I have never been to Las Vegas. However, I do have an image of it in my mind and an idea of what the city must be like. Through films, photos, conversations I conceive it as a city to be consumed, a place to go, have fun and leave.
However, I started reading a book by Dave Hickey called Air Guitar. He describes an entirely different view on Vegas, he describes it as his home: "(…) this most un-homelike of cities has come to function for me as a kind of moral bottom-line - as a secular refuge and a source of comforts and reassurances that are unavailable elsewhere - as a home, in other words."
In his text, Hickey is making a point about what makes a place a home. That moral bottom-line means an understanding of a place, an understanding of how the people one is surrounded by think, act and relate to each other. One doesn't necessarily need to know or have spoken to a person in order to know them. The notion of home is the greater assumption about one`s neighbor. There is a very specific example in Hickey`s essay about that specific momentum. He describes a conversation he had with a waitress in a restaurant who wants to move up from "food to cocktail where the tips were better." She is "thankful for something and looking forward to something else." It seems to be that modesty, honesty and optimism of the people in Vegas Hickey relates to.
Las Vegas is about money. You can make a lot of it there or loose a lot. That being the city`s central feature, Hickey argues this means the total erasure of social classes, no one is special in Vegas "(…) because money here is just money." Therefore, Vegas is a city where people are true to themselves as it "is about stakes, not status - real action, not covert connections." People are more down to earth in Vegas and their ambitions are not as far fetched as elsewhere. Thats why Hickey calls Vegas his home because "there are only two rules: (1) Post the odds, and (2) Treat everybody the same. Just as one might in a democracy (What a concept!)". According to him, Vegas is more democratic than any other city, maybe not on the level of governance but surely in the way people relate to each other.
Like Las Vegas, Dubai is a city which is based on money, making profit and speculating. However, the city grew in a very different way and more importantly, they differ in one aspect mainly: social mobility. As described previously, Vegas is a city that provides opportunity for anyone and according to Hickey there are no social classes. The city provides a democratic ground for anyone to move up from "food to cocktail".
In opposition, Mike Davis observes in his essay Fear and Money in Dubai that the economic flourishing of that city is primarily based on social inequality and the exploitation of cheap and imported labour. He argues that Dubai, in becoming the new world capital of finance and speculation, is based on a social construct as seen in Fritz Lang`s film Metropolis (1927): the ultimate culmination of social inequality. This political framework provides the basis for architectural gigantism and visual orgasms. Davis´ conclusion about Dubai: "Speer meets Disney on the shores of Araby."
Dubai has become a city of excess in every aspect. Sheikh al-Maktoum, Dubai`s Emir provides the right ground for foreign investment, a tax-free oasis, attracting many national and international companies and enabling the hyper-capitalist economy to prosper. Effectively, the construction of the city develops immensely, achieving the construction of bigger and bigger projects (Burj al Dubai, The Palm, The World etc.). But the city strives for finished architectural images and products that ignore any public or democratic use. Davis puts it: "In fact, it goes even further; it copies not the product as it exists in its countries of origin but its `ideal type´, and it is able to do so for the very reason that it is in a position to append instead of going through the process of development."
In this sense, the city is ignoring reality (its majority of people). Rather than dealing with the city as a home for people (like Vegas) Dubai is the prime example of a city becoming a brand for speculative investment. The city`s infrastructure has been set up to serve a selling image, the city has become a brand. However, it shows ignorance and arrogance towards what a city should be: a dense accumulation of architecture and infrastructure to make the concept of a home possible. In the end, Vegas works well as a city as it manages to provide a home to people and a democratic base which enables social mobility and on which people can relate to each other. In opposition, Dubai is a constructed reality, like Disney World, but on a Speer-scale. It does not establish any relationship between its social classes and therefore stagnates in its attempt to draw the perfect image of its future.
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