Globalizing dubai,transience, dwelling and hospitality tensions(rev01)

_____________________________________________________________________ Globalizing Dubai: Transience, Dwelling and Hospitality Tensions EURA Conference 2011 1

Residential liveability in urban regions

Globalizing Dubai: Transience, Dwelling and Hospitality Tensions Amir M. Abdella

Abstract

Finding an appropriate point of departure to understand Dubai urban phenomena is extremely challenging task. Dubai, the global city in-the-making, as a young city-state that developed dramatically over the last three decades is becoming now a major business and tourism centre. The paper is dragging attention to the influence of tourism and hospitality industries in shaping the residential environments created there and how the distinct organization of the residential patterns is influenced and to what extent by the associated features of leisure, fantasy and spectacle. In defying the predominant perceptions of tourism as for mere economic diversification, the paper puts forward claims on adopting tourism as a strategy for urban development and a as model for an improved quality of life terms. By outlining sample developments, the investigation is extended to explore how the leisure element and commercial hospitality is particularly influencing the residential landscape by establishing new connections to hotels and priming certain hospitality features. On the background of the transient Dubai, the investigation attempted to look at the contribution made by the complex intersections and overlaps of mobility and dwelling, ephemerally and permanence to the guest and host binaries.

Keywords: globalization, tourism, urban development, residential, hospitality

Introduction

Developing large scale mixed-use projects with substantial residential component was an

inherent part of the Dubai city building process. A Sheer amount of this stock is coming in

pre-planned forms as part of the various large scale urban projects including specially themed

and master planned residential districts, California-style gated communities and common

interest housing. Golf course-centered communities, horse ranches homes, beach and marina

themed residences and mall or hotel anchored neighbourhoods are examples of these growing

typologies. In imposing no limits, these developments are massively reclaiming the sea front

the same way they are doing to the desert on the back side producing novel leisure-scapes of

unprecedented scale and nature in region. The patterning and styling of the emergent residential

landscapes are extending hard-to-ignore complex industrial hospitality features manifested by the wide

array of leisure and fantasy offerings. Beginning with outlining the global city path of Dubai, the

following sections are putting forward the arguments for city tourism being adopted as an urban


development strategy and looking at a select of developments as examples for the influence of leisure

and hospitality discourse on their structuring mode.

Dubai Globalizing

Global city studies for awhile have been busy with ordering the cities interms of their

command power and the quest to gather worldly scaled authority functions (New York,

London, Tokyo - Saskia Sassen 1991). Later, Sassen extended the scope to include another

tier of linked cities where more are now coming under the study lens of globally connected

locales. This has been a significant recognition for more cities that even earlier identified

“global cities” have to engage a number of certain potential cities to facilitate their global

reach and act as regional or intermediate nodes. Transnational corporate headquarters are

concentrating in global cities; they however, would require to branch out in some strategic

locations elsewhere for their regional functioning and extended reach.

Dubai being at the trade crossroad and at a geographic junction is capitalizing this opportunity

with an approach to extensively develop its transportation and communication functions as

connectivity infrastructures for a global gateway.

Gateway Infrastructures Transportation Sea connectivity

Jebel Ali Seaport Jebel Ali Free Zone

1975 1985

• World’s largest man-made port, 14 m TEU capacity. • Largest container port between Rotterdam and

Singapore, World’s 8th largest 2009. Transportation Air connectivity

Dubai Airports International Emirates Air Lines established

1959 1985

• Current capacity 60 million passengers, 120 airlines fly into Dubai, 42.9 million passengers 2010.

• Currently the 4th busiest airport globally. • Emirates: a fleet of 153 aircrafts, 111 destinations in six

continents, employing 49,950 people, carried 42.9 million passengers 2010.

Communication Info &Media

Dubai Internet City Dubai Media City

2000 2001

• Home to global media giants such as CNN, CNBC and Reuters

• World’s top IT firms including IBM, Microsoft and HP. Compiled from institutions (DP World, ACI, Emirates, Tecom) websites and company reports.

The associated arrangements internally on the city host land were huge touching on every

aspect from continuously updated legislations, foreign business incentivization, flexibly

structured governing bodies, development of extended business utilities to an ambitious

upgrade of city-wide infrastructures. Today Dubai by some measures (A.T. Kearney Global

Cities Index, 2010) is a global city ranked 27 in both 2008 and 2010 ahead of Rome,

Amsterdam and Copenhagen. The index said to examine cities along five dimensions:

business activity, human capital, information exchange, cultural experience and political

engagement.


From loss of identity and character down to the accusations of extreme neo-liberal and

sociopolitical polarization tendencies, there is no scarcity in the views that are criticizing what

Dubai urbanity is producing (Davis 2005, 2007; Davidson 2008, 2009; Kanna 2005, 2007;

Krane 2009; Urry 2010). It may however be important to recognize a myriad of circumstances

around and to realize particularly two aspects: a) Dubai isn’t a sole product of its own as the

powerful global market and political forces currently shaping the world are clearly

capitalizing in it too. The city gained by helping a lot in creating hospitable conditions for the

exchange between east and west and facilitates the reach across regions that would have

otherwise been hard to include in global trade circuits. b) Unlike at the colonial era when the

massive rebuilding of Paris by Napoleon or digging London Metro (Wolmar 2005), in the

19th century, Dubai being in an age of advanced awareness with both environmental concerns

and the universally promoted human rights either social or political, has had impact in

subjecting the city experiment to a global scrutiny. International organizations (Human Rights

Watch 2006), think tanks and media are keeping close eye on what is going and point out the

deviations from the globally accepted principles of the good doing.

