Staggering skylines and boastful architecture make Dubai famous-this
book traces them back to a twentieth-century plan for survival.
In 1959, experts agreed that if Dubai was to become something more than
an unruly port, a plan was needed. Specifically, a town plan was
prescribed to fortify the city from obscurity and disorder. With the
proverbial handshake, Dubai's ruler hired British architect John Harris
to design Dubai's strategy for capturing the world's attention-and then
its investments.
Showpiece City recounts the story of how Harris and other hired
professionals planned Dubai's spectacular transformation through the
1970s. Drawing on exclusive interviews, private archives, dog-eared
photographs, and previously overlooked government documents, Todd Reisz
reveals the braggadocio and persistence that sold Dubai as a profitable
business plan. Architecture made that plan something to behold. Reisz
highlights initial architectural achievements-including the city's first
hospital, national bank, and skyscraper-designed as showpieces to
proclaim Dubai's place on the world stage.
Reisz explores the overlooked history of a skyline that did not simply
rise from the sands. In the city's earliest modern architecture, he
finds the foundations of an urban survival strategy of debt-wielding
brinkmanship and constant pitch making. Dubai became a testing ground
for the global city-and prefigured how urbanization now happens
everywhere.
