The Art of Demolition in the Heart of Doha, Qatar
85Let Destruction Commence
The old city is disappearing fast
Most of central Doha is a mess. The streets are narrow, the buildings low quality and largely unmaintained, and the infrastructure of water mains, sewers, electricity and communications is woefully inadequate. Some areas have simply been abandoned to decay into slums worthy of Delhi or Dhaka.
Until recently, the focus has been on building a new city on the West Bay area and largely letting the old centre take its chances. But while that soulless pick & mix of hideous skyscrapers continues apace, a huge new project has started and is fast gathering momentum. This project, the Heart of Doha, is centred on the Royal Palace and comprises wholesale clearance and complete rebuilding of the surrounding area of a few square miles.
How is this possible?
In the West, wholesale demolition of inner cities is difficult. It can be done, but it takes a long time because of private ownership and landlords' rights. Extended legal battles have to be fought, with the outcome uncertain. In Doha it is different. Legal battles are fought here too, but the outcome is absolutely certain. The Emir and his Government can do whatever they want, and they want the Heart of Doha project to roll out fast!
And to be fair, the city was in need of a good demolition. It had grown haphazardly, with no plan and, as a consequence, with no future as a modern centre of business and culture. Something had to give; now the bulldozers are moving in.
Now you see it...
The story of a building
In the distance, across the bay, is the new Doha, a ghastly jumble of towers randomly juxtaposed and far too close together. I'm lucky in that my work never requires me to go there, and for our present purposes we can forget about them. The area in the middle distance is to be the Heart of Doha project. Most of it is close to falling down anyway, but there is one exception - a three year-old 11-floor apartment block. This was built, fitted, furnished, never occupied, unfurnished, unfitted, marked down for demolition, all in two years, and is already half destroyed. Once, I viewed a show-flat on the 8th floor and was considering moving in. Fortunately I didn't.
And now for the Art
In Western cities, it is not easy to get up close to a demolition site. Public safety is paramount. But in Doha they only look after the cars. The roads around the demolition are blocked, but pedestrians are more or less ignored and can walk freely amidst the mayhem. You might not agree with me, but the next few pictures taken in the quiet of last Friday morning (Friday is the Islamic day of rest) reveal an almost surreal beauty in this huge urban cliff face that the demolition artists have created in the very heart of Doha. These things are to be enjoyed, for their magnificence and transience.
And for the reminder that we make equally beautiful sculptures with our bombs and missiles, without first evacuating the people.
Thank you for reading!
The Heart of Doha - phase one
More about Doha from Paraglider
- Doha - a Walk in the City
Doha? There is the Doha the authorities want to promote and there is the other Doha. The Doha of dusty streets, overcrowding, slum dwellings, little corner shops, juice stalls and street restaurants. Let me show you around.
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Comments
I think I'll try to get a couple of pics every week from more or less the same vantage points to record the development. Thanks for the visit.
Doha has a unique history that is told in the buildings, I suppose. If you have relatives there and wanted to do your family history, pictures would be wonderful for the younger generations to look at and be taught. Pictures of small, unique, humble buildings are sometimes more artful and wonderful to look on than the great white glassed-in buildings mankind builds today. Thanks for your Hub, I really like your writing. Don White
hi Dave! it would be nice taking a picture out of that ruins, but what is more important is how they gonna do it in terms of the people who are there and for security purposes too,
hmmm, I saw DOHA in one of your articles and when the DOHA economic summit was held there, it is growing too fast,
as always you have a good insight on what is happening around,
you have a good day, MAITA
Your pics of Doha look like a shot from a post-apocalyptic movie that takes place perhaps 100 years in the future. Thanks for the hub, paraglider. I'm glad you didn't move there too!
Don - the Heart of Doha project plans do look very promising. I think it's good that Doha is going to build a proper city centre around the palace, instead of just moving out to the new Doha on the bay. But the clearance area is my 'stomping ground' with lots of little shops, restaurants, hairdressers, tailors, chicken hatcheries, repair workshops etc. I'll miss that side of things. But I'm a working visitor. I'm not going to settle here. Thanks for the read!
