Institutional Changes in the urban environment of the MENA region Arash Salek University of Utrecht 2010

The globalisation of the Middle East has increasingly got two faces. Due to its oil resources, geopolitical importance and widespread international networks, Middle Eastern urban nuclei have become part of the global network economy (Taylor 2005, Wall 2009). Although this process took place in several cities - like Beirut, Cairo, Amman etc. - Dubai is without doubt the most prominent and the icon of this Middle Eastern globalization. From a small fishing harbour in the late sixties, Dubai has evolved into the most influential power-hub of economy and trade in the region Oxford Business Group: The Report Dubai-2008). Since the early 1980s, Dubais trade with the other GCC countries and other Gulf States has expanded to make Dubai the busiest port in the region. (Dumper &Stanley, 2007)In less than three decades, various kinds of technologies, international banking, and media have been settled in this rapidly growing city. In order to promote its acquired urban space and infrastructure, the city has developed both horizontally and vertically. Dubai is constructed of high-towers and (post)modern skyscrapers, like the Burj Khalifa, next to the unlimited suburban expansion areas towards the Gulf (The Palm islands). In recent years, politicians and economists have praised these massive and rapid urban developments of Dubai (Davidson 2008, Ahern 2011), congratulating the emirate's government for doing better than anybody else at this time of global economic turmoil. 1 It has raised the ambitions of other traditional cities in the Middle East for becoming like Dubai. Not Justin the Gulf region, with high oil incomes, investors from all Middle Eastern countries are pouring their oil-dollars surpluses into new investments in the region's economic powerhouses following Dubai's footsteps to reach a position as a global city of excellence. (Oxford Business Group: the Report Dubai2008). This ambition which has recently even produced the term Dubaization (Alraouf 2005, Elsheshtawy 2008) seems to have become the dominant ambition of Middle Eastern urban development, not only in the traditional parts of this region, but also in what is recently called the Greater Middle East.2 Recently after his visit to the city, Asif Ali Sardari, the current

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The traditional definition of the Middle East mostly comprises countries as Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Gaza, West Bank, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. The Greater Middle East also comprises Afghanistan, Pakistan, Algeria, Mauritania, Western Sahara, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Sudan, Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia and Comoros

president of Pakistan, even stated that he wanted to rebuild Karachi (Pakistans capital) as the second Dubai.3 On the other hand, and since the end of last year, this part of the Greater Middle East has also become the stage of what is called The New Arab Revolt (New Statesman, 7 February 2011). After a fruit seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire against the corruption endemic among Tunisias elite, within weeks President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was gone from power, within months President Hosni Mubarak was set to rest in Egypt, violent upraise grew in Yemen and Libya, turmoil occurred in Bahrain, Oman and even Syria, while Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Algeria and Jordan are under pressure to change the constitution. Although developments are still in full swing, scholars already discuss how the developments could be best described: riots, uprising, insurrections or revolutions (Coombs 2011). Some argue that due to the fact that the organisations and institutes of civil society are still experiencing their embryonic period, and that groups such as trade unions and commercial guilds are normally based on ideological, non-economic principles, the upraisings are very tender and fragile (Ahmadi 2011). Others therefore claim that the present upheavals in the Greater Middle Eastern countries have more in common with the anti-Soviet pro-democracy liberalisations than they do with the bold revolutions during the 18th, 19th and early 20th century (Badiou 2011). In an article published in The New York Times in April 10, 2011, Abdullah Gul, the current president of Turkey stated; The wave of uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa is of historic significance equal to that of the revolutions of 1848 and 1989 in Europe. The peoples of the region, without exception, revolted not only in the name of universal values but also to regain their long-suppressed national pride and dignity. In this sense pride and dignity are closely linked to the relational identity and the historical background of the Middle Eastern societies. . I have outlined something which can be called a relational identity what we are, our identity, is determined by the links we create when we live and act in the world. Nevertheless, some also analyse the upraisings as being against Western influence and neo-liberalism, legitimating their potential as revolutions (Brassier 2011). Whatever it may be, it is clear that the people are mobilised in mass protest across the Middle East exactly by the same technology, which aids the global and networked world; that is Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Blogs etc. As such one can characterize these upraisings or revolts as virtual uprisings. Nevertheless they also occur in the physical space. The masses are mobilized on specific squares in Central City areas, if necessary for months (like the Tahrir Square in
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Cairo or Change square in Yemini Sanaa), or seemingly broken up, when these squares are recaptured by the existing rulers (like the Pearl Square in Bahrein or the Revolution Square in Theran). Next to that, in some regions the fragile revolt has seemingly no chance to success within the central urban core of the country, but has to start from the urban periphery (like in Lybya or in Syria). In both cases therefore as well as in the case of global cities in a networked economy, as in the case of the present new technology aided revolts across Middle Eastern public spaces the specific meaning and urban identity of those Middle Eastern Cities are placed prominent on the agenda. With regard to Dubai sociologists and urban scholars sharply criticize the lack of local urban identity and spatial character in the city (Davis 2006, Katodrytis 2005 & 2008). Dubaization is criticized as a prototype of the new post-global urbanisation, which creates appetites rather than solves problems (Sadik 2004, Katodrytis 2005). Explicitly in recent years, one questions not only the cultural, but also the financial, environmental and social costs of such urban reformation (Yigitcanlar et al.2008, Elshatawy 2008, Alraouf 2010). Shouldnt post-industrial generic concepts like World Cities, Global Cities or Global city-regions (Derudder & Witlox 2008) be backed up by more geospecific historic, anthropological and institutional arguments to become more resilient? But also the other way around, one could ask oneself why present Middle Eastern demonstrations always gather on specific public places, and sometimes even on specific times (after the Friday prair), in order to be easily met by the police and military? Wouldnt it be more efficient and with the new technology also possible to develop more surprising, flexible or even guerrilla tactics, which had even been practised in medieval times in the Middle East (see for instance Bey 1991)? What is the social, political or symbolic meaning of space in this respect? Or in other words: What is the Urban Identity of Middle Eastern Cities within those two processes of globalization?

