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August 15, 2009
Less Green, More Red.
So the Glitzy Sycophantic Architecture firm I was in yesterday spent a lot of time advertising themselves to us as green and sustainable and on the forefront of all things righteous and good, and one of their projects that exemplified it was this zero emissions small city they are designing for Dubai.
more photos here, but no supporting text.
There was no talk of the other side of the Dubai construction industry, and in the week that I have been in school I haven't heard any talk that even comes close to talking about the issues that are presented in the article I will link to after a lengthy quote:
Once they arrive in the United Arab Emirates, migrant workers are treated little better than cattle, with no access to healthcare and many other basic rights. The company that sponsors them holds on to their passports - and often a month or two of their wages to make sure that they keep working. And for this some will earn just 400 dirhams (£62) a month.A group of construction engineers told me, with no apparent shame, that if a worker becomes too ill to work he will be sent home after a few days. "They are the cheapest commodity here. Steel, concrete, everything is up, but workers are the same."
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One evening in Abu Dhabi, I have dinner with my friend Ali, a charming Iraqi engineer whom I have known for two decades. After the meal, as his wife serves saffron-flavoured tea, he pushes back his chair and lights a cigar. We talk about stock markets, investment and the Middle East, and then the issue of race comes up.
"We will never use the new metro if it's not segregated," he tells me, referring to the state-of-the-art underground system being built in neighbouring Dubai. "We will never sit next to Indians and Pakistanis with their smell," his wife explains.
Not for the first time, I am told that while the immigrant workers are living in appalling conditions, they would be even worse off back home - as if poverty in one place can justify exploitation in the other.
"We need slaves," my friend says. "We need slaves to build monuments. Look who built the pyramids - they were slaves."
Sharla Musabih, a human rights campaigner who runs the City of Hope shelter for abused women, is familiar with such sentiments. "Once you get rich on the back of the poor," she says, "it's not easy to let go of that lifestyle. "
The very well written-besides the horrible magazine intro- article can be found here:
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I totally get and like sustainable green architecture, and it's defintatly a great idea, but there really doesn't seem to be much concern in the world of design for the ecology of society. Or perhaps there is a sort of inner analogy that is made that equates society with an eco-system, and as there prey species which are fed upon by the strong and large, there are the rich who prey upon the poor.
And it sucks, and it's not the only way we can live.
and besides, this is how I feel about nature:
Posted by felix at 06:12 PM | Comments (1)