As nation-states gradually give way to quasi-imperial geopolitical spheres of influence, artificial city-states are appearing in Asia and the Middle East to punctuate global crossroads. Beyond Singapore, these uber-habitats are signposts of the future intersections of radically conceived designer realities and a millennial world culture. Famous examples, such as Dubai's man-made archipelagoes‚ “The World” and “The Palm Islands”‚ may not excite much serious speculation in this regard. But they are only the most visually contrived of many such projects, which reflect the impact of global affairs on modern life. These cities and islands are built as hyper-localized hothouses and are set to become bastions of over-specialization. At the same time, they project a peculiar cosmopolitanism, with their great potential for cultural overlap, exchange and conflict, standing as they do at the flashpoints of international trade and interaction. Increasingly referred to as “international free zones” in their areas of expertise, these districts recall both ancient and medieval free cities, founded on common interests in the face of imperial disarray.
The first centers of note are the academic cities. These post-secondary educational bases are offshoots of the increasingly fashionable international collaborations between universities. Foreign university franchises are clustered together, shopping-mall-style, on campuses that also function as self-sufficient towns. These knowledge importers include:Education City in Qatar; Dubai International Academic City; Dubai Knowledge Village; Abu Dhabi's University City; and the Global Academic Complex at New Songdo City in South Korea.
New Songdo City, estimated to cost over $40 billion, and to be built on reclaimed land off Incheon's coastline, is planned as the first truly “ubiquitous city,” or U-city. Like other U-cities, it will provide a smorgasbord of features from western metropolises. Its designers promise a Central Park like New York, canals like Venice, and pocket parks like those in Savannah. But it still appears that New Songdo will specialize as an international business hub. Other such cities will be industry-specific: Robot City in South Korea is to be devoted to the manufacture of robots and artificial intelligence; while Eco City will be Abu Dhabi's showcase of renewable energy.
Most of these centers will be artificial islands, created from waste from nearby port cities. Aside from Dubai's famous enterprises, Bahrain is currently building the artificial island, Durrat Al Bahrain; Federation Island will be built in the shape of Russia in the Black Sea to serve the 2014 Winter Olympics site of Sochi; and X-Seed 4000 will be constructed as the world's most populated island in Tokyo harbor, featuring the world's tallest sky-scraper as a high-rise city in and of itself. Another anticipated single-building city is Ziggurat : a carbon-neutral green pyramid, conceived to house and employ one million people in Dubai.
These utopian islands and towers revive a new classical aesthetic for the 21st century. Current city-state architecture implicitly recalls the wonders of the ancient world, yet retains none of the caveats that the latter convey. There is a hubris in the designers' "post-Postmodern" blank-slate philosophy that pushes design to extremes. Will there be human costs in these idealized, fully-tech-integrated spaces? The Canadian comedy Waydowntown (2000) probes the mentality among workers who never leave their downtown Calgary complex of apartments, skyways, shopping concourses and offices: three office drones bet on who can last the longest without going outside. Mercifully, this film probes the dark psychology inside the urban bubble with a dose of satire. By contrast, there is no hint of irony in the international marketing campaigns that promote these futuristic utopias, which often seem less a template for optimistic global commerce‚ and more a model for space exploration.
