In A Thousand Years of Non Linear History Manuel De Landa describes (much more intricately than I will) a mesh work of development prevalent in emerging Western cities over history. The notion that central nodes are supplied by many other smaller nodes which are supplied by smaller nodes seems clear enough; and the idea that when competing Major nodes are supplied by similar smaller nodes, their available resources are divided, slowing and in many cases limiting their growth. So, theoretically, Major urban centers grow because they, by some advantage, are able to monopolize the resources in an area, reducing competition for those resources. It’s an organic idea about the growth of cities through accumulating of resources, populations, and other traits over the course of time.
Now, we see in Dubai (and other cities) an attempt to compress what was a process 1,000 years of bifurcations in the making for London and Paris, or 300 years for New York, into a matter of decades. It seems clear to me that Dubai is attempting to accelerate its growth and there by establish itself as the capital of the Middle East. It seeks to create a massive central node that will draw resource and population from a very large geographic area.
When such specific effort is put towards constructing a city is there time for a city to undergo the bifurcations that allow cities to GROW in the non tangible sense? Does this method create places we want to live?
And, What is causing this type of explosion? Is it forced? Desired? a consequence of what?
I've never been to Dubai either nor do I really know that much about the city, but I often find myself wondering if there is such a thing as a fad city and if so could Dubai be one? You hear so much about it lately, I am just curious if eventually people will get tired of hearing about it (or visiting it for that matter) and look for the next place to go. Does Dubai really have alternate economies to support itself other than luxury and entertainment? Granted a place like Las Vegas has been able to sustain itself on such economies but it has developed its identity for seventy years and has shown its ability adapt and market itself effectively with each new generation.
I have never actually visited dubai either. everything i know comes from things ive read. But it seems to me that Dubai is well aware that its extraordinary wealth from the oil reserves it has access too can not be counted on forever. So they have put the pedal to the medal in order to build a city that can sustain further growth outside the Oil industry. A portion of that is Tourism, yes, but perhaps a even more integral piece is the building of Dubai into an Economic center for the middle east. Creating a city which can act as the New York or London or Tokyo of the middle east. A world city that can hold its own with its economic clout. It seems they are providing the infrastucture for this to exist in the hopes that the prestige and power will follow... Is it a 'if you build it, they will come' type of situation?
Guarantee? No sweat!
We got the Bleezburgs lined upto build condos where the hangars are.
We lay the airplanes off to the Mexicans,who are dumb enough to buy 'em!
And I got the Texas boys droolingat my kneecaps for the routes and slots.
What's your problem? It's done!
I'm working on a project in Doha, Qatar. They are significantly expanding their airport (close to an 8 billion overhaul). They are anticipating sharp population growth over the next couple of decades. I guess one way to allow a city to grow is build a big ass airport allowing people an easy in and easy out.
I imagine air ports may eventually become cities themselves, what with the expanded presence of retail enabling them to generate their own economies, now you just need to build some level of housing for nomadic travelers which in many cases already exists directly outside the airports.
As for Dubai, I think it epitomizes the early 21st century in the fact that it is constructed very fast and its entire existence is based off of fashion and luxury. If Koolhaas was serious when he said "Superficiality is the new Depth" that Dubai is the very manifestation of a city built on the superficial, even more so than Vegas IMO.
One thing Dubai has right is the idea of architectural investment: that there are unknown future benefits to spending money on buildings and spaces. Personally, I've yet to see anything from Dubai I actually like though (and I haven't been there either).
With respect, I don't think you're reading Delanda quite right by reading it in terms of a heirarchy of cities. I think Delanda describes the larger cities as emergent from the network of smaller-scale interactions.
Christopher Alexander's 'A City is not a Tree' is quite good on the distinction between a heirarchally structured city and an emergent systems view of the city. He makes topological diagrams and argues that no city that can be rendered as a singular heirarchy of connections can be truly successful. Cities have to be conceived as interconnected 'meshworks'. Stable systems lead to dead cities, Dynamic systems lead to growing cities.
