Today, it processes over 10 million shipping containers annually. With the success of Jebel Ali, Sheikh Mohammed began carving other free zones out of the desert, each specifically designed to woo an industry he felt would benefit Dubai.
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But carving Dubai up into free zones was more than just an economic development strategy. Being a single city governed under multiple legal regimes would come to define Dubai. Global cities have always struggled with how to apply laws to their diverse assemblages of people. Through its patchwork of free zones, Dubai had come up with a new answer.
How Dubai Became Dubai
While in the foreign concessions of Shanghai, different people were bound by different legal codes based on their nationality, in Dubai the same people would be governed by different legal codes depending on where they were within the city. In Shanghai, extraterritoriality meant that no matter where you were in the treaty port, you were, in a legal sense, always back home; in Dubai, the free zones made traveling from neighborhood to neighborhood, in a legal sense, like moving from country to country.
As with the architectural blueprints, the intellectual blueprints for the DIFC had been drawn up for the monarch by an American firm — consulting behemoth McKinsey — which advised the Dubai government to create a financial district governed by Western-style business regulations. It fell to veteran finance regulator Errol Hoopmann, who was hired away from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission in , to write the legal code.
Like a state, the DIFC has its own court system, presided over by an imported British judge, to enforce its laws. In addition to making Dubai the financial hub of the Middle East, Sheikh Mohammed sought to make it the technology and media capital — pursuing glamorous industries whose viability in an autocracy seemed dubious. In , saltwater-inundated lowlands along Sheikh Zayed Road were drained and set aside to become two contiguous free zones, Internet City and Media City.
Today, the story twin Chrysler Buildings standing next to each other along the expressway mark the development. The SimCity Chryslers are a fitting icon for the Internet and Media City free zones, since the zones themselves mimic America on a deeper level, hoping to approximate the constitutionally protected free inquiry that has helped make the United States a global leader in media and technology. In the twin zones, the government promised, the Internet would be fully searchable except for sites based in Israel, which would remain blocked.
The government of Dubai could be open about the special Internet City and Media City regulations because, unlike other authoritarian countries, notably China, the UAE is completely transparent about its Internet censorship. To kick off the Internet City development, the state-owned real estate company behind the project cut a loss-leader deal with Microsoft: With Microsoft signed up, other companies soon followed. Hundreds of smaller companies employing thousands of workers occupy a series of sleek, if less-showy, low-slung office buildings set amid manicured grounds and parking lots.
But despite its big corporate names, Dubai has only been able to lure the finance and marketing departments of the tech companies. Assurance of free thought in one designated neighborhood has not been enough to woo the creative research and development and programming departments, which remain clustered in the more liberal nearby nations of India and Israel.
Internet City, for all its successes, is still hamstrung by the lack of intellectual freedom in the wider city-state of Dubai.
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With similar guarantees of freedom of information, the adjacent Media City development successfully attracted foreign bureaus of leading Western news services, including the BBC , CNN and Reuters, as well as the top Arabic stations, al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya. To the companies, Dubai offered a quiet location in the eye of the Middle Eastern storm.
The city-state was an ideal place from which to cover the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Journalists could hop on a plane for a short flight into the war zones, do their reporting, and then return to their office in rich, peaceful, stable Dubai. To Sheikh Mohammed, part of the allure of building Media City was free publicity. Bringing major bureaus to the city helped make Dubai a global household name as locally based journalists ended up covering fluffy stories in the city-state that they would never have covered farther afield.
Many Dubai developments seem to have been conceived with just such stories in mind. But as with Internet City, the degree of intellectual freedom in a Gulf autocracy remained an issue for the media companies. Their initial assumption that uncensored reporting by foreign media operating in Dubai would be tolerated as long as it focused on the wider region rather than the internal affairs of the UAE has been called into question. In , at the request of fellow regional autocrat, Pakistani strongman General Pervez Musharraf, Dubai shut down two independent Pakistani media outlets that were reporting on unrest in their home country from Media City.
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Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. I don't know why he hates Scrap so much, but hopefully we will find out in part 2. It's kind of bitter sweet for Jayla meeting her father like that, now her mother has some explaining to do This was a very good book. I knew something was up with German though. I can't wait to see what becomes of this one. Can't wait to see what happens in the second series, love the story line. Definitely recommend this book, I couldn't stop reading! This book is a page turner from beginning to end!!!!
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You never know what the next page is holding Ready for part 2. I'm so involved in these characters already and read this book faster than I read any other book because I wanted to know what was going to happen next!
This was a very In read. Jayla was just another girl trying to make it working a job at Chilis after breaking things off with her on again off again boyfriend Keno. He was taking care of all her hills but she could no longer deal with his cheating ways.
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The job didn't last long after her boss made a sexual attempt toward her. Not knowing what to do her girl Chandler talks her into going to Dubai and that's when her life changed. Scarp her neighbor had been trying to get with her for a while and things hit off right before her trip and he let her know how he was living and wanted something with her. While in Dubai she meets a man that is very drawn to her and makes her a deal she thought would have her living good that was until they return back to the states and his true feeling showed.
All the time he had an motive for approaching jayla. When part of the motive was clear he also let it be known that he didn't care for her relationship with Scrap and tried to separate them but she wasn't having that. Things had being going good it wasn't until the last meeting with him trying to hook her up with a friend she got pissed and kinda but him in his place.
After making threats to get rid of Scrap jayla decided to meet with him and it is then he takes her to Columbia and shows her the last part of why he choose her and to say she was shocked so was the other party that attended the meeting his brother her father which she didn't know was her dad. Things is about to get crazy and I can't wait for part 2. This book moved at a nice steady pace Definitely captured my attention It did start out a little slow in the beginning but it did pick up a little as I continued to read I enjoyed reading this book It did not have me on the edge of my seat but it did hold my attention..
Jayla starts off this young lady working to make ends meat Then with an incident that happened at work she had to quit and now she was back to not making any money This prompted her to get back with her cheating ex boyfriend Keno.. Of course he still could not do right by her Well in the mean time her and her best friend Chandler planed a trip to Dubai This trip definitely changed both girls lives This is where the story picks up Now just when this bomb is dropped on Jayla