Demystifying Doha

On Architecture and Urbanism in an Emerging City

Ashraf M. Salama, Florian Wiedmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317152828
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Over the past decade or so, the wealth produced by Qatar's oil and gas exports has generated a construction development boom in its capital city of Doha and the surrounding vicinity. Since the late 1990s, the number of inhabitants has grown from less than 400, 000 to more than 1.7 million today. In many respects, Doha is portrayed as an important emerging global capital in the Gulf region, which has been positioning and re-inventing itself on the map of international architecture and urbanism, with a global image of building clusters of glass office towers, as well as cultural and educational facilities. While focusing on the architectural and planning aspects of Doha's intensive urbanization, this first comprehensive examination of the city sets this within the socio-political and economic context of the wider Arabian Peninsula. 'Demystifying Doha - On Architecture and Urbanism in an Emerging City' features a comprehensive discussion on contemporary architecture and urbanism of Doha as an emerging regional metropolis. It provides a critical analysis of the evolution of architecture and urbanism as products of the contemporary global condition. Issues that pertain to emerging service hubs, decentralised urban governance, integrated urban development strategies, image-making practices, urban identity, the dialectic relations between the city and its society and sustainable urbanism are all examined to elucidate the urban evolution and the contemporary condition of Doha. 'Demystifying Doha - On Architecture and Urbanism in an Emerging City' concludes by suggesting a framework for future studies of the city as well as for investigating the future of similar cities, setting out an agenda for sustainable urban growth, while invigorating the multiple roles urban planners and architects can play in shaping this future.

1

Introduction: Globalisation and the Emerging City

The city of Doha, a sleepy fishing hamlet only a few generations ago, is now a rapidly emerging hub city on the Arabian Gulf, popularly known as the Khaleej.¹ The Khaleej region in the Middle East is an area which is gaining increasing strategic importance both financially and politically on the world stage. Before Doha and its particular urban phenomena can be investigated, it is esstential to provide a general overview of contemporary urban developments across the globe. Since the 1970s cities have become increasingly defined by globalisation and its various social, political and economic consequences; this development has meant the end of welfare states in the West but not in the affluent emerging citystates of the Arabian Gulf. The dissolution of collective consumption, a terminology introduced by Manuel Castells to identify public control mechanisms,² has led to more dynamic and complex developments within newly emerging networks. By focusing on the phenomenon of international division of labour, Robert B. Cohen was one of the first pioneers to investigate the map of the new global urban order.³ The outsourcing of industrial production to less developed and developing countries resulted not only from various economic crises in the West, but was also propelled by an increasing level of connectivity via modern technologies such as fibre optic cables as well as the development and extension of aviation and shipping routes.⁴ The digital information age has thus changed the patterns and dynamics of global urbanisation and spaces of flows as Manuel Castell points out: ‘…The new spatial logic, characteristic of the Informational City, is determined by the pre-eminence of the space of flows over the space of places. By space of flows I refer to the system of exchanges of information, capital and power that structures the basic processes of societies, economies and states between different localities, regardless of localisation.’⁵ Accordingly, cities have become important nodes in expanding international trading networks while the concentration of transnational companies and their headquarters have turned them into global control centres challenging the national state and its political boundaries.⁶

In 1982, John Friedmann and Goetz Wulff introduced the term ‘World Cities’ to further distinguish various hierarchies of world cities based on their function as hosts of transnational companies. These world cities exemplify many of the contradictions resulting from the new international division of labour inside their own boundaries and are thus perceived as sites where the citadel and the ghetto coexist in uneasy proximity.⁷ Friedmann argues that world cities are used by global capital as basing points in the spatial organisation and articulation of production and markets and, accordingly, are major sites for the concentration of capital.⁸ A number of methodologies have been developed to empirically study world city formation and its various hierarchies. The most significant contribution in this regard was made by an innovative research network known as GaWC (Globalisation and World Cities) led by Peter J. Taylor. Based on various new data sources GaWC introduced a new ‘metageography’ focusing on inter-city networks and their flows, linkages, connections and relations.⁹ Saskia Sassen added another layer to the World City discourse with her definition of‘Global Cities’as centres of broad clusters of advanced producer and financial services industries that cater to the distinctive organisational and informational needs of global companies.¹⁰ She asserts that in order to differentiate world cities, it is necessary to focus on particular control functions rather than the pure quantitative approach of detecting the headquarter locations of transnational companies. Riccardo Petrella further claims that the world of today is dominated by a hierarchy of thirty city-regions linked more to each other than to their territorial hinterlands.¹¹