Is Dubai a stable system or a dynamic system? I have my suspicion that in spite of the ferocious pace of construction, it is actually the former.
I think the proof is in the fact that, cities that were allowed to develop are the more desirable place to live in the world. Paris, London, New York, etc. The instant, star on a map overnight cities, while rampant in growth, do not have the intangible quality that the developed cities have. It's a fact that very few of Houston, Phoenix, Vegas, and even L.A.'s residents are actually born there and remain there far into their working years. There is an undeniable transience and displacement that is pervasive. Dubai, while flush with cash and potential will carry the same impermanence and even a sense of fragility in relation to its location. It will be occupied but not settled.
and i very much understand and agree with your comment about Dubai's architectural investment. Though we may not agree necessarily with the aesthetic choices i like the idea of building as infrastructure. That the construction of occupiable space is as much an infrastructural responsibility as the construction of streets, sewers, and power grids. I think their projects could likely benefit greatly by viewing it as such. Though who really knows.
As for your comments on De Landa, i agree that he is talking about emergent patterns in city development and not hierarchical development. Though in fairness he does describe both as credible theories, its clear that he favors the mesh/nodes theory over hierarchical (obviously)... thats why i was trying to stress the organic nature of city development. I meant to counter organic mesh work like growth of pre industrial cities with the inorganic growth of 20th century.
To sort of paraphrase De Landa, he describes the flow of resources through the mesh work as the means through which cities might grow. Where the flow of those resources slow and are accumulated, cities emerge and increase their gravity.
I imply the hierarchy within the network as a means to show that in a more long term organic system, like what would have occurred in pre-industrial Europe, is a sort of natural progression. As in a forests food chain, wolves might clearly be at the top of the food chain with little competition, but groups of wolves still compete with other groups of wolves for the same resources. Like London and Paris might compete, or Shanghai and Hong Kong might compete.
As of right now, Dubai has no competition, and i wonder fit perhaps its intention is to slow down enough of the middle east's resources within its boundary as to limit the growth of possible competitors.
What an instant city is missing is that patina of age that appears by use over time. New Urbanists have face this issue. Insta-city is missing the ad-hoc peculiarities, changes over time, and most importantly real human social events and memories that make a city a real place.
Disneyland has this underground city of workers and machines that makes it go... makes me think of another parallel that may be relevant:
The roman bath houses had nice warm floors, made possible by subfloor fires tended by slaves.
i really like that idea of a city occupied but not settled. Its a very important distinction. I wonder, however, if that patina Gabe talks about comes only from time? i dont see how it can be instilled or manufactured... perhaps someone does?
and if it does come from time, how much time?
Chicago is a perfect example. Barely more than a fort, it overnight boomed into one of the largest cities in the USA and is now ranked among the most economically important cities in the world. Not to mention the fact that many people that live in Chicago were born in chicago and will die there. It has some of that Patina, yet it is barely 150 years old.
The bifurcations i mentioned in threads above is actually borrowing from De Landa, he uses that term. But i feel it is a perfect way to describe the growth of a city. At a certain point, due to a variety of factors, what was once one, is forced to split and becomes 2. Those 2 disparate parts, though from the same source are now free to grow and be influenced in their own way. Independent of each other yes, but also inextricably linked... they are from the same place and made of the same things.
I think there's an interesting question regarding the natural here.
Delanda describes the 'natural' growth of cities: the way they are emergent on the social, economic, spatial interactions of a region.
Perhaps what makes us uneasy about Dubai is that it doesn't appear to be 'natural' - it is being constructed as a sudden, arbitrary intervention. That might be why the absence of signs of natural change like the patina of age is troubling.
