
Showpiece City: How Architecture Made Dubai
Trevor Williams
Todd Reisz.
Stanford UP, 2021.
Dubai’s reputation builds off skyscrapers and boosterism, but its foundation is more prosaic: urban planning. Writer and architect Todd Reisz discards the city’s superlatives by focusing on the city’s transformation from desert backwater to pioneering hub. Sourcing from the library of British architect John R. Harris, designer of Dubai’s first town plan in 1960, Reisz reveals how the city’s growth in subsequent decades relied on both ambition and ambiguity. British disinvestment couldn’t stymie Dubai’s port, and the port’s mystique grew as its wealth remained concealed. Oil compounded optimism, creating a bonanza for British experts, but the benefit flowed both ways: Shaykh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, who ruled Dubai between 1958 and 1990, assumed both the risk and credit for projects from Dubai Creek’s “hardened edges” to the World Trade Centre, what Reisz considered true “showpieces”—infrastructure that hastened Dubai’s ascent.
You may also be interested in...
In War and Peace, Book Explores How Rome and Persia Remained Frenemies
Book Review: In his latest scholarly work, Roman historian Adrian Goldsworthy reduces Persian and Roman longevity to simply an ever-evolving coexistence.Rome and Persia The Seven Hundred Year Rivalry
The Great British Bake Off Winner Nadiya Hussain Gathers Global Recipes in Culinary Celebration of Ramadan
Nadiya Hussain's diverse recipes highlight the global unity of Muslim cultures and cuisines.