Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai will soon play host to the world’s largest shopping mall – the gargantuan Mall of the World. Comprised of 48 million square feet of over-the-top retail, residential, and even medical services, the covered pedestrian city is expected to attract some 180 million visitors a year. I shudder at the thought.

In terms of density, this new Dubai Holding development is on the right track. Mixed use development is widely considered to be desirable in an urban context, and linking areas of the city with public transportation as well. But there’s more that goes into a city to create a wonderful, vibrant and inspiring space — it’s got to have soul.

With 25 hotels linked to the mall alone, any semblance of soul is already lost as far as I’m concerned. Add to that a three million square foot wellness center and seven kilometers of retail, and this place is starting to sound like a certain kind of hell.

Dubai Holding attempts to compare their development to La Rambla in Barcelona, but it will never be anything like it.

The Mall of the World is pure consumerism, and a particularly gilded form of it rarely seen in our age of austerity, poverty, hunger and war.

I find it particularly hard to see this development in the context of Syria’s war; as widows are trying to raise their children in refugee camps, and missiles are raining on Gaza, why do some people insist upon perpetuating such irresponsible excess?

Nonetheless, here are some details:

The development will have three districts, namely the hospitality district, which will have a total of 20,000 hotel rooms, a cultural district, which holds some promise as it will include a cinema art school, and the wellness district, which will have among its many amenities a facility that provides “one-day surgeries.”

Dubai wants to become the new Mexico for the wealthy elite. And why you ask is this on a green site?

Well, in part because Dubai Holding claims that their mammoth temperature-controlled pedestrian city linked by a tram network and filled with hundreds and hundreds of stores selling stuff that is completely unnecessary is a responsible development.

“We are ready to move forward with this unique concept, whose distinctive offering and strategic location will play an instrumental role in advancing the growth of Dubai’s tourism sector,” said Ahmad Bin Byat, Chief Executive Officer of the company.

“The project will follow the green and environmentally friendly guidelines of the Smart Dubai model. It will be built using state-of-the-art technology to reduce energy consumption and carbon footprint, ensuring high levels of environmental sustainability and operational efficiency.”

Sigh. I wish Dubai would follow the Masdar experiment in neighboring Abu Dhabi a little more closely. In any case, we expect this to be ready in time for Expo 2020 Dubai.

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An enormous flexible canopy of photovoltaic cells will shade the pavilions at Dubai’s 2020 expo, an innovative step towards greater energy efficiency for the international event, but critics warn that the workers slated to build the necessary infrastructure stand to suffer the most.

This is the first time a country in the Middle East will host the Expo, which is a great boon for Dubai and the Gulf countries in general, which have pushed really hard to make their presence known in the international sphere.

From the Masdar-sponsored World Future Energy Summit, one of the most important energy networking events on earth, to athletic gatherings such as the World Cup coming to Qatar in 2022, these events help to shift the global perception that the Middle East’s is only populated by either rich Arabs who keep cheetahs as pets or terrorists.

Renowned architects HOK and Populous have been picked to design the pavilions, which are inspired by the souk or Arab market. Larger pavilions will be arranged on the perimeter, while smaller booths will be aligned closer to the center, and the whole facility will be organized around a central distribution core.

The theme  of the expo will be “Connecting Minds, Creating the Future.”

A carefully designed human circulation system is designed to foster new connections, and a fully automated underground tube system will connect the pavilions in a way that keeps services “invisible.”

But that’s not all that will be invisible. We have walked the back streets of Dubai, just two blocks from the glittering skyscrapers and retail outfits that make up what the Expo design team call its “essence,” and we have seen the squalor in which the city’s workers are forced to live.

(Related post: Comparing Qatar Stadium to a Vagina is Ridiculous, says Zaha Hadid.)

While laws have improved, those that regulate hours and working conditions are poorly enforced, and many people die or fall seriously ill from laboring under the hot sun without proper nutrition or shade.

Sara Kamalvand, a respected designer who was deported from Dubai for being “brown,” according to her, wrote this upon hearing the announcement that Dubai has been selected to host the 2020 Expo.

“#Expo2020 will proliferate the slavery of Indians, bangladeshis, pakis, and the rest of the brown people [sic] of this planet, that are serving a white washed society, clinging to the last remains of a petrol hungry, non-spaced anaesthetic past. By placing the expo in Dubai we will only emphasize our own madness, and the deterioration of all human values.”

So the solar canopy (which will be turned into a big light show at night) and the 50 percent clean energy that will be generated on-site are all huge steps for Dubai, which up until recently has paid little more than lip service to genuine green innovation, but a truly sustainable system transcends building materials and energy generation.

The people who build these magnificent monuments to excess should at least get fair recompense.

:: World Architecture News

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