I guess the question is: is it really possible to distinguish between natural cities and unnatural cities? Why should we make a distinction like that? Dubai is natural in a sense: it results from various economic, social, spatial interactions just like, say, Paris.
i think the thing that worries me about dubai (and i might be completely off base with this because i don't know much about it) is the attitude amongst the well-heeled oil elites that everything needs to be over-the-top, first class. it's like if donald trump were to decide to build a city. they might actually get the whole thing built, but who are the people that will actually live there? what's the plan for all the low wages workers? will it be vegas style sprawl? will they be place under ground like the tunnels of disney land? how is this city going to work?
I find the 21st century Dubai to be an oxymoronic city. As an answer to declining oil export revenue they build a massively energy dependant city? They seem to have learned nothing from their own first hand experience of declining oil resources.
2. De Landa refers to flows meshing together and that result becoming occupied, the fact that his examples for the most part take place over thousands of years is mere coincidence (ok, maybe not. I'm sure they are picked to make his point more clear, but for this argument that seems a bit irrelevant.) Places like Dubai, Dongtan and the suburbs still have these characteristics though there may be less of them and they may happen faster. Thus making them fake tits?
3. In the context of this thread, does the fact that you don't agree with the way Dubai appears to be hold any relevance? I think mayo is a disgusting excuse to gain weight but that doesn't change the fact some people like it with ham.
I agree pist. I don't think the speed of development makes it any less natural, and I think that Pollock quote is great.
For me, the problem with Dubai is that it makes visible a field of social and economic interactions that aren't very pretty. Just because free-market capitalism is natural doesn't make it good.
(Apparently there are no addresses in Dubai. Delivering the post is tricky.)
"I guess the question is: is it really possible to distinguish between natural cities and unnatural cities? Why should we make a distinction like that? Dubai is natural in a sense: it results from various economic, social, spatial interactions just like, say, Paris."
Really can we differentiate between natural and unnatural period?
Afterall humans and what we create are natural, people who study such topics often distinquish between human and non-human nature, thereby pointing out we are a part of nature.....Even if we sometimes don't act like it...
As for cities in general and Dubai,
I would think that certain aspects of urbanity can't be developed at all (Read Jane Jacobs) or at least not quickly, and or along capitalistics profit making models....
You can build the urban infrastructure but not the urbanity (used as an adjective?)
chicago became a "natural city" only after the industrial revolution allowed for train travel, steam travel for ships, canal dredging and digging etc. that allowed for the commercial and capital market developments ala commodities trading etc to take firm hold there. if there had been no technological revolution, chicago may have never developed into what it did. oh and that fire helped too.
In regards to the idea of what exactly is natural i think some good points were made. If we really think about it, is urban living the natural human state? Is rural living? It seems an un-answerable question...
One interesting paradox though... we have cities like Dubai and Shanghai which are concentrating their new found wealth in developing their cities. We then have a place like Lagos where there isnt the money for the infrastructural development to keep up with the booming population. If Dubai is not a natural (which i feel can almost be used as an alternate for traditional in this discussion) development, is Lagos?
My inclination is to say neither would be considered "natural". Why is that the case. Is it the cause of our understaning of nature? Is it a inherent distrust of rapid growth? Is it because we are physically removed from the presence of this change and its foreignness makes it difficult to comprehend? I would venture a guess that established European cities frowned upon NY, Chicago and LA's respective population explosions, but do they still frown on the cities created by them? so many questions... so little understood eh...
To clarify, I don't think the natural/unnatural distinction is possible or helpful. All cities are natural to the extent that they are not arbitrary interventions, but result from historical, economic, and cultural forces. Differences between cities (like Dubai, Paris, and Lagos) are differences in those forces. This is how I read Delanda, anyway.
I think our unease about Dubai, however, comes from a habit of seeing the natural in a certain way.
I don't think the natural/unnatural distinction is a good line of criticism to follow for Dubai.