In recent years newly emerging cities around the world have been challenging established networks and adding a new dimension of complexity to urban development. Like previous international economic crises, the financial crisis of 2008 became a major catalyst for new shifts and parameters within the dynamics of World City formation. Today, all cities within international networks compete to be perceived as secure and desirable havens for international capital. Thus, any new player wanting to be successful in entering the competitive global network arena must invest in the establishment of infrastructure that can enable it to access foreign markets, capital and producers. To be an authentic key hub within this global network, however, the emerging city needs to attract the business of both international and transnational firms and, ideally their headquarters, in order to diversify its economy toward independence from heavy industries and the export of natural resources.¹² The resulting close competition has put extensive additional pressure on emerging urban regions to spur rapid growth and thus to sustain their momentum as attractive and lucrative markets. These implemented growth strategies include liberalisation and decentralisation measures to attract investments and investors from the private sector, at the same time large-scale public investments are needed to establish, refurbish and expand modern infrastructure. The resulting construction booms have reshaped urban morphologies not only physically but also socio-economically; this is largely fuelled by exponential population growth via workforce and labour migration along with newly emerging service sectors. In the long term, these cities must meet the challenge to become attractive investment hubs during the period of rapid urban growth as well as international service hubs, and thus operational centres of transnational companies. As a result, decision-makers face the need for combining both growth and consolidation strategies to establish cities within world city formation without being reduced to becoming temporary and illconceived ventures of market speculators and developers.

One of the major obstacles that emerging cities face in this regard is the fact that many precincts of the advanced producer service sector are centralised in and monopolised by already existing global cities.¹³ Due to the high demand in these sectors that public investments must deal with, governments are, in many cases, forced to privatise and decentralise urban development by selling state-owned land to investors and their developers.¹⁴ This sell-off is usually accompanied by a relaxation of financial regulations and of restrictions regarding building permits in order to accelerate and facilitate construction growth. Such strategy to generate urban growth is a common practice in many parts of the world although there is always the danger of upsetting the balance between the short-term interests of speculators and long-term governmental plans to achieve urban consolidation. While certain companies and businesses are keen to establish a visible presence in emerging cities as a result of construction booms and the expansion of financial markets, they are unlikely, however, to relocate their headquarters without an already present high degree of urban consolidation. Thus, the major challenge faced by emerging cities is to develop a built environment that integrates all the aspects of the liveability and sustainability that would attract long-term investment. This high-quality built environment is crucial to enabling a city to evolve and develop with a view to becoming an international service centre. Thus, emerging cities are now facing the major challenge of establishing balanced urban growth, despite the pressure to privatise and deregulate, with the aim of becoming more competitive globally.¹⁵ In order to gain in-depth insights into emerging cities the authors have identified five key aspects that need to be investigated.

UNDERSTANDING HISTORICAL CONTEXT MATTERS

The study of urban history is an extensive research field integrating socioeconomic and physical developments as well as evolutions in governance. In order to examine a city and its particular contemporary condition, urban developments should be seen as a product of various historical contexts. Janet Abu-Lughod argues that recent urban research has neglected the study of long-term historical developments by putting too much emphasis on the globalisation phenomenon and its particularities in the information age. She argues that world city formation represents the latest chapter in the long history of capitalist urbanisation. Thus, in order to ascertain the impact of global political-economic realities on local structures, the specific and pertinent historical background needs to be examined.¹⁶ Each economic development stage is usually accompanied by spatial transformations of built environments as well as changing structures in urban societies leading to new types of cities. According to Henri Lefebvre (1991), capitalist incentives have gradually transformed vernacular urbanism, based on collective spatial practice, into centralised planning by a technocratic administration and finally into privatised and decentralised forms of governance leading to increasing conflicts between social classes.¹⁷ The reproduction circles of capital and how they historically transformed urban morphologies was examined by David Harvey who cleverly coined the term ‘time-space compression’ in order to explain the spatial impact of capital accumulation on the built environment. In his view, investment accumulation in urban developments changes the time-space configuration of the world by bypassing the spatial barriers within the actual production process.¹⁸

