The National: Abu Dhabi - building a creative city

The National Newspaper

Thomas Bender April 16. 2008 3:25PM UAE / April 16. 2008 11:25AM GMT

What makes a creative city – a city marked by both artistic creativity and technological innovation?

Thomas Bender from the National Newspaper draws parallels between the new metropolis of Abu Dhabi and New York City, and posits a possible rosy future for the cultural capital of the Middle East, with its Saadiyat Island set to become home to the Guggenheim Museum, the Louvre, the Sheikh Zayed National Museum, a Maritime Museum and a concert Hall, as well as campuses for elite institutions of higher education like the Sorbonne and New York University. These new arrivals will join existing events like the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Festival, the Abu Dhabi Book Fair, and Art Paris Abu Dhabi.

Rather than hypothesize the impending apparent doom that this growth and westernization will bring to Abu Dhabi, (as many have written of in places like present-day China),  Bender takes a positive stance:

” My point here is that invention requires a social world that crosses class and cultural lines, and brings individuals with very different forms of learning and craft into casual contact with one another.In Abu Dhabi, a city of innumerable languages, home to migrants of all sorts – with various talents, some yet to be realised – there exists precisely this possibility. How might they together make both themselves and the city?”

…

“If the secret of New York’s creativity has indeed been its fruitful mix of dollars, democracy, and diversity, I would add that the easy part is the dollars. It is the democracy and diversity that are hard. By democracy I mean the participation of many classes and cultures in the life of a city; and by diversity, not merely the presence of varied races and ethnicities, but a diversity of habitats of knowledge.

Abu Dhabi possesses the potential to fulfill all these conditions. It has shown genuine commitment to culture and to the creation of a great cultural centre. But the city’s success as a creative metropolis will require careful stewardship beyond the investments made so far to bring great cultural and educational institutions to the city. It must also ensure that the daily life in the city nourishes the conditions and opportunities that sustain talent and offer a creative environment of a lively, diverse urbanism.”

To me, it sounds an awful lot like Singapore.

Read more at The National Newspaper

JJ is co-founder of 5ft Creatives and is currently based in New York.