Sep 25, 07 3:26 pm ·
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The New Cities Grow
In A Thousand Years of Non Linear History Manuel De Landa describes (much more intricately than I will) a mesh work of development prevalent in emerging Western cities over history. The notion that central nodes are supplied by many other smaller nodes which are supplied by smaller nodes seems clear enough; and the idea that when competing Major nodes are supplied by similar smaller nodes, their available resources are divided, slowing and in many cases limiting their growth. So, theoretically, Major urban centers grow because they, by some advantage, are able to monopolize the resources in an area, reducing competition for those resources. It’s an organic idea about the growth of cities through accumulating of resources, populations, and other traits over the course of time.
Now, we see in Dubai (and other cities) an attempt to compress what was a process 1,000 years of bifurcations in the making for London and Paris, or 300 years for New York, into a matter of decades. It seems clear to me that Dubai is attempting to accelerate its growth and there by establish itself as the capital of the Middle East. It seeks to create a massive central node that will draw resource and population from a very large geographic area.
When such specific effort is put towards constructing a city is there time for a city to undergo the bifurcations that allow cities to GROW in the non tangible sense? Does this method create places we want to live?
And, What is causing this type of explosion? Is it forced? Desired? a consequence of what?
i've never visited dubai...yet
dubai is the architectural equivalent of fake tits.
What architecture isn't "fake tits"?
I mean really...
anyone any thoughts on the thread premise?
I've never been to Dubai either nor do I really know that much about the city, but I often find myself wondering if there is such a thing as a fad city and if so could Dubai be one? You hear so much about it lately, I am just curious if eventually people will get tired of hearing about it (or visiting it for that matter) and look for the next place to go. Does Dubai really have alternate economies to support itself other than luxury and entertainment? Granted a place like Las Vegas has been able to sustain itself on such economies but it has developed its identity for seventy years and has shown its ability adapt and market itself effectively with each new generation.
I have never actually visited dubai either. everything i know comes from things ive read. But it seems to me that Dubai is well aware that its extraordinary wealth from the oil reserves it has access too can not be counted on forever. So they have put the pedal to the medal in order to build a city that can sustain further growth outside the Oil industry. A portion of that is Tourism, yes, but perhaps a even more integral piece is the building of Dubai into an Economic center for the middle east. Creating a city which can act as the New York or London or Tokyo of the middle east. A world city that can hold its own with its economic clout. It seems they are providing the infrastucture for this to exist in the hopes that the prestige and power will follow... Is it a 'if you build it, they will come' type of situation?
Guarantee? No sweat!
We got the Bleezburgs lined upto build condos where the hangars are.
We lay the airplanes off to the Mexicans,who are dumb enough to buy 'em!
And I got the Texas boys droolingat my kneecaps for the routes and slots.
What's your problem? It's done!
the chances of something being successful drastically improve when you have a shit load of money to throw at it...
I'm working on a project in Doha, Qatar. They are significantly expanding their airport (close to an 8 billion overhaul). They are anticipating sharp population growth over the next couple of decades. I guess one way to allow a city to grow is build a big ass airport allowing people an easy in and easy out.
I imagine air ports may eventually become cities themselves, what with the expanded presence of retail enabling them to generate their own economies, now you just need to build some level of housing for nomadic travelers which in many cases already exists directly outside the airports.
As for Dubai, I think it epitomizes the early 21st century in the fact that it is constructed very fast and its entire existence is based off of fashion and luxury. If Koolhaas was serious when he said "Superficiality is the new Depth" that Dubai is the very manifestation of a city built on the superficial, even more so than Vegas IMO.
One thing Dubai has right is the idea of architectural investment: that there are unknown future benefits to spending money on buildings and spaces. Personally, I've yet to see anything from Dubai I actually like though (and I haven't been there either).
With respect, I don't think you're reading Delanda quite right by reading it in terms of a heirarchy of cities. I think Delanda describes the larger cities as emergent from the network of smaller-scale interactions.
Christopher Alexander's 'A City is not a Tree' is quite good on the distinction between a heirarchally structured city and an emergent systems view of the city. He makes topological diagrams and argues that no city that can be rendered as a singular heirarchy of connections can be truly successful. Cities have to be conceived as interconnected 'meshworks'. Stable systems lead to dead cities, Dynamic systems lead to growing cities.
