" ...learn to swim..."
- Tool

So, uhm, any opinions about Dubai or Tenochtitlán?

Too short (no surprsing compaint, I know). Dubai didn't really catch me, I didn't get a good impression how living there would be. Other than what I know of today's Dubai.

Trust me, that's a common complain among freelancers. NYC in 1.5k? Right...

Yah, mostly we're just happy to get them in as short entries because it means there's a strong chance we can return to them later in a plot book.

Dubai would be swell if there was any chance of it being a real market, or a stock market. But so long as it tolerates Arabian/Middle East business practices, it will fail. Like The Economist said it would.

I feel the same about Dubai / everything about the Islamic Caliphate. The writeup felt like someone had just read through a wikipedia article on Dubai, perhaps a city explorers guide, and thats it. It had no feel for the place, the region, its history, its culture - at all. Living in the place is like California in the turn of last century, Hong Kong in the 70-80's or Singapore in the 90's. Its an absolute boom town of huge successes and major tragedies, where everything and anything goes (as long as its behind closed doors) and nothing is forbidden - though less so than Doha or Abu Dhabi.

I've got half a mind to compile a shadows of the middle east web supplement. Then again, as JongWK said, NY in 1.5k is pretty tough, so I guess I'll take what I can get on Dubai.

ADSM, DFM, DIFX. 3 exchanges in 1 country the size of a small US state. 300x over subscription on damn near every IPO. 3% of emirate-level GDP reliant on oil, the rest devoted to financial services, commercial services, re-exportation, manufacturing and tourism. It is the one place in a region of over 350 million people where they can live a normal western style life without some customs official shoving a finger up their ass just because they look middle eastern / subcontinental.

The place is going to be the primary center of a region bursting at the seams with liquidity.

As for the business practices, having dealt with the major players in the region like DIC, ADIA, QIA, ADIC, Mubadala, KIA and Istithmar I can confidently say that they have already adopted worlds best practice with regards to corporate governance, financial controls, MIS etc. It's going to take about 5-10 years to filter through to the small caps, quicker if the amount of inbound M&A increases as projected.

Good enough for what they were - small fluff pieces to allow people to build their own frameworks for exotic foreign runs. I'd expect any future major writeups would be done with a bit more vigour if these places are to take a reasonably prominent place in SR canon.

However, I am a little alarmed at the amount of revisionism going on within SR. I would have much preferred Dubai not be mentioned at all (as when canon was being crafted Dubai was a nothing place) rather than suddenly popping up just because IRL its booming.

What are you talking about? Page 101, Shadows of Asia: "Abu Dhabi and Dubai. These ultramodern glass and steel metroplexes are the twin hearts of Arabian finance. A less restrictive atmosphere rules, and most residents live and work in conditions closer to the Western world." And it goes on about foreign mega corps having special privileges. I don't see any revisionism in that.

I was going from the broader perspective than the recent mention in Shadows Of Asia - since the handover from FASA there has been a bunch of revisionism - see SoE, which I love as Europe was poorly portrayed before then (London sourcebook? *shudder*). Based on the earlier canon descriptions (CD/TW IIRC) the entire Middle East is a basket case devastated by the crash of 29 and decline in oil revenues. After the caliphate forms and the economy is being rebuilt there would be no focus at all on Dubai or Abu Dhabi as there isn't the population to sustain development or a strategic incentive to develop the area other than the oilfields which are offshore and in the salt flat western regions. The population of the entire GCC region is focused in KSA - Damann, Riyadh, Jeddah and the twin holy cities. Any rebuilding of the economy would focus on that area due to labour proximity.

Things like the world archipelago - these are predominantly debt funded developments which have only occured due to the the influx of foreign capital. These were built in 2005-2007 - around when Israel and Libya are trading nukes. These things would not have been built under the canon SR timeline. Its unlikely with the disintegration of the US, Europe, China and the rise of imperial Japan and the devastation of Tehran that there would be much capital available to fund the projects going on for the next 20 years. With the amount of instability in the region and less likely deployment of foreign capital, Dubai and Abu Dhabi would go the way of Beruit - once great cities of the region reduced to almost nothing.

What should have happened is for people to look at the region and how it would have been influenced from the Shiawase decision onward, then build a Middle East that fits that vision, however ludicrous. To simply make a vision of Dubai or the ME in general for 2070 based on how it is in 2008 just doesn't work, and is the reason why the piece reads more like an adaptation of a current travel brochure rather than a place people can stage runs. Not that I'm bagging out the writers - its hard to get a feel for how things should be when you're not there.

I totally understand what you're saying but that's the inherent danger of writing near future science-fiction and using definitive dates. If the work is popular enough it will stick around and eventually date itself. The example I always cite is the original Star Trek's timeline of World War III/The Eugenics Wars starting in 1996. Independence Day and Ace of Base's popularity aside little in the way of global genocide occurred that year.

Was there a timeline mentioned for when the world archipelago was built in Corporate Enclaves? If not I would make a little mental note to shove its construction timeline forward a few years or decades and just roll with it. But if its construction timeline did conflict with established SR canon, then, yeah, I'd be totally irritated.

Its not that it directly conflicted with it - no date is mentioned in SR canon of its construction. What gets me is that Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, all these cities are essentially in play only as long as nothing terribly destablising happens in the world. Dubai has become the city of the region solely because no one else had the foresight to stablise their country, impose 0% taxation, remove capital restructions and spend oil revenues on infrastructure. However, most of the real spending (other than Jebel Ali Port) only started this century. Already in NY you've had food riots, the Seretech and shiawase decisions etc. The world of 2000-now is so different in SR canon that it doesn't make sense that Dubai or all these other little countries (like Israel) somehow made it through unscathed and were allowed to develop along the exact same lines as they had in real life.

The GCC regions carrying capacity is pretty minimal - very little fresh water, almost no agricultural land, low native manpower (other than saudi), limited natural resources other than hydrocarbons. If the world went to hell in a handbasket like it does from 2000 onwards in canon, I cannot imagine that they would be able to keep up with the required food imports, power and desal projects etc just to keep things ticking. A good chunk of the population would have died from VITAS, mostly the subcontinental labour that they rely on, and with no projects food or water they'd have trouble replacing them. 70 years ago the place was full of nomads scratching a living out of the sand - without the current world order they would have to fall back to that merely to survive and it would be harder still given the damage done to what little productive land they have. There would be massive riots, probably a reversion to tribal governments, coup attempts and corporatisation of oil and gas by Megas with sufficient mercs to hold back whats left of the population. The place would be Beruit all over again - which would have made for one hell of a good runner haunt IMO.

Once the Caliphate forms and things slowly get rebuilt, the focus for development would be where people already are: Baghdad, Amman, Riyadh etc, and where its possible to support a population - on the coastal plains. Dubai and Abu Dhabi wouldn't get much love IMO and consequently those islands probably wouldn't exist.

Wow. Let me just say that I agree with everything you said 100%. I am also not entirely satisfied with the revisionism, especially since I see it at its heart as being a form of intellectual laziness.