Urbanization (URBAN-UH)

We examine contemporary cities as transnational, subject to influences coming from distant places while generating their own extra-national impacts. We take our primary cases, Abu Dhabi and Dubai, as extreme but not exceptional in these (and other) regards. Great wealth and distinctive modes of migration, resource use, and citizenship make processes more evident that are generally occurring across the globe. So, the Gulf is a "lab." Our strategy will be to focus, in particular, on buildings and public space - architecture and infrastructure - to shed light on larger social, economic, and cultural dynamics. The goal will be to understand and compare "travel" among the urban components as they mix up, hybridize, or conflict. With continuous attention to environmental impacts - in both "sending" and "receiving" locations - we will look for prospects that might reform production, consumption, and transit. In taking up events and processes in the UAE, will be comparing them to parallel dynamics in other cities, particularly the origin-places of participating students.