Is Dubai a stable system or a dynamic system? I have my suspicion that in spite of the ferocious pace of construction, it is actually the former.
If you haven't read this article by Mike Davis on Dubai, you should. It's insightful.
Thanks for this thread.
I think the proof is in the fact that, cities that were allowed to develop are the more desirable place to live in the world. Paris, London, New York, etc. The instant, star on a map overnight cities, while rampant in growth, do not have the intangible quality that the developed cities have. It's a fact that very few of Houston, Phoenix, Vegas, and even L.A.'s residents are actually born there and remain there far into their working years. There is an undeniable transience and displacement that is pervasive. Dubai, while flush with cash and potential will carry the same impermanence and even a sense of fragility in relation to its location. It will be occupied but not settled.
Great thread btw.
good comments agfa8x
and i very much understand and agree with your comment about Dubai's architectural investment. Though we may not agree necessarily with the aesthetic choices i like the idea of building as infrastructure. That the construction of occupiable space is as much an infrastructural responsibility as the construction of streets, sewers, and power grids. I think their projects could likely benefit greatly by viewing it as such. Though who really knows.
As for your comments on De Landa, i agree that he is talking about emergent patterns in city development and not hierarchical development. Though in fairness he does describe both as credible theories, its clear that he favors the mesh/nodes theory over hierarchical (obviously)... thats why i was trying to stress the organic nature of city development. I meant to counter organic mesh work like growth of pre industrial cities with the inorganic growth of 20th century.
To sort of paraphrase De Landa, he describes the flow of resources through the mesh work as the means through which cities might grow. Where the flow of those resources slow and are accumulated, cities emerge and increase their gravity.
I imply the hierarchy within the network as a means to show that in a more long term organic system, like what would have occurred in pre-industrial Europe, is a sort of natural progression. As in a forests food chain, wolves might clearly be at the top of the food chain with little competition, but groups of wolves still compete with other groups of wolves for the same resources. Like London and Paris might compete, or Shanghai and Hong Kong might compete.
As of right now, Dubai has no competition, and i wonder fit perhaps its intention is to slow down enough of the middle east's resources within its boundary as to limit the growth of possible competitors.
parallel?
Disneyland - Mainstreet, USA
What an instant city is missing is that patina of age that appears by use over time. New Urbanists have face this issue. Insta-city is missing the ad-hoc peculiarities, changes over time, and most importantly real human social events and memories that make a city a real place.
Disneyland has this underground city of workers and machines that makes it go... makes me think of another parallel that may be relevant:
The roman bath houses had nice warm floors, made possible by subfloor fires tended by slaves.
here's your sign
i really like that idea of a city occupied but not settled. Its a very important distinction. I wonder, however, if that patina Gabe talks about comes only from time? i dont see how it can be instilled or manufactured... perhaps someone does?
and if it does come from time, how much time?
Chicago is a perfect example. Barely more than a fort, it overnight boomed into one of the largest cities in the USA and is now ranked among the most economically important cities in the world. Not to mention the fact that many people that live in Chicago were born in chicago and will die there. It has some of that Patina, yet it is barely 150 years old.
The bifurcations i mentioned in threads above is actually borrowing from De Landa, he uses that term. But i feel it is a perfect way to describe the growth of a city. At a certain point, due to a variety of factors, what was once one, is forced to split and becomes 2. Those 2 disparate parts, though from the same source are now free to grow and be influenced in their own way. Independent of each other yes, but also inextricably linked... they are from the same place and made of the same things.
*bump*
I think there's an interesting question regarding the natural here.
Delanda describes the 'natural' growth of cities: the way they are emergent on the social, economic, spatial interactions of a region.
Perhaps what makes us uneasy about Dubai is that it doesn't appear to be 'natural' - it is being constructed as a sudden, arbitrary intervention. That might be why the absence of signs of natural change like the patina of age is troubling.
