Harvey Molotch NYU/UCSB and Davide Ponzini Politecnico di Milano, have published The New Arab Urban: Gulf Cities of Wealth, Ambition, and Distress (NYU Press, 2019).

abstract: Thanks in part to their spectacle and authoritarian rule, cities of the Arabian Peninsula reveal contradictions of contemporary urbanization. When money is plentiful, regulation weak, and labor conditions severe, new paradigms of urbanism challenge prior precepts of urban analysis. Somehow in the Gulf, cosmopolitan sensibilities are aligned with authoritarian rule as regimes import projects, plans and virtually every segment of a human workforce. What sense can be made of massive investment for environmental breakthrough in the midst of the world-class ecological mayhem? With five chapters by Molotch and Ponzini — and nine additional informed contributors, The New Arab Urban expands our knowledge of what a city can come to be.

Table of content & Introduction: https://nyupress.org/books/9781479897254/