This past February, the Dubai Chamber of Commerce authorized the development of a “free zone” dubbed Food City. GCLA, a green landscape architect firm, proposed a master plan for the city sector to turn it into an incredible off-the-grid, self-sufficient metropolis. GCLA’s future-forward urban quarter incorporates an extensive list of sustainable urban planning ideas, including vertically stacked landscape surfaces, artificial roof landscapes, renewable energy systems, aquatic farms,and thermal conditioning.
Vision of the future - green neo-feudalism? Maybe that’s the idea in Dubai? They have lots of sun, lots of money and a slave labor underclass. Self-sufficient? I’m not sure this model of “green” is what the rest of us should be looking to but the collection of solar energy and water collection in a desert climate is interesting. Question is, how is this technology gonna “trickle down” to the rest of us if at all?
Perhaps some good news out of Argentina,
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/15/argentine_journalist_sergio_ciancaglini_on_sin
Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein documented the struggles of Argentine workers occupying their factories in the 2004 film The Take
AVI LEWIS: Zanon Ceramics. After two years under worker control, it’s the granddaddy of this new movement. Today, the factory is in production with 300 workers. Decisions are made in assemblies: one worker, one vote. Everyone gets exactly the same salary.
NAOMI KLEIN: It wasn’t always like this. A couple of years ago, the owner claimed that the plant was no longer profitable, that it had to be shut down. The workers refused to accept that fate. They argued that the company owed so much to the community in debts and public subsidies that it now belonged to everyone. In the Menem years, the Zanon factory had received millions in corporate welfare, and the owners still ran up huge debts. Now that his workers have restarted the machines, he’s back.
Literally, the day after 9/11, Washington and Wall Street lawyers and investment bankers started heading to Dubai on a regular basis. It was as if someone had thrown a switch. Rumors were that major money laundering and related operations were shifting HQ operations towards Dubai. Certainly with more US military presence in the middle east, it would be safer to move gold and other assets there. I believe Halliburton moved their HQ there several years back. No doubt the bubble burst is causing serious pain to those without significant capital.
FYI —
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/05/middleeast.gender
This is sort of off topic but could your web people shorten the margins on posts and features so they fit on a normal screen page?
Anyone else have to scroll back and forth to see the whole line?
Yes I can control > minus key to shrink it down to mouse type but that is not a good solution.
Now to the topic. Dubai, Las Vegas and other artificial man made environments will, according to Jim Kunstler, dry up and blow away for lack of water in the huge quantities necessary and energy strain as the oil curve goes down and the electrical grid strain goes up.
Haliburton has moved to Dubai so when Cheney gets done spewing and posturing on tv he’ll head to one of the skyscrapers there and hole up like Howard Hughes (maybe.)
The age of the megastructure may be passing, but National Geographic has a television series on megastructures in the built environment. I’ve seen one of these on the California Academy of Science completed by Renzo Piano. Real green solutions were incorporated into the design and execution. It was a massive undertaking.
Doug:
What is beautiful about what the people did in Argentina is that the middle class allied with the poor and they realized they were united against the banksters who pulled the plug on their country. There was some real cooperation amidst realizing that people had more in common than they did in difference.
Unfortunately here in the U.S. they can easily pit the middle class against the poor and play on racism to intensify the divide. I’ll tell you what - the gentrification that has and is occuring in inner cities kicking people out who have lived there for generations to make room for yuppies is the self-same struggle that is affecting the middle class and working class today with the foreclosures. It’s the same monied interests screwing all of us. It is time to co-operate.