I guess the question is: is it really possible to distinguish between natural cities and unnatural cities? Why should we make a distinction like that? Dubai is natural in a sense: it results from various economic, social, spatial interactions just like, say, Paris.
i think the thing that worries me about dubai (and i might be completely off base with this because i don't know much about it) is the attitude amongst the well-heeled oil elites that everything needs to be over-the-top, first class. it's like if donald trump were to decide to build a city. they might actually get the whole thing built, but who are the people that will actually live there? what's the plan for all the low wages workers? will it be vegas style sprawl? will they be place under ground like the tunnels of disney land? how is this city going to work?
I find the 21st century Dubai to be an oxymoronic city. As an answer to declining oil export revenue they build a massively energy dependant city? They seem to have learned nothing from their own first hand experience of declining oil resources.
a few things....
1. I am nature.
-Jackson Pollock
2. De Landa refers to flows meshing together and that result becoming occupied, the fact that his examples for the most part take place over thousands of years is mere coincidence (ok, maybe not. I'm sure they are picked to make his point more clear, but for this argument that seems a bit irrelevant.) Places like Dubai, Dongtan and the suburbs still have these characteristics though there may be less of them and they may happen faster. Thus making them fake tits?
3. In the context of this thread, does the fact that you don't agree with the way Dubai appears to be hold any relevance? I think mayo is a disgusting excuse to gain weight but that doesn't change the fact some people like it with ham.
I agree pist. I don't think the speed of development makes it any less natural, and I think that Pollock quote is great.
For me, the problem with Dubai is that it makes visible a field of social and economic interactions that aren't very pretty. Just because free-market capitalism is natural doesn't make it good.
(Apparently there are no addresses in Dubai. Delivering the post is tricky.)
@ Agfa8x
"I guess the question is: is it really possible to distinguish between natural cities and unnatural cities? Why should we make a distinction like that? Dubai is natural in a sense: it results from various economic, social, spatial interactions just like, say, Paris."
Really can we differentiate between natural and unnatural period?
Afterall humans and what we create are natural, people who study such topics often distinquish between human and non-human nature, thereby pointing out we are a part of nature.....Even if we sometimes don't act like it...
As for cities in general and Dubai,
I would think that certain aspects of urbanity can't be developed at all (Read Jane Jacobs) or at least not quickly, and or along capitalistics profit making models....
You can build the urban infrastructure but not the urbanity (used as an adjective?)
chicago became a "natural city" only after the industrial revolution allowed for train travel, steam travel for ships, canal dredging and digging etc. that allowed for the commercial and capital market developments ala commodities trading etc to take firm hold there. if there had been no technological revolution, chicago may have never developed into what it did. oh and that fire helped too.
In regards to the idea of what exactly is natural i think some good points were made. If we really think about it, is urban living the natural human state? Is rural living? It seems an un-answerable question...
One interesting paradox though... we have cities like Dubai and Shanghai which are concentrating their new found wealth in developing their cities. We then have a place like Lagos where there isnt the money for the infrastructural development to keep up with the booming population. If Dubai is not a natural (which i feel can almost be used as an alternate for traditional in this discussion) development, is Lagos?
My inclination is to say neither would be considered "natural". Why is that the case. Is it the cause of our understaning of nature? Is it a inherent distrust of rapid growth? Is it because we are physically removed from the presence of this change and its foreignness makes it difficult to comprehend? I would venture a guess that established European cities frowned upon NY, Chicago and LA's respective population explosions, but do they still frown on the cities created by them? so many questions... so little understood eh...
To clarify, I don't think the natural/unnatural distinction is possible or helpful. All cities are natural to the extent that they are not arbitrary interventions, but result from historical, economic, and cultural forces. Differences between cities (like Dubai, Paris, and Lagos) are differences in those forces. This is how I read Delanda, anyway.
I think our unease about Dubai, however, comes from a habit of seeing the natural in a certain way.
I don't think the natural/unnatural distinction is a good line of criticism to follow for Dubai.
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