There is a new type of urbanism: designing islands and coastlines visible from the sky, recorded by satellites and transmitted across the Internet as jpeg attachments. Technologies that are used to monitor wildlife development, hydrography and land drought is now a tool for global transmission of projects under construction. Post-card GIS and reconnaissance technologies turn into spectacle and telegenic fantasy addressing mass tourism. Dubai’s suburbs are rising from the water, in the form of artificial and prosthetic islands, imitating Venice. Dubai is turning into a postcard portrait city of the future. Satellite imagery of unfinished projects gives rise to the exciting promise of fantasy.
– George Katodrytis, Transcity: Dubai’s Satellite Urbanism.
Designing cities to be visible from the sky. It feels to me like SimCity is being played out for real in Dubai. You’ll get what I mean if you are a fan of Google Earth — zoom in and around the Dubai coastline, you’ll find road networks laid out for future developments.
I guess god-games (SimCity, Civilization, etc.) can be extremely addictive because the player is the planner; the all powerful decision-maker; or, quite literally, a god. Quite similarly, we are now planning and designing cities by gazing down on the action from the ‘heavens’ (or watching city growths from Google Earth, in my case).
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Just a thought – Most human advancements in the history of civilization point towards one fact: Man wants to play god.
Are we there yet?
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