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City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism
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The city of Dubai, one of the seven United Arab Emirates, is everything the Arab world isn’t: a freewheeling capitalist oasis where the market rules and history is swept aside. Until the credit crunch knocked it flat, Dubai was the fastest-growing city in the world, with a roaring economy that outpaced China’s while luring more tourists than all of India. It’s one of the world’s safest places, a stone’s throw from its most dangerous. In City of Gold, Jim Krane, who reported for the AP from Dubai, brings us a boots-on-the-ground look at this fascinating place by walking its streets, talking to its business titans, its prostitutes, and the hard-bitten men who built its fanciful skyline. He delves into the city’s history, paints an intimate portrait of the ruling Maktoum family, and ponders where the city is headed. Dubai literally came out of nowhere. It was a poor and dusty village in the 1960s. Now it’s been transformed into the quintessential metropolis of the future through the vision of clever sheikhs, Western capitalists, and a river of investor money that poured in from around the globe. What has emerged is a tolerant and cosmopolitan city awash in architectural landmarks, luxury resorts, and Disnified kitsch. It’s at once home to America’s most prestigious companies and universities and a magnet for the Middle East’s intelligentsia. Dubai’s dream of capitalism has also created a deeply stratified city that is one of the world’s worst polluters. Wild growth has clogged its streets and left its citizens a tiny minority in a sea of foreigners. Jim Krane considers all of this and casts a critical eye on the toll that the global economic downturn has taken on a place that many tout as a blueprint for a more stable Middle East. While many think Dubai’s glory days have passed, insiders like Jim Krane who got to know the city and its creators firsthand realize there’s much more to come in the City of Gold, a place that, in just a few years, has made itself known to nearly every person on earth.
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Product details
Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1 edition (September 15, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312535740
ISBN-13: 978-0312535742
Product Dimensions:
6.5 x 1.3 x 9.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
Average Customer Review:
4.4 out of 5 stars
57 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#1,167,519 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
This is a well written, concise, very readable and fascinating portrait of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates. Although I understand that its sale has been banned in Dubai, it strikes me as a very complimentary/upbeat portrayal of what has been achieved in the desert. Krane does not ignore the social issues such as the poor treatment of labor and lack of political freedom. But the overall judgement is that the Al-Maktoum family has repeatedly taken huge, gutsy bets that have paid off big. We have them to thank for one of the world's most modern, efficient and livable cities -- certainly in this part of the world. This book really hits the mark.
American journalist and former Dubai resident Jim Krane has written perhaps the best introduction yet to Dubai. An overview of the UAE's brief recorded history is preamble to the larger story of how a fishing village that wasn't electrified until 1960 became the regional hub for transport, banking, media and tourism. Krane's near breathlessness in describing the planning and building of one seemingly impossible project after another is tempered in the second half by a more sober reflection on the exploitation of labor, abuse of the environment, and marginalization of the native population.Krane writes well and interviews widely but perhaps his greatest strength is his sensitivity to a textured narrative, of not being satisfied with a simple story, in presenting angles and opinions that are often contradictory. Not only does this make his story richer, but you're never quite sure how he thinks of any of this until the very end. The long-time resident finds himself seduced by Dubai, a city that developed so quickly that it's no longer in the modern age, but "somewhere out in the future."The unstated assumption among Dubai observers seems to be that of most economists, politicians and other social engineers - life is better when you have more money and more stuff. It is therefore the job of those in power to enable people to make and accumulate more. And since Dubai is doing that quite well, it must be a swell place. Thanks to the generosity of the Sheikhs, Emiratis have one of the highest per capita incomes on the planet. They have all the stuff they could ever want, including literacy and higher life expectancy. But where is the benefit of living longer when your life amounts to little more than shopping? When your work is largely meaningless, a government job that is often nothing but a welfare appointment, a title to justify paying you a wage? Where's the benefit in a house full of great stuff when you've lost your culture and identity? When you are a minority in your own country?Krane talks to a 39 year old mother who during her lifetime saw Dubai grow from a town in which boys and girls played together each afternoon in the creek, to a heaving metropolis in which you can't safely walk across the street because of the traffic. Children spend more time indoors in schools and in houses separated by wide roads. People work longer. "Before, life had a taste. Now nothing makes you happy. Before, you could buy one mobile phone and you are happy. Now you buy five mobiles in a year and you're not happy. There is nothing making people happy now."It's not just the Emiratis who are dissatisfied. The laborers building and maintaining the city live in crowded conditions, working long hours in often dangerous jobs for little money, the threat of deportation preventing them from organizing to improve their condition. There are of course many poor people in many countries across the world, and it is true that many laborers make better money in Dubai than they would at home. But what kind of "vision" of development ignores the suffering of so many of its residents? Before the 2009 market collapse Dubai had bank-loads of money, some of which could have been diverted from the latest vanity project to help those who make important contributions to the state and society. Where is the compassion? What kind of vision of the future is this?If Dubai means anything at all, it's a call to start questioning our assumptions. What's wrong with less stuff and a more measured pace of development? Won't compassion for the environment, an equitable division of benefits, and a meaningful personal stake in society and in one's own life make living richer than another hotel, shopping mall, or skyscraper? For a country that's actually trying to do something different, to break out of the present and into something possibly futuristic, look to Bhutan, a small developing country with few resources which measures progress in terms of GDH - Gross Domestic Happiness.#
I started reading this near the end of a trip to Dubai and I wish I had read it earlier. It is an excellent introduction to this city-state and will explain in advance many of the questions that will arise anyway in the course of your travels. For readers who do not plan to travel to Dubai, it provides a good historical and cultural introduction to an important part of the Arab world. Krane does not stint on his criticisms of the government or the royal family, but also acknowledges the progressive and visionary elements of the current leadership. I highly recommend this book if you are planning a trip to the UAE. If you weren't planning to go there, this book will certainly whet your curiosity.
When traveling to a new country for work for an extended period of time, I try to read a book or two that provides some historical and cultural context to the place. It's nice to get some grounding on the place I'm visiting, and I've found this contributes both to my enjoyment of the locale and also my understanding of the people I'm working and interacting with.For the first-timer to Dubai, I don't think you could do much better than this book. The author is clearly fascinated by his subject matter, and brings passion and deep expertise to his writing. Mr. Krane presents Dubai through the eyes of a reporter, providing first-hand interviews from the men and women behind the scenes in Dubai, and presenting several facets of the key aspects of the city. Rather than a puff piece or agenda-driven slash job, the author presents the positives and negatives of Dubai's breakneck development and allows the reader to form their own conclusions at the benefit of his research and commentary. While it's missing the details of Dubai's economic crash, it certainly gives one the grounding to make more sense of Dubai's chances for the future.Aside from a jab or two at former US President GW Bush, which seems a bit hackneyed and trite in 2012, the book was well-researched and unbiased, and managed the difficult task of remaining entertaining rather than reading like a graduate thesis. I was unable to set the book down, and found my evening walks through Dubai complemented by each chapter I read. The only flaw I found was several photographs are mentioned in the acknowledgments, but none appear in the Kindle edition of the book, although they would not have been missed unless one read the end notes.For the casual observer, it's tempting to dismiss Dubai as the "Las Vegas of the Middle East," but Mr. Krane provides a deeper, more nuanced view of this fascinating place. Beneath the shiny buildings there are subtle undercurrents, and I found each chapter of this book provided a welcome exposure to yet another facet of the City of Gold.
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