter Benjamin’s urban «uncanny». Thus, in a city where shopping malls and hotels became the main points of social aggregation, the urban structure seems similar to an interconnection of Non-Places (Marc Augé, 1992) that turn out to be outstanding urban landmarks. This paper will attempt to unfold the implied and jettisoned ambitions of Dubai’s masterplans, attempting to point out solutions for the present open urban issues.