It may, furthermore, be significant as well to realize the geohistorical context in which Dubai

phenomena occurs. Comparing against the classic and Western-influenced models of

historical urban trajectories that benchmark with the rise and fall of the industrialization

movement epochs at the 18th to 20th centuries, or those of Fordist and Post-Fordist timelines

could by no means be valid in explaining the growing urbanities in other locations and at

different historical time frame. The tools and technologies available and transferable at this

age to intervene in nature are enormous along with the expanding quest to exploit resources

and advance economies and quality of life. It is apparent not only in the advanced

technological abilities to reclaim sea or desert, but the novel ways of financing it and the

capability to transfer people from other parts on the globe to do it.

Peter Marcuse and Ronald van Kempen (2000) literally denied novel spatial orderings in

globalizing cities, and acknowledged only intensified and strengthened urban processes. Their

study though broaden the angle of looking at cities under globalization conditions, however,

fall short of including important examples of young cities like Dubai that primarily take their

shape during contemporary globalization wave. Here is where profound changes are taking

place and the trajectory of urbanization is establishing route.


Urbanization of Dubai, United Arab Emirates

NASA Earth Observatory http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov

The City Distinct Demography

Dubai population grew almost ten times in less than 35 years. From 183,187 in 1975 to

1,770,978 in 2009. The male-female gap has been widening since then as males are

outnumbering by more than 300 percent by 2009 (DSC 2009). The population clock of Dubai

Statistic Centre is showing population crossing 1.9 million early this year.

But the striking facts remain the dominant majority foreigners, over 80 per cent, and the

circulatory nature of the population. Statistics of 2002 by Globalization Urbanization and

Migration website cited in (www.migrationinformation.org) show Dubai topped the list of

cities with largest foreign born population with over 80 per cent followed by Miami far

second with around 50 per cent foreign born. To grasp the picture at least statistically one

should consider 1,074,494 more of commuters and averaged tourists. The use of foreign born

terms may be a little bit reductive and not sufficiently precise as it excludes the births of

foreign families.


What is described by many as a condition of permanent impermanence is the transient nature

of foreign working population currently holds 99 per cent of the jobs in the private sector and

91 per cent of positions in the government as revealed by Authorities. Dubai is de facto an

employment destination for the majority along the business people who anchored in city.

Accordingly, this induced an eccentricity in the demographic pattern which made a city of

predominant majority non-nationals, male dominated, young working singles and of lesser

families. The ethnic mix is estimated little below 200 nationalities by country of origin

rendered Dubai highly cosmopolitan at least in statistical terms. There is no officially

accessible data that inform on the circulation and replenishment of Dubai people, though the

jump in population is seen primarily caused by net increase in workforce imported to city.

Among the general condition of temporariness, there are some groups which are more

temporary than others, mainly construction workers and low skill jobs to name a few. The

stay period can range from months to tens of years differing greatly across age, education and

skill level. Though some estimates are telling about grand averages of two and four years for

low skill workers and medium and high skill job takers respectively. What is in official plans

is a move towards higher skilled employment by plus 3 to 5 per cent and squeeze the low

skilled strata by 8 per cent (DSP 2015). Furthermore a recent draft plan by Authorities is

tackling the stay period issue with a target to raise it to 6 years in average by 2020.

The Trade/Service City and the Leisure Turn

What is now popularly called by many as the leisure capital of the Middle East, could

however be hardly imagined so few decades ago. In contrast to the often comparable cities of

Gold Coast or Las Vegas, Dubai grew and sustained a dominant business course following

centuries long history of trade, harbouring and pearling. The long legacy as a mercantile city

along historic Oman coast began in the 600-1500 period. It however, particularly flourished

as the prime port city and a trade hub in the aftermath of the British colonizers regular

steamer service in the Gulf after 1863 first as a mail service and later as a cargo and passenger

service (Kazim 2000). It was serving a region currently described as India, Pakistan, Iran, and

Iraq far to Europe and America for gold, spices, pearl and palm dates exports among other

commodities.

Year 1979 was a key one for the city when a triple move was made by opening Dubai World

Trade Centre office tower, Jebel Ali port and Dubal which together resembled a commitment

towards a synergized model for global business, transshipment and globally-linked aluminum

manufacturing and export. The location of the new port followed by the associated free zone

Jafza in 1985 at a 35 kilometer south west of the city has formed the second node that guided

the growth later in that direction along a major spine road paralleling the seafront at a distance


known currently as Sheikh Zayed Road. This appeared to have influenced greatly the city

geography and induced major spatial clustering around. The highly important of the newly

built urban districts and most of the Dubai skyscrapers are lining up the sides of Sheikh Zayed

Road.

Until then, Dubai was a city primarily for trade visitors, stop over or meeting and exchange

hub for business people from around the region joined later by oil discovered in late sixties. It

was only Jebel Ali Hotel & Golf Resort opened in 1981 with the golf course attached later in

1998 and the Chicago Beach Hotel from the 1970s that were said to be the first and only

resorts ahead of their time with exclusive beaches and leisure facilities. Chicago Beach Hotel

was later demolished in late 1990s and replaced by the modern Jumeirah Beach Hotel and the

highly profiled Burj Al Arab on an artificial island located right offshore.

Dubai early entertainment venues

Chicago Beach Hotel 1970s Jebel Ali Hotel & Golf Resort 1982

Contemporary urban tourism is opening up cities as fine locations to visit and tour, which

may give supporting clue on their potential as places to work and live in. Dubai guided

morphing from business hub into a destination has been through developing a series of tourist

attractions. It indeed capitalized on the high connectivity established earlier.

While well situated geopolitically, Dubai’s position as an entrepôt has been exploited and enhanced with development policies that target the particular needs of various sectors of the transnational economy, including, but not limited to, the tourism sector.