While many urban historians and theorists have been busily engaged in investigating the historical contexts of cities in the developed world, cities in the global South have generally been neglected since they were perceived as less important within international networks. However, as export centres of important resources they have played a significant role within globalisation trends; in addition, the import and influence of neoliberal agendas have opened doors for unprecedented and accelerated urban growth. While the urban history of emerging cities in the developing world is usually relatively short, the transition periods between various colonial ties and post-colonial conditions, has in fact, led to major transformation within urban morphologies.¹⁹ While outside influences were often retained in the form of economic ties, post-colonial independence helped create very distinct local development strategies enabling capital cities to position themselves as emerging international hubs by the end of the 20^th century. Nevertheless, as David Simon points out, cities in the Third World are becoming increasingly differentiated.²⁰ Although vernacular structures may persist in both spatial and social dimensions due to cultural and climatic circumstances, these local morphologies are often opposed to the import of internationalised structures transmitted by increasing trade, labour and workforce influx and migration, and political consultation. Today, many emerging cities are being exposed to an intense influence and impact of global trends within urban developments; as a result, many vernacular particularities rooted in the urban history and socio-cultural contexts are turning into peripheral and isolated elements. Thus, the conflict between a rapid urban development, which seeks to integrate historical and traditional contexts, and the continual import and impact of globalised morphologies is leading to clear demarcations in urban evolution and as such is one of the key characteristics of any emerging city.

UNDERSTANDING URBAN GOVERNANCE MATTERS

While the historical context of emerging cities is undoubtedly an important factor within contemporary development tendencies, current evolutions in urban governance are mapping future pathways of urbanism. Urban governance worldwide faces a variety of challenges caused by globalisation thus leading to an intense competition between cities to attract investments and investors. Timothy Luke alleges that urban ecological issues are being channelled into ‘subpolitical’ processes of ‘private ecologies’ consisting of economically guided actions in pursuit of individual interests. In his view, capable urban governance dealing with the global and local inequalities of the current phase of globalised urbanisation requires more workable policies and political practice to sustain the balance within developments.²¹ One major battlefield of the public sector in emerging cities is the management of real estate markets. While liberalisation measures and extensive public investments in infrastructure are needed to stimulate urban growth in order to become a focus of international investment networks, consolidation strategies and regulations are also essential to integrate urban efficiency and diversity in the long-term. Anne Haila notes that examining global real estate investment flows could provide insights into how local governance worldwide needs to adjust to global pressures and interests. In her view, real estate capital has become increasingly mobile due to globally operating developers and real estate investors whose interests are usually detached from the long-term needs of cities.²² The worldwide trend of globalised built forms, one of the results of liberalised markets, has led to the common perception of local governance as a secondary figure in guiding urban developments. In fact, according to Warren Magnusson, municipal governments have been condemned to a sort of observer status within the cities they are supposed to govern.²³

Subsequent to the recent period of decentralisation and privatisation, many governments have begun to introduce new organisational structures in order to oppose and deflect the influence of anonymous investors in defining urban morphologies. The more conscious reflection of what role a city is capable of occupying long-term, in addition to a newfound awareness of a realistically sustainable growth rate, has led city administrators to make adjustments in public investment strategies as well as introduce new strateg...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• About the Authors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Globalisation and the Emerging City
• 2 Overview of Architecture and Urbanism in the Arabian Peninsula
• 3 The Urban Evolution of Doha: From a Vernacular Settlement to an Emerging Service Hub
• 4 Contemporary Urbanism in Doha: From Decentralised Governance to Integrated Urban Development Strategies
• 5 Contemporary Architecture and Image-making Practices in Doha
• 6 Dynamics of Population and the Urban Environment of Doha
• 7 The Challenges of Sustainable Urbanism and the Future of Doha
• 8 Conclusion: Introducing an Analytical Framework for Emerging Doha
• References
• Index