Mega-Structures and Cultural Districts As City Branding and Tourist Attractions: Limits of Labor, Leisure, and Environmental Sustainability in Dubai and Abu Dhabi

21st-century mega-projects are emblematic of large-scale capitalist transformations of urban spaces, realized through "coordinated applications of capital and state power" (Gellert and Lynch 2003: 15-16). In the United Arab Emirates, such projects have become synonymous with state-sponsored initiatives that mobilize cheap migrant labor, drive economic diversification, shape city branding, and result in widespread encroachments on natural landscapes, particularly in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. These mega-projects also serve as popular attractions for the luxury consumption of space and the cultural commodification aimed at tourists, citizens and expatriates. Drawing on the field data gathered for an ongoing research project in the United Arab Emirates, this article examines selected mega-structures with cultural importance -such as the Museum of the Future and the Mohammed Bin Rashid Library in Dubai- as well as emerging cultural districts like Dubai Design District and Saadiyat Cultural District of Abu Dhabi. The article focuses on how these mega-spaces for tourism and trade are physically and socially constructed by migrant labor, tourists, expats, and citizens through their distinct and often conflicting experiences shaped by social class and nationality. Finally, this article explains how mega-structures and cultural districts in Dubai and Abu Dhabi function as strategic elements of city branding, economic diversification, and cultural tourism within the 21st-century context of capitalist (re)production of urban space—largely reliant on the exploitation of cheap migrant labor and the invasion of fragile local ecosystems.

Reference:

Gellert, Paul & Lynch, BD. (2003). Mega-projects as displacements. International Social Science Journal. 55 (175):15-25.