kateoplis:

The view from the 164-story, 2,717-foot Burj Khalifa

the dubai episode of no reservations was fascinating, because it’s impossible for an outsider to have an nuanced conversation about dubai with someone who lives in dubai, but what they don’t say is just as revealing as what they do.

there was tony talking to a son of indian immigrants who grew up in dubai, watched it grow around him, who had a working class perspective, that dubai for many south asians is the american land of opportunity to come work and earn more than at home and send money back, and also that he, as an indian, could meet tony at a pakistani restaurant, and in dubai it wasn’t anything at all.

then there was tony talking to a british banker who works for the emiratis, who basically party-lined it about how dubai is good and great and profitable, dubai is a young city and all the established cities criticizing it were built in the same fucked up ways, dubai is no worse than many other places.  and, you know, he’s almost right?  china actually doesn’t have to outsource for indentured servitude, there you can see urban chinese exploiting rural chinese to build more urban china, you can read about how the workers who built the birds nest and the water cube couldn’t afford tickets to the olympic games.

but, of course, we all know all of this already, which is why dubai is supposed to be better than that, because we’re better than that, nowadays, right?  which begs the question, although tony softballed le chiffre and didn’t press the issue (and i don’t blame him, he’s not actually a journalist), is the obvious indentured class on the fringes of dubai really worse than the indentured chinese factory laborers who make all those wonderful goods we buy at target?

then tony watched a cricket game played by those indentured foreign laborers who’ve built dubai up from nothing in ten years, on their one day off a week, where they get together as a community, come dust storms or foreign chefs, and play ball.

then he had dinner with a family of emiratis who were just like any other well-to-do family he’s had dinner with anywhere, ever.

dubai is extraordinarily complicated and belies the kneejerk simple answers.  ten years from now it’s as likely to have slowly worked through it’s early social issues and matured into a world class cosmopolitan beacon, as to have been reclaimed by the sands and become the worlds tallest ghost town.

the most interesting point, for me, as a would-be science fiction writer, is that dubai as we see it simply wasn’t there ten years ago, and the city is ostensibly impossible.  it shouldn’t have worked, it shouldn’t be a city.  there are obvious money and labor and biosphere issues to work out, but in a lot of ways, dubai is symbolic of what colonizing other planets would be like.  throw enough resources at something, accept the costs both human and otherwise, and you can do impossible things.

so take the kinds of stories people want to tell about the dark side of dubai, set them on mars fifty years from now, and that’s a compelling fucking premise.  that’s a show i want to watch every week.  that’s syfy’s answer to the wire.  fuck avatar.  we don’t need blue catgirls to talk about cosmic imperialism.

[in fact, ellis linked to a trailer for a tv pilot with a comparable premise that i’m going to have to go dig back up…]