Maita - Doha is growing fast, but it's not trying to be Dubai. It will always be more formal and more Islamic than its crazy cousin to the east.
Dohn - The project is rolling so fast now that every time you go down town you find another chunk of it reduced to rubble. I just hope they finish the reconstruction before the oil & gas money dries up, or else we'll have built a moonscape!
OMG. BTW, the third photo is really artistic. Did you take it?
IMHO, cities in general are a blight on the land. But that's just me and what the hell do I know?
Since those photos are yours, I'd like to ask your kind permission to save a copy of the first in my jpg collection. It would make an excellent texture for use in Bryce (a 3d graphics program I'm very fond of using).
The pix, the first and especially the last, are really excellent. I'd love to see the last one as a 3'x 5' poster.
Tatjana - These pics and most of the ones I put on my pages are mine, using a simple mobile phone camera and the free image tools in Picasa.
CWB - you're most welcome to use any pics of mine at any time. Coming from a crude mobile phone, you won't find much resolution in them though.
Cities might be a necessary evil, but some can be fairly convivial environments. Amsterdam comes to mind, with its canals, bicycles small local shops and cafes, etc. But I don't think the new Doha will be in that mold
Thank you kindly.
I suppose it's possible that a city could be made tolerable given proper planning and a sensible purpose. Too many people, crammed into a dehumanizing, unnatural environment too small, tends to produce a pathologically neurotic population. Having not traveled nearly as widely as you, I should avoid making such broad statements. I would probably criticize another for doing so. Nevertheless, what I have been able to glean from various media, casual research and history does not leave me disposed to a favorable outlook on the city as a viable, sustainable habitat.
I agree that many city environments are as you describe, especially the more modern ones that are built far too quickly with no thought for community.
Others, like London, are not so much cities as agglomerations of pre-existing small towns and villages. It certainly was possible to live locally in a community in parts of London. Unfortunately 'developments' like ring roads and hypermarkets have knocked the stuffing out of these older communities. Some are still hanging on, but only just.
I wouldn't know about other parts of the world but, in amerika, the ethnic subcultures that abound in very large cities become much like separate villages. There are, of course, good and bad points to this. Opportunities to experience the food, art and philosophies of other cultures become available to those who care to engage. On the other hand, the corruption that results from the "amerikanization" of some portions of those subcultures produces criminal elements that exploit their own people and add to overall decay of the city.
It is simply the untenable conditions that prevail in large modern cities that produce extreme responses. Such an environment becomes self-destructive. Yet they spread like a cancer from coast to coast.
The only American cities I've spent more than a couple of days in are Portland Or and San Francisco, both of which I quite liked. I would guess they would be rated among the more amenable environments, as cities go? SF actually felt quite like a European city, with its multi-ethnic mix.
I think cities are at the greatest risk of going bad when their raison d'etre disappears, whatever that might have been. Then you get the wave of unemployment sweeping through. And you are right that self employment and cottage industry doesn't stand much of a chance with such large numbers packed together. On the other hand, moving people without land skills back into the country doesn't work either.
That is great,itn't it?
Catch 22? Seems like we humans can't win for loosing. We are, as the saying goes, our own worst enemy.
Constructed, furnished ... unfurnished, then demolished ... what a waste, Paraglider! What a waste indeed!
The pictures are really amazing! Thank you for these impressions from doha! Mathias Will, http://www.wolkenunddreck.de
Quicksand - in Doha they have money to burn and frequently do. The waste is incredible, and the lack of forward planning.
Cloudsanddirt - most welcome, thanks for commenting.
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WOW! Very Well Written, I totally enjoy the content of this hub
Thanks Shanekruger :)
This is an interesting article. I never heard of a 3 year old building being torn down before. Seems like a waste of money there by somebody. I'm not sure I would let go of Mont St. Michel. That is pretty special.
James - it couldn't happen in a 'joined up' country, but the oil-rich Middle East is the Wild West with Technology. There are lessons to be learned here, for good and bad! Thanks