Abstract

AVENDANO ARIAS, Johan Andrés. Chronicle of an Urban Utopia: Arab polis in Abu Dhabi, an Emirati City in a Context of Global Environmental Change. Cuad. Geogr. Rev. Colomb. Geogr. [online]. 2021, vol.30, n.2, pp.297-317.  Epub Aug 27, 2021. ISSN 0121-215X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcdg.v30n2.88640.

Contemporary cities on the Arabian Peninsula -Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Mecca, Doha, Medina, Riyadh, Dammam, Kuwait, Manama-, have undergone abrupt transformations with a common factor: a petro-dollarized economy since 1967. Despite their contexts and dissimilar geohistorical origins, currently, together, they are clear central hierarchical nodes of the world economy, a type of new generation global cities. How can we not ask ourselves then, what role do these agglomerations play and what characteristics do they have, as an urban project, which are supported by the domination of the wild forces of the desert in a context of environmental crisis, and why not a global social one? Although in other latitudes sumptuous cities full of countless skyscrapers also emerge like mushrooms, the current Arab polis or Arab cities -as is the proposal to be typified- with the largest gas and oil reserves in the world, an architectural, urban and symbolic style peculiar, and without industrial antecedent: would they be in themselves a utopia or an urban dystopia? Focusing on Abu Dhabi, and presenting some hypotheses to resolve these questions, this text is spun, verifying particularities and combining geohistorical, observation, and documentary review methods to encourage new scenarios for reflection.

Highlights: reflection article that proposes the category of Arab polis to connote the modern cities of the Arabian Peninsula -case study of Abu Dhabi-, based on the singularities that typify them as new world nodes and given the multiplying factor represented by the finding of the oil.

Keywords : agglomeration; geopolitics; globalization; middle east; oil; toporepresentation.

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