Relational views
In this contribution we want to analyse this question from the recent actor-relational debates on space, in order to shed a new (interactive) light on those issues. These views bypass the old Euclidean views on space, which consider space to be a kind of absolute container (of three dimensions) or a neutral platform on which people, business and governments act with regard to static, though dynamic flows of behaviour (Gleeson 1996). In those views the debate on local identity becomes largely one-sided, primarily dealing with specific geotypological and archetypal issues. Or in other words, those views mostly deal with the materialized urban forms, e.g. the hardware of the issue, while the software and orgware (the

socio-economic use and the specific urban organization) remain largely outside the field of argument (Boelens 2009). Instead the relationalists claim that absolute space cannot exist because at the moment it is colonized through social activity, it becomes relativized and historicized space (Lefebvre 1991). Place thus represents a distinctive and more or less bounded type of space that is constructed not only by the lived experiences of its citizens, but also by the global operations of its businesses, the way they interact with each other and with the specific climatically and geo-specific artefacts, and the way they are organized through times. Therefore all those actors and factors of importance, those specific institutional settings, and evolving regional customs and traditions, might even be more crucial for the issue of local identity than the artificial space itself, precisely because through history and time they influence and shape materialistic urban forms and infrastructures in a more profound and resilient way. Therefore (f)actor-relational networks and local institutions are crucial to understand the (re)development of urbanity in a specific region. In this contribution we would therefore propose an actor-relational approach to the issue of Dubaization in reference to the spatial representations of the present Arab Revolts. Because neither the exclusive focus on global dynamics, nor the exclusive focus on the socio-political symbolic meaning of space sheds a new light on embedded, identifiable metropolises in global networks. Therefore and instead, the relational approach of (global) cities does in fact start from both positions at the same time. It does not only focus on the cross-border interrelational networks of which each city is currently a member, but it also focuses on the inter- and transrelational associations of leading actors and factors of importance by which the city and all its institutions and urban landscape are eventually made (Thrift 1996, Graham/Healey 1999). It therefore also refers to changing views about the meaning and determinants of space and the new scientific social and evolutionary economical ideas about the proper role of actors and networks (Massey 2005, Latour 2005). Crucial here is not so much scale or the more or less abstract processes of globalization and/or localization themselves, but rather the way people, organizations and circumstances interconnect, promote specific alliances and networks, and thus determine the spatial dynamics of urban growth. In this sense Actor-Networks are scale-less in essence and bypass modernist and traditionalist views, dealing with (permanent and/or temporary) alliances. Moreover it appears that precisely those actor-network processes throughout history are being influenced heavily by specific trans- and inter-local conditions, changing power relations, economic cycles and/or specific inventions. It includes the plural wishes of the business, public and civic societies (with their focus on money making, power extension and interest sharing respectively), the need to overcome

their differences in pragmatic solutions, urban organizations and customs, partly built in vibrant and morphological specific contexts. That's what is called elsewhere the DNA profile of cities (Boelens/Taverne 2009). This refers to a highly variable temporal and spatial interplay between the institutional environment to which cities belong, and agile players, whose associative and network-oriented economic, political and socio-cultural links, position cities in the locality itself, as in its regional, national and/or global networks. In this contribution and from these theoretical backgrounds we will try to develop a new idea about metropolitan identity in a globalized world. We will focus on Islamic/Middle Eastern metropolises, while this region is experiencing some of the highest rates of urban growth in the world (3.3%). In 2009, of the 324 fastest-growing cities, 24.4% were located in the Middle East. In less than a decade, about 90 percent of the population of Bahrain, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia is expected to live in cities (Bate 2001). Next to that, the region is characterized as the cradle of urban civilization, and is characterized by various historical layers of urban regimes, from ancient and Roman cultures, through the Persian and the Ottoman reigns, towards current forms of western Dubaization. However, to analyze those regimes and their influence on the urban landscape, according to the relational views, we will start by explaining some headlines of the Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) and the Actor-Relational-Approach (ARA) of urban design and planning. Next, we will apply those more or less ontological views to the subject at hand, by using Max Webers typology of consumer- and producer cities. We will analyze the resulting categories in two cases; Baghdad and Isfahan. Because Baghdad was the capital of the entire Muslim World for about half a millennium (Wiet 1971) and is frequently described in the orientals literature as an archetype for Islamic urbanity. In contrast, the city of Isfahan has played different roles in old Persia and the Islamic world, while the city has an important centre of commerce, and industry for more than thousands of years. In order to understand how Middle Eastern cities could be understood as a way of becoming (instead of as a way of fulfilment), we will apply a kind of ANT/ARA typology to the history of Baghdad and Isfahan. By analysing a Middle Eastern capitals such as Baghdad, we will try to prove that the decisive (f)actors of these cities. We will analyse the actor-relational identity of those two cases, by going into a kind of ANTanalyses of the major transition-phases of those cities. From here we will finally return to the Dubai-issue and come up with some recommendations how these identities could be used more fruitfully and proactively in as well a locally embedded, as a neo-liberal, global world.