Waleed Hazbun, 2008

At a stage of the city major urban facilities began to take shape by the nineties, the opening of

Jumeirah Beach Hotel in 1997 followed soon after by the landmark Burj Al Arab in 1999 and

a water leisure park next door, has boosted a lot the city image as tourist spot. It was when the

waterfront has been targeted primarily as natural magnet of sands and water for tourist

facilities. Jumeirah Group a government owned company established in the same period to

oversee this cluster and tasked to forge further tourist developments included later in 2003


Madinat Jumeirah, The Arabian Resort, an additional water side leisure, shopping and

hospitality complex along with exclusive beaches.

Tourism as an Urban Development Strategy

The touristic development orientations extended further by the launch of Dubai Marina, a

massive waterside community on 4.6 square kilometers land area lead by Emaar, and began

construction in 1998 which is sough to be the first to inject a significant map change. It is also

a skyline pull up and a spatially powerful concentrated urban node along Dubai main spine

road by planting a multi-district project of 200 marina-themed towers overlooking a 3.5 km

long man made canal running in between and housing 4 marinas of 500 yachts capacity.

Dubai Marina includes a significant quota of hotels, shopping, leisure and hospitality

functions; thus eventually have it pioneered the trend to systematically mix closely the

residential element with the hospitality use as well. The long built Emirates Golf Club with

two courses of 1988 is the catalyst for Emaar new communities by developing of Beverly

Hills-inspired home clusters together with the signature of celebrity architects. This has

grown immediately into master-planned gated residential districts of thousands of amenity-

rich homes around lakes and greenery ways on a slice of about 10 square kilometers. The

same company Emaar continued to produce thousands of costly homes around new golf

facilities to equestrian themes through a pure property investment and development vehicle.

A steep turn with conspicuous leisure tourism-centered ambitions peaked by the early 2000s

with the launch of The Palm islands in 2002 and Dubailand in 2003. Each is targeting a

separate side of the city: the first is a marine project more than doubling the coastline to

some150 kilometer with artificial peninsulas and series of connected islands, while the second

is chopping from the desert a chunk of 278 square kilometers close to one tenth of the total

city princedom area. Both are destined primarily to create vast leisurescapes from sea and

desert sands. The most city-wide implications of these two major projects are their bold

spatial intervention scope that breaks the ground for untouchable zones. Offshore and deep in

desert were never been as potential expansion grounds.

Dubai benefited from trends in global tourism market that have sustained demand for artificial

and simulated experiences of places rather than on natural environments or locations and

historically significant monuments (Hazbun 2008). A couple of even larger palm-shaped

island developments followed soon together with a set of offshore islands strengthening the

strategy toward the city waterside. More land and beaches were added to the city which

eventually led to a significant map update. Ideas were exhausted from doorstep city beaches


to urban islands. Along the drawn strategy for Dubailand, the desert has been a busy site for a

number of ecotourism resorts as well. Al Maha and Bab Al Shamas, luxurious desert-themed

eco-resorts were opened in 1999 and 2004 respectively emphasizing the still-there desert

exoticism of the City for tourists. A chain of massive shopping malls as well joined led by

opening Mall of The emirates in year 2005 emphasizing the shopping element as an important

tourism drive.

The Tourism-Trade Marriage in City Building

If Dubai becomes the most exciting place to live in the Middle East, the thinking goes, it will also attract businessmen who will make sure that the city is more than a mere tourist destination.

Edward Glaeser 2011

Along the beginnings of the tourism phase, apparent simultaneity and spatial tie-up can be

noticed along the course of the development of city urban spaces and surface expansion.

Building on the legacy of Jafza in early 1985, the period of the nineties and early 2000 has

witnessed the explosion of the idea of “free zones” and “business parks” all over the city for

almost each and every business and economic sector from technology, media, re-exports,

stocks to education and healthcare which to some estimates may amount to about 30% of the

city geographic area. In parallel, bold moves were made to invent multiple hard and soft

attractions on top of capitalizing on the traditional tourism fundamentals of sun, sea and sand

with significant hospitality, leisure and shopping facilities.

A well connected hub has a potential to turn into a destination upon furthering specific

aspects. This approach has well been evidenced by the governance style of these two related

sectors: tourism and trade, as the presence of Dubai Commerce and Tourism Promotion

Board (DCTPB) since 1989 recognizing the synergy. DCTPB was then institutionalized

formally in 1997 by the establishment of Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing

(DTCM) headed at the top Sheikh level with objectives to boost the publicity of Dubai to

global audiences and to attract both tourists and inward investment into the emirate as stated

in their policy. It is currently officially overseeing the city tourism sector and the alignment

with business boosting strategies. Airports and hotels, facilities serving the international trade

business of Dubai which is transborder by nature involves traveling people along with

commodities has been identified quite early as vital elements of tourism as well.

On the other hand, the drive to dot the city with multiple tourist attractions, shopping and

entertainment venues has been well on speed at inner city and city edges, both sea and desert

sides all with the necessary infrastructural nerves, roads, power and so on.


Ordering Urban Development Institutions

Integral to the understanding of the urban development model is to consider how it is

institutionalized. There is no conventional authority of civil works or a centralized body that

oversee urban development strategies in Dubai. Three major government-backed company-

like corporations are thought to control not less than three quarters of the property sector:

Emaar, Nakheel and Dubai Properties. It is operating along a combination of project-based

property development approach and a land rent model that form the strategy. Two more

massively supported companies DREC and Meraas joined in 2007 and 2008 respectively with

no much luck hit by the downturn before their ambitious plans dig the ground. Dubai Real

Estate Corporation (DREC) and Meraas were planned to jump start with huge inventory of

properties registered under the name of Dubai government and also exclusive development

jurisdictions over areas left inside city (www.wasl.ae). Pertinent to the corporate nature of

Dubai government, companies are borne, formed or established in many associations,

subsidiary and membership chains around specific set of projects not always easy to follow.

Projects usually layered on the map of free zones or free hold status areas along with

considerable authority on subprojects’ permissions and by the way delegated with regulatory

powers over substantial areas as master developers. Considerable group of local businesses

like AlFuttaim Group joined the city building boom by growing their property development

arms upon concessions form government over massive areas.

Major City Builders

Company Formed Major Projects Notes

Emaar Properties PJSC 1997 Burj Dubai, Dubai Mall, Old Town, Dubai Marina, Emirates Living, Arabian Ranches

Government owned, Publicly listed

Nakheel Properties PJSC

2000 Palm Jumeirah, The World, Jumeirah Islands, Waterfront, Atlantis

DP World is the mother company

Dubai Properties Group

2004 Dubailand, Jumeirah Beach Residence, Business Bay,

Member of Dubai Holding

Corporatization of city supporting agencies continued on the same pace. RTA (Road and

Transport Authority was formed in 2005 with joint traffic and civil powers to cope with the

city development vision. RTA builds roads, bridges, tunnels and metro system and controls

bus, ferries and taxi transport fleets. DEWA Dubai Electricity and Water Authority takes care

of city water supply, sewerage and power demands. Both are operate on considerable

commercial basis using all techniques of private sector partnerships and external funding.

Dubai Municipality urban, authorities though developed substantially in service terms, were


kept limited not including the new extensions which are designated as free zones or free hold

areas.

The Tourist City as The Good City

Observing the urban development in Dubai, clear lines of building on quality of life material

terms appear to induce the course. General urban amenities and social services are

modernizing at city-wide level, though principally offered on pure commercial basis. Unlike

Ash Amin’s socio-politically-centered theorization of the good city (Ash Amin, 2006), Sheikh

Mohammed, thought by many as the architect of modern Dubai, own interpretation appear to

underscore specific values of recognition, excellence and meritocracy. A reader to his book

titled My Vision, Challenges in the Race for Excellence (2006), will see, among the business

lessons, a focus on creating also liveable urban environment and a repeated praise for

cosmopolitanism citing the Andalusian city of Cordoba as a role model for a flourishing Arab

city of social tolerance. He noted precisely for the advantage of living in a tourist city, which

denotes a city-wide approach beyond the typically limited tourism precincts or enclaved sites.

This also reflects a belief in tourism as a strategy to produce utopia-like spaces that signify

growth, wealth and comfort. Of the main spatial effects of urban tourism is the production of

prettified spaces that exclude visible evidence of poverty (Fainstein and Judd, 1999).

Theoretical Notes

Home, Hotel and Hospitality Realms

A myriad of socio-cultural, eco-geographical meanings and symbol creation has been

negotiated at “home”, a key idea and an ever contested site for human existence. From

principal Heidgerian dwelling to the house meanings of Rapport, it has once more been

challenged by the contemporary transnational flows and globalization.

Some of the most radical changes to the globalizing world are written not in the language of law and diplomacy but rather in the language of architecture and urbanism.

Keller Easterling 2008 Of all architectural genres and genuses, the house is perhaps the most enduring symbol of change and innovation, a neat self-contained statement of intent that, when analysed in masse, should reveal essential truths about aesthetics, social dynamics and, the concept crucial architectures key obsession, modernity.

Jonathan Bell 2006

What was once shaped by Marxian movements and welfarism in producing socially-informed

housing developments for the masses is now shifting grounds to cope with the ambitions of

the mobile elites on a global scale. From the community architecture of social housing to


world-wide landscapes of affluence leveraging the offerings of home to unprecedented levels

of convenience and leisure. The long awaited utopian and haven-driven dreams of home are

finding ways to realize and occupy our cities and lives in neoliberal capitalism era. Shelley

Mallett in her critical review to home literature noted for that: Ideas about home are not

simply shaped by the interests of capital and the manufacturers’ marketing departments.

Rather they assert that people’s personal and familial experiences as well as significant social

change, influence their perceived needs and desires in relation to house design. Changing

patterns of employment, particularly the organization and location of work, together with

shifts in the distribution of wealth, transformations in peoples’ ideas about community,

family, even the good life, all impact on the notion of the ideal home (Mallett 2004).

In the age of extensive transborder mobility, switching work places and the movement of

people across the globe, domestication concept is shaking and has invoked ephemerally-

induced ways of home-making. Multiple home uses and tags appeared like commercial home,

second home and holiday home calling for levels of amenity and expectations beyond the

conventional. The idea of hotel, caravan or so has historically borrowed its fundamentals from

home as provider of shelter and food, but for the traveling people, is inspiring much of its

developed amenities back to home. Rybczynski (1988, p.40) states that the term ’hotel’

referred in the seventeenth century to large individual townhouses where the nobility and

richest bourgeois lived which were both grand and luxuriously appointed, i.e. what we would

call mansions (Cited in Lynch and MacWhannell 2000:111). On the understanding of

Sandoval-Strausz of:

The hotel was (and is) an artifact of an epochal shift in which people were gradually dissociated from place. …

Sandoval-Strausz, 2007

A similar condition may apply to home for those on the move or on frequent transnational

mobility which puts forward an argument on the emergence of typical hospitality features.

The contemporary commercial hospitality enforces much leisure and entertainment facilities

attached to hotels, which later become not only a characteristic but also bases for

classification and ranking. The term hospitality conveys an image and culture that reflects the

tradition of service that goes for centuries beyond lodging and food service to guests to

gestures of welcome and celebration.

Temporal factors are coming in influencing the home experience and determine what would

be tension between situatedness and the extent of aspirations then. Dubai people with

predominant majority sojourning foreigners or as popularly described as expatriate non-locals


are a remarkable example of transients. They are neither migrants destined in, nor simply

guest workers or mobile elites living half-heartedly. A significant life is building up with

massive connections to the place and a critical urban mass is developing accordingly. One of

the principal aims of this enquiry is to help understand this urban genre of homes by

examining the phenomena under the conditions of globalization and put it into a social

context.

Leisure, Tourism and Everyday Life

Veblen’s Theory of The Leisure Class in late nineteenth century, though established

important factoring on leisure as a social phenomena linked with excess wealth, has been

building considerable emphasis on defining work and leisure as oppositional distincts:

productive and non-productive. He coined the term conspicuous consumption and bordered

the associated phenomenon of pecuniary living forms and reputation seeking stemming form

leisure practices of the affluent people. Veblen argued on the emergence of a social class

identified themselves sharply through the possession and use of leisure (Torstein Veblen,

1899). The work/leisure and production/consumption dichotomies remained for a while

dominated by the socio-economics of the industrialization age. Later, modernity and

postmodernity discourses have managed to recognize the aspects beyond mere consumption

and have socio-culturally positioned leisure with further significance. Modernity is breaking

up the "leisure class," capturing its fragments and distributing them to everyone (Dean

MacCannell, 1976, 1999). MacCannell not only did he make important points on leisure as a

constructed social reality and tourism as an institutionalized form of leisure practice, but his

analysis of tourism settings, parks and attractions under dialectics of authenticity triggered an

unfinished dialogue about the spatialities and visualities of touristic leisure. The

conceptualization of leisure and recreation has broadened scope as encompassing culture,

communities, and institutions to meanings, symbols and spaces.

The technological changes not only made the new sites of consumption (and the goods they proffered) possible, they also helped to make them more fantastic.

George Ritzer, Douglas Goodman and Wendenhoft in Handbook of Social Theory

It is effectively the twenties century that witnessed the rise of tourism as distinct paradigm,

and interestingly enough brought it to end late the same century according to Urry’s

observation about the dissolving nature of tourism into everyday life. Urry termed it ‘end of

tourism’.

Disorganised capitalism then seems to be the epoch in which, as tourism’s specificity dissolves, so tourism comes to take over and organise much contemporary social and cultural experience. […]


People are tourists most of the time whether they are literally mobile or only experience simulated mobility […] the purchase and consumption of visual property is in no way confined to specific tourist practices.

John Urry in Consuming Places 1995

Tourism has covered more and more spaces and activities, coming closer and closer to home,

it has changed the sort of world we live in and how we live in it. Tourism has become a way

of life for a global world and there are small but significant numbers for whom the tourist

destination has become the everyday and the home. Because of the greater speed and extent

of the circulation of peoples, cultures and artefacts, we find the distinction between the

everyday and holiday entirely blurred (Adrian Franklin and Mike Crang 2001) and (Adrian

Franklin 2003). The long paradigmatic dichotomy between everyday and holiday is quickly

coming to an end under postmodern era excessive mobility and globalization.

Considerable examinations are there for the growing effect leisure projected on cities as a

collective social practice from recreation spaces of modern city planning to the emergence of

leisure cathedrals – Los Angles and Gold Coast. The leisure landscapes produced by the

commercialization and industrialization are depicting the use of tools and technologies,

thematization, utopianization and alike. Mark Gottdiener noted for the increasing use of

motifs in organizing recreational activities in both central cities and suburbs; shopping places,

airports, recreation spaces such as baseball stadia, museums, restaurants, and amusement

parks. Progressively, then, daily life occurs within a material environment that is dependent

on and organized around overarching symbols, many of which are clearly tied to commercial

enterprises (Gottdiener 1997). The visual strategies of Disneyland, the leisure cathedral, have

influenced the building of urban facilities like thematized shopping malls and give lessons for

organizing the use of urban space like New York City’s business improvement districts

(CBD) by controlling people behavior and exert clean up policies (Zukin 1995, 200).

Southern California as examined by Lawrence Culver in his recent publication The Frontier

of Leisure showed Disneyland was not a point of origination that inspired American cities,

but rather one of culmination, the product of a longer regional and national history of urban

leisure. He further noted among other for the public recreation as consistently lost out to

private recreation, and an idealization of family recreation centered on the home and yard

rather than recreation in public spaces (Lawrence Culver 2010).

What might be attributed to the transition from the earlier manufacturing legacy of the

European cities and intensified by the excess mobility of the contemporary age, tourist

qualities are increasingly defining the urbanness of cities. European cities develop a new

quality by the relatively increased importance of recreation and, more specifically, of tourism.


The quality of urbanness largely depends on the presence of tourists, of tourist-related

business and of images informed by tourism (Mathis Stock 2006). He contextualized this

development as “recreational turn” explaining the ascending importance of recreation in cities

driving urbanization, role change and the quality of urban life.

City Tourism and Leisure Theorization Concept Thinker Context Features

Tourism Urbanization Patrick Mullins 1991

Gold Cost Australia

• No traditional central business district • Marinas, shopping , attractions • Pleasure and consumption • Rapid population and workforce growth • Flexible system of production • Population mostly older adults

Fantasy City John Hannigan 1998

American cities • De-industrialization • Business and profit • Leisure economy • Theming, branding and solipsism

Tourist City Susan Feinstein 1999

Las Vegas, Orlando,

• Urban tourism • Places of play • Tourism precincts • Regulation of peoples and places

Entertainment City Terry Nichols Clark 2004

Chicago, San Francisco

• Growth machine • Living and working • Amenities as enticements for talents • Consumption and entertainment drive growth

Notwithstanding the regional and contextual differences of the theoretical explorations made

to the newly highlighted primacy of leisure and its derivatives in shaping our lives, cities and

home environments, the socio-spatial dialectic is now complicated further to address the

broader issues of consumption, tastes and styles. It was once dominated by economic and

communal factors which are no longer able to explain satisfactorily our contemporary

milieus.

Profiling Sample Developments

A select of developments most of them completed and well established and some are in

different development stages have been analyzed for their component elements. Being

predominantly with residential space is the main criteria. The principal objective, however,

remain to assess the extent of influence of hospitality element on both the spatial and

operational aspects of these developments.

The existence of “hotel” as a prime hospitality organ is identified interms of number, size and

class. Identified as well the range of amenities associated with these developments.

Interestingly enough, a considerable range of amenities and services found attached to home

environment, were far beyond the traditionally known conveniences for domestic areas.


The physical existence of the hotel element appears to take an anchoring role in guiding the

master plan and dictate the level of amenities there. In either developments on clear touristic

location or those with a lesser potential like deep in desert area, the organization of land uses

is showing a deliberate spatial integration across residential, hotel and amenity zones. Almost

all are coming in gated and well demarcated zones with controlled entry and exit. Expansive

parks and lakes to sandy beaches are joining in to form a generous and space-hungry

provision laying the setting in which homes and hotel buildings are in together. Although the

residential-hotel quota ratio varies considerably among the sample developments, the overall

configuration is often stressing a spatial organizational link as well as a planned functional

relatedness.

Planned homes and hotels are coming spatially bound and often described as self-contained

with exclusive share of the leisure facilities out there and in some cases private hotel

amenities like spa, restaurants and other leisure facilitates are intended to be used by

community residents on privilege basis. Developments even with relatively minimal hotel

component in most of the locations from seaside water to desert sands, are systematically

encompassing advanced leisure facilities traditionally associated with hospitality industry e.g.

spa, theatre and alike.

The approach to community administration and sunning up of services as well is seen as

depicting dominant commercial hospitality features. From staff of private security firms, gate

control, facility management personnel, and gardeners to housekeeping companies are

keeping those areas busy with uniformed service armies. Written community rules are used to

govern the public and private behavior, family size per home unit, number of friends you can

invite at once and party organization permissions along with control regulations restricting

changes and additions to structures with varied enforcement levels. Worth mentioning is that

home properties are subject to compulsory “maintenance fee” paid to community

management overseeing amenities there. In most cases original master developer remains as

the sole community maintenance service provider through a facility management company

arm or his own hospitality services enterprise.

The table below is including information extracted from the developments promotion

materials and websites on the techniques used to attach a specific theme to development

either physically by adopting a popular architectural character to built homes or in a soft

manner by using celebrity endorsement as a branding tool. Use of celebrity architects signing

on home designs is not uncommon as well. Specific luxurious and leisurely living styles are


emphasized by these hard and soft tools from “Haut Living” to “Golf” and “Marina” urban

living cultures.

Dubai Lifestyle City Green Community

Al Barary Arabian Ranches

Marsa Plaza at Dubai Festival City Dubai Creek Club Residences

Large Scale Mixed Use Developments including Master Planned Communities

Palm Jumeirah Dubai Festival City Jumeirah Beach Residence Development Residential Hotel Amenities Theme Style

Palm Jumeirah

• 2,500 villas • 4,000

apartments

• 30~40 Hotels • Water park • Beaches • Marinas • Parkland

• Mediterranean and Arab architecture

• Waterside, beach resort living and holidaying

Dubai Festival City • 1,300 acres • 2.4 miles bank

• 20,000 apartments & villas in full

• 2-5star hotels Intercontinental (498 room), Crown Plaza (316 room)

• 212 apartment Intercontinental Residence suites

• Shopping centre, restaurants,

• Cinemas complex • 530,000ft2 office • Corniche, promenade • 4,000ft2 events square • Bowling, fitness • Golf, clubhouse, • 100 birth marina • 2 International Schools

• Mixed modern, Arab and globally imported styles

• Marina & golf waterside living and holidaying

• Business


Jumeirah Beach Residence • Coastline

apartment complex

• 2,000,000ft2 • 1.7 km • $2.0 billion

• 6,916 apartment in 36 residential towers

• 4 Beach and resort hotels

Ritz Carlton, Hilton, Oasis, Rotana

• Beach and beach clubs • Health club • 350 beachfront retail • 45 beachfront

restaurants, walk • Swimming pools • Landscaped plazas • Kindergartens • Medical facilities • Spa, gym

• Art deco, Mediterranean and local Arab architecture

• Beach side living and holidaying

Master Planned Residential Communities Development Residential Hotel Element Amenities Theme Promoted Lifetyle Dubai Lifestyle City ETA Star Group • 4,150,000ft2 • $653.4 million

• 68 villas • 120 apartments

(villettes)

• 150 room 4-star hotel

• 170 room 5-star hotel

• Club & spa • Mall • Arts theatre • Restaurants • Garden centre • Sport IMG Academy,

Tennis, Golf • Butler & concierge • Powered by SISCO &

Microsoft

• Tuscan village architecture

• Homes conceived by Tony Ashai Beverly Hills Designer

• Launch by Maria Sharapove

• Haut living

Green Community Properties Investment LLC & Union Properties • 67 hectares

• 719 villas and apartments

• 5 office blocks

3,500m2

• 165 room Marriot • Executive

apartment

• Swimming pools • Children’s garden

nursery • Shopping and dining

boulevard • School • restaurants • Man-made lake

• Mixed Green suburban

• Suburbia • Community

living

Dubai Creek Club Residences Wasl-DREC

• 92 villas

• 260 rooms & suites Park Hyatt

• Marina • Yacht clubhouse • Golf clubhouse • Golf course • Rental

furnished/unfurnished • Spa • restaurants

• Old Dubai architecture style

• leisure • Golf and

marina living

Al Barari • 14,200,000ft2 • 130 hectares • US$ 6.4 Billion Al Barari Development Company

• 97 villas, originally 290 villas phase1

• 228 Apartments phase2

• 6 Star Boutique Hotel

• 82% planted and open spaces

• 14.6 km of waterways • Soul Spa • Old Souk • a wildlife reserve

• Arabian architecture with contemporary design

• Themed Botanical Gardens

• Endorsement by India’s celebrity – Shahrukh Khan

• Eco-living • eco friendly

lifestyle • tranquil retreats • scenic seclusion

Marsa Plaza • Part of the

1,300 acres Dubai Festival City

• 510 residence apartments-total

• 212 managed by InterContinental Hotels

• Two 5 star hotels, • Convention centre •

• pools , gymnasium • Convenience store • Salons, coffee shop • baby sitting, laundry

services, lounge • International Schools • Golf, clubhouse,

marina

• Cosmopolitan • Modern

architecture

• Contemporary waterside living


Arabian Ranches Emaar • 1,652 acres

• 3,876 villas

• 6 suites guesthouse

• Golf club, spa • Equestrian centre • Polo club, restaurants • Desert golf course • Parklands, pools • School, medical centre • 20 outlet shopping

centre

• Rural, desert garden

• Arabian, adobe, Andalusia architecture

• Country club living

• Leisure, golf and horses

Note: some figures may be just current estimates as projects are frequently updated through development course

Master Planned Residential Communities: Detailing of Services and facilities Development Hospitality Agent Services/ Amenities Al Barari • 97 villas, originally 290 villas phase1 • 228 Apartments phase2

• 6 Star Boutique Hotel • Membership to the lakeside state-of-the-art gym • Preferential rates at the Healing Haven • Helicopter transfers from Dubai International Airport to the

Al Barari helipad • Discounted membership at the Nad Al Sheba and Racing

Club • Entry to the private members lounge at the Kasbah

Dubai Creek Club Residences • 92 villas

• Park Hayatt Hotel • Discount on hotel & club food & beverages • In-villa catering service • Special Golf membership and use rates • Shop and retail discounts • Customized landscape services

Dubai Lifestyle City • 68 villas • 120 apartments (villettes)

• JW Marriott • Concierge • In-villa catering service • housekeeping • garden care

Marsa Plaza • 212 apartments Part of the 1,300 acres Dubai Festival City

• InterContinental Hotels and Resorts Group.

• Service desk, housekeeping • Airport services, valet parking • baby sitting, laundry services, lounge • Licensed lounge - InterContinental • Discounted golf green fee • Two five star hotels and a convention centre

The Emerging Discourse

The produced residential landscapes and the way they follow to take shape are revealing

important discourses on their morphing nature under the conditions of ephemerality and the

interweaving milieus of lives and places. It is allegedly to have projected profound changes to

the way places are perceived and experiences. The profiled developments were examined

across three major lines of analysis: spatiality, imaging and control. Significant set of features

are assembling around the new notion of home and are eventually raising a tension between

the classic dwelling characteristics and the new grounds of the modern thematized service

culture of hospitality and hotel-ing.

Spatiality

Be on the water edge or at an augmented desert landscape, the primacy of the locational

settings of the developments is quite characteristic. Such spots were often deployed as


touristic and leisurely spaces. The potentialities of a site occupied by these developments are

exhausted to high levels such as private beaches attached to the villas of the Palm Jumeirah.

The favourable and amenity rich locations, either natural (seafronts and sand dunes) or

invented (reclaimed land, man made canals, planted desert) are incubating these homes and

thus maintaining an extensively aestheticized aura suggesting something close to the

pleasurable experiences taking place in themed parks, hotels and restaurants. Ample non-built

space, generally planted or articulated surfaces, going above 80 percent in some

developments like Al Barari is a common feature. It is mostly used to detach homes more

rather than being collated in big enough public space.

Very much guest-oriented space management technologies are taking place in the form of

gating or multiple gating like the arrangement observed in Arabian Ranches community and

Palm Jumeirah villa fronds. The often used description of “self contained” is also

emphasizing the rigidly demarcated boundaries accentuates a spatial independence and a

strong territorial character with less interest to connect or merge with the surrounding. Also

the term community which appears to be used metaphorically to point out a singularly unified

control subject is serving towards the same.

The ultimate integration of tourism into the local community occurs when the local people discover the convenience and desirability of using facilities designed originally for tourists.

Dean MacCannell 1973

The interest in tourist-oriented amenities accrued a physical proximity to leisure amenities.

Homes are now sharing a common site and transact spatially and functionally with hotels and

hospitality facilities pronouncing an envisaged compatibility at least at the level of

homogeneous users as recognized by development plans. The strategies for organizing the

space also emphasize the nodal value of hospitality facilities and thus the anchoring of homes

around a range of leveraged amenities. Consequently residents are legitimized to use those

delights as daily conveniences and virtually turned into resident tourists.

Imaging

Dubai surge for place marketing has had each and every urban space joining, landmark hotels,

gigantic structures and trend-setter developments. Caught up in, residential spaces as forming

substantial part of the city building process and place making. Elsheshtawy analyzed the

composition and role of architecture images in forging unique city brand. The use of

superlatives and spectacles, like the tallest building or the largest man-made island; and the

perpetuation of mythical environments are examples of the image creation tools deployed

(Yasser Elsheshtawy 2010). Not different from visitors places, residential sites are to


contribute to city image as fine and a refined place to live in and making it home. Images of

paradise living, indulgence and exclusivity are projected through developing composite

residential districts interweaved with abundance of natural and constructed recreational

amenities.

No single utopia fits all. On top of the amenity package, a further segmentation is promoted

by these developments along varied lifestyle lines and preferred living. Golf is not alone in

catalyzing lifestyle communities. From equestrian, yachting and professional sport

communities to fashion, eco-living and country club styles, many can be seen as setting the

organization principle for these developments. Thus stressing the experience factor in

designing home milieus and portray images complementing the overall city uniqueness. More

developments are trying to mediate sensationally the values of comfort, joy, serenity or retreat

which in fact represents some of the popular hospitality micro trends and are articulated

visually in both the created settings and the individual themes of homes. Attention to create

appealing visual and spatial consistency led to the adoption of consumer venues theming

techniques. Historically and culturally- appointed architectural styles and space planning

principles from Andalusia, Mediterranean region, to spa towns and western countryside

proves popular. The mental image projected is conveying recognition to the demands of

contemporary lifestyles of the mobile elites that underscore the values of leisure, joy, prestige,

service and comfort in home environment.

Control

Despite the apparent comfortable lifestyles that these new communities represent, a specific

condition of a differently regulated place and people has been created qualified basically by

the architectural disposition. In the pre-assumed absence of shared communal values, the

informal social guides of customs, norms, public conduct, mores and so were replaced by

written community rules administered by developer. The developer here acts as the host who

has the sole rights to operate the rules and exercise mastery control. Those local laws are

intended at ordering the interaction among residents and hence promote detached and

personalized living much known in hotels and lodging institutions.

The presence of the management powers of developer is popularly justified by arguments on

maintaining the advanced amenities (from district cooling and piped gas to security, private

parklands, clubs and lakes) usually beyond the conventional municipal services. This

situation, however; brings a closer and more focused governance over residents and hence a

sense of excessive governmentality supported again by the self-containment. What sought to

be serving a perception of security and safety as the employed entry control is, in fact,


surveillance mechanisms too. Restricted access gates, guest registers and party permissions all

do sensor people movements in a very watchful way. Thus set them vulnerable to the

apparatus of control there.

Important enough is to note that the admission to these planned communities is principally

regulated by financial ability and wealth which proved to be leading to a sort of social

typification, filtering a homogeneous people sets grouped further around specific lifestyles,

tastes and perhaps ethnicities. Hospitality being a means of controlling the ‘other’ or

‘stranger’, people who are essentially alien to a particular physical, economic and social

environment’ (Brotherton and Wood 2007) seems to find in planned/managed residential

communities a domain. Management of the contested relation with guest resident and the way

it is transacted contractually depict the use of hospitality with all its commercial dispositions

as organizing frames.

The recorded architectural dispositions together with larger city trend are allegedly putting

forward arguments on a tourism-dominated logic that appears to dictate the way these

residential spaces are envisioned, developed and run. Indeed capturing on the characteristic

living norm of the wealthy transient population and eventually putting more reason in

borrowing from hospitality model. In Dubai there is little difference between holiday

accommodation and housing. Architectural programs are becoming fused and undifferentiated

(George Katodrytis). It is the core subject of this work is to try making sense of this

phenomenon, if we can say so, by: 1) positioning it within the context of Dubai globalizing in

a joint direction of a trade/services hub and a tourism destination; and 2) considering the

transient condition predominating the city from majority foreign workforce, tourists and trade

visitors.

Concluding

Whatever the controversy is, Dubai remains a remarkable urban condition that is challenging

to understand along the conventional theories of urban development. Dubai which must have

now been well known through the glitz, glamour and extravaganza of tall towers, shopping

malls and tourist attractions, is also running significantly a wider city build up agenda. The

paper defies the general perception of Dubai tourism boom as mere economic diversification

way, but rather is used widely as an urban development strategy and a model for an improved

quality of life. The hospitality discourse is used to help understand how tourism, the human-

intensive industry, is adopted as well as recognition and acceptance by the other and a tool for

familiarization.


The general tourism-induced discourse in shown as to how the leisure element and

commercial hospitality have influenced the residential landscapes. Clustering homes, hotels

and amenities with varying proportions and overlaps seem to be a dominant recipe. The

phenomena of leisure-intensive communities is found to be happening in a very

institutionalized and industrialized way as prime home building mode that may not be

sufficiently accurate to conceptualize it along the lines of Blakely and Snyder (1997) of gated

lifestyle communities or the later thinking as privately governed neighbourhoods.

Hotels play well and are common in tourist precincts and central business districts, but it isn’t

the case in classic residential zones. The paper, however, is suspecting rather than making

claims, on the background of the transient condition in Dubai, that a systematic appearance of

hotels and hospitality facilities may partly be attributed to their extended role as landmarks,

concentrated leisure clusters and as model for service delivery. Indeed the social dispositions

of growing strata of mobile rich frequenting the city or parking for their winter escape could

support this mode of living. Although concrete empirical data may not be available in full,

much of anecdotal evidence can give sufficient clue.

The study attempted to find some more explanations by looking at the intersections of guest

and host, holiday and everyday and ephemerality and permanence as representative by the

conditions of Dubai. This may resonate as well with the forming of transitory geographies and

with the wider conceptualizations of place and non-place of Marc Augé (1999) where hotels

are one of most placelessness. In this regard, the created settings of these leisure-intensive

residential districts are reducing the engagement of residents by the solitary contractuality,

and are favouring commercial service-oriented culture. Thus socially and politically

neutralize people from the city society.

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___________________________________________________________________________ Amir M. Abdella, PhD Candidate, Bauhaus University Weimar. Germany Nakheel Properties PJSC, Dubai Email: [email protected] / [email protected]

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Globalizing dubai,transience, dwelling and hospitality tensions(rev01)