The impact of mega-scale master plans on traditional lower income communities in Dubai

In this lecture, Khaled Alawadi (Khalifa University) discusses how Dubai’s top-down redevelopment strategy affected residents of densely aging Dubai neighbourhoods. His research draws on original ethnographic work, including field observation, interviews with residents and local press reports. Findings show that redevelopment plans demolished centrally located traditional neighbourhoods to appeal to economic elites without making any effort to preserve its social, economic or emotional value to residents or the larger community. Alawadi uses the concept of place attachment to interpret these cases’ significance for planning and preservation theory and practice. His study gives planners, policy makers and preservationists new evidence that attachment to place and community is important and it justifies expanding historic preservation into concerns for community preservation. Conventionally, historic preservation concerns itself primarily with built environment and landscapes; this research argues that individuals’ feelings and bonds to social settings can be crucial.

Relatore: Khaled Alawadi (Khalifa Univeristy)
Discussants: Maryam Karimi, Politecnico di Milano, Fabiano Lemes de Oliveira, Politecnico di Milano