"Plastic-Fantastic"

(Noun/Adjective)

The rapid, inorganic, contextless design of urban space in the 21st century - with complete disregard for the social, political, & environmental impacts of such hyper-growth.

Did u just build that 120-floor underwater skyscraper in 2 months? That's so Plastic-Fantastic!

[Urban Dictionary Entry - Dec. 23, 2008 _ By Omar Offendum]



I love(d) Dubai ... Since members of my immediate family moved there to set up shop in the earlier part of the decade, I was blown away by how different it looked every time I would visit ... I was just beginning to study Architecture at the University of Virginia when the global fascination with this shiny new Emirate started to form ... The PR Campaign was unparalleled, & all the "StArchitects" on planet earth were racing to get on it's royal radar with hopes of cashing in & building out ... It seemed as though anything was possible - 7 star hotels, indoor ski resorts, underwater palaces & air-conditioned beaches ... Not to mention the world's largest anything & tallest everything ... It was starting to become one of the world's most marvelous destinations - and a stroll through any of the countless shopping malls built on it's virgin sand could only serve to bolster this notion, as every single face I passed by seemingly represented a different ethnic background ... it was a fantastic sight to say the least.

Yet since the indigenous locals barely accounted for %15 of the population (& typically kept to themselves), I couldn't help but notice that the overwhelming majority of people who lived within the city were of South Asian descent (upwards of %60) ... Furthermore, most of these people were laborers - opening doors, driving cabs, cooking meals, & above all - constructing buildings ... As a student of built form, I couldn't help but look up - and the higher I looked (my neck started to hurt as the years went by) the more I would see dark faces in yellow construction hats & orange/blue/green jumpsuits ... Eerily similar to those worn by inmates in the United States & GITMO ... Sweating away at all hours of the day & night ... Providing the housing, office buildings, & retail/recreational space necessary to make this real-estate agent's dream a reality ...

At first I tried to justify it, convincing my conscience that their living conditions must be better than they were in their home countries - and that they now had the opportunity to send much needed income back to their impoverished families overseas ... After all, this was the rationale used throughout the Arabian Gulf region (& not just by "Khaleejis" mind you) over the past several decades to explain why it was OK to treat such immigrants as second class citizens - at the workplace on construction sites & factories, in schools as teachers & janitors, at home as live-in maids & cooks ... their fate was generally the same (and I am usually one to stray from making any generalizations) - they had tiny basement bedrooms they often shared with several other individuals, ate measly leftovers of lavish meals they cooked & served, braved the intolerable desert heat at its most extreme hours, & often suffered verbal/physical abuse with nobody to call on for help when it got out of hand ...

Besides, migrant labor was used all over the world (from time immemorial) to bring the dreams of the rich to fruition - Surely this wasn't any different?

This slippery slope seemed more & more ludicrous whenever I would try to vocalize it ... Leading to difficult discussions with many friends & family members whose livelihood depended on the success of the Dubai experiment & the employment of South/Southeast Asian migrant workers ... I was even told to be careful of who/what/how I criticized this particular aspect of society as it could get me into a lot of trouble with certain authoritative figures ...

Yet this wasn't some "jealous Westerner's quest to expose the ills of a successful Eastern city" - a notion I find very insulting on a number of levels ... It had a very personal effect on me, as the son of a Syrian Civil Engineer who made a living off of construction projects throughout the Eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula ... To this day my father's colleagues & employees speak highly of his moral character - and the care with which he dealt with every individual he interacted with on his construction sites ... Many of these individuals knew him longer than I did, & certainly had more professional experience with him - so their opinion of his work ethic & ethical standards is even more valid than mine on this matter.

For proof of this I didn't have to look any further than my own home ... During most of my childhood & teenage years, we too had a live-in housekeeper - a man from the Indian Subcontinent whose life story is nothing short of the American Dream ... He was a small, thin Desi teenager when he first met my father at a construction site in Al-Khobar - confessing to my dad with brutal honesty that he would be much better suited for household chores than heavy lifting ... and thus a couple of months after I was born, he moved in to our home ... He didn't read or write, but he could cook some delicious Indian food & had a wonderful sense of humor ... He helped my father as he tended the garden (& called him Baba), set the table as my mom prepared us dinner (& called her Mama), & listened to some hilarious Indian-Disco music as he did our laundry (& called us Brothers/Sisters) ... It wasn't long before he would move to the United States with our family in 1985, gradually sending thousands of US dollars back home to his parents/siblings overseas & eventually getting his American Citizenship with the rest of us ... He would later marry, father a child of his own, & move out of our house into an apartment with his new family ... When they outgrew the apartment & purchased a house in the upper-middle class suburbs of Northern Virginia, I found myself visiting him for a little taste of "home" - since most of my immediate family had moved back to the Middle East by then ... On one of these occasions I noticed he had rented out a room in his basement to a Kuwaiti college student - and that he somehow didn't even see the irony in this beautiful twist of fate ... He was simply proud of the fact that he was now in a position to provide shelter to an immigrant teenager the way our father had provided for him years ago ...

As I look back on this part of my family history (& I most certainly consider him to be a part of my family), and listen to the tales of Dubai's recent real-estate market collapse, I wonder if people can learn from his/our story. It is often stated that you are what you eat, & that if a chef is upset with you, your stomach will be too - well I would like to think the same applies for architecture. While the economic crisis hinged on many different external factors, one can't ignore the simple fact that if these real-estate developers were not in such a greedy rush to build bigger, better, faster - a process more akin to the temporal & unsustainable qualities of plastic than the everlasting nature of timeless architecture - the bubble would not have been so big & prone to such a disastrous burst.

Please do not misunderstand me - I am not at all happy about this ... Nor do I intend to impart an apocalyptic fate upon this glorious boom-town ... Again, the livelihood of many of my family members & closest friends depends on the success of the Dubai experiment ... I want nothing more than to see a flourishing "City of Life" where Al-Wasl used to humbly stand ... It is after all one of the few places in the region that has welcomed people from all walks of life - for better or worse ... One of the few places where one can enter a museum & see breathtaking works of art from all over the Muslim world, without them being censored based on which sect they belong to or language they speak ... It is Dubai's unique history of economic openness & diversity that made it so - and yet sadly was its achilles heel with respect to this current credit crunch ...

Perhaps this can be seen as an opportunity to bring about change ... not just that US presidential campaign buzzword type of change ... a true, lasting, positive change that can warrant Dubai's being the shining example of what similar cities in the region were/are striving for - not simply attempting to copy & paste ... speaking of copying/pasting - one Emirati writer recently posted this quote on his blog >>

A lot of us Emiratis feel this downturn is exactly what we have needed. The chance to finally slow down and see things as they are without the stink of greed distorting everything. To finally concentrate our efforts where it counts such as improving our schools and colleges, completing the metro, building a stable civil society, and a sustainable economy. (http://secretdubai.blogspot.com/)

The Prophet Muhammad Peace Be Upon Him once said: "Innama al-a3maalu bil-niyaat" (roughly translated as "actions are based/judged on intentions") ... After watching the al-Jazeera special I've embedded at the beginning of this post, what can one infer about the intentions of these developers / contractors / agents who exploit(ed) these human beings?

Well, I for one feel that they gave into the Plastic-Fantastic notion of "if you build it, they will ...buy" - but who am I to judge ... I'm just an Architect / Hip-Hop artist from SyrianamericanA ...

This is already the longest blog I have written to date, but honestly doesn't even scratch the surface as far as what would need to be covered were one to provide a wholistic assessment of this dynamic & rapidly-changing part of planet earth ... That said, for those of you waiting for Omar to shut up & Offendum to kick in, this one's for you >>

Plastic-Fantastic

City of Dreams

but everyday in Dubai

aint as pretty as it seems ...

dont believe me?

ask anybody behind the scenes

overworked & underpayed

yet they're keepin it clean ...

Plastic-Fantastic

City of Dreams

but everyday in Dubai

aint as pretty as it seems ...

dont believe me?

just ask anybody behind the scenes

they can tell you exactly what i mean ...

The HIGH-rises

somethin to scrape skies with

jump suit - orange & blue

slave disguises

85 to a nine room house

divided

8 bucks a day justified it

and thus provided

the man power needed to erect

the worlds biggest sand towers

leadin to a (w)reck-ord setting

half-a-million Desis getting

no credit for the day - sweating

it away betting

it'll say 50 on thermometers today

that's over 120 fahrenheit - but hey

ain't no Michael Moore here

they just like more here

bigger-better-faster-strong Kanye malls here

ski slopes in the desert

make you wonder how the hell we ever coped in the desert?

bedo soaked in the pleasure of a hopeless endeavor

to endulge in a measure contest

a mine is bigger than yours - complex

situation that im lovin & im hatin

emotional fluctuation

like real-estate speculation

its a risk taken

but the high is in the stakes

flippin a condo twice

& thats before the ground breaks

oceans cars & cranes the apparent soundscape

reclaimed coasts & man-made islands - drowned fate

that sounds great on satellitle tv

believe me

all that glitters aint gold in the DX(7abi)B ...

Plastic Fantastic

City of Dreams

but everyday in Dubai

aint as pretty as it seems ...

dont believe me?

ask anybody behind the scenes

overworked & underpayed

yet they're keepin it clean ...

Plastic Fantastic

City of Dreams

but everyday in Dubai

aint as pretty as it seems ...

dont believe me?

just ask anybody behind the scenes

they can tell you exactly what i mean ...

(If you turn your head sideways, the verse kinda looks like the Skyline =)

3iiish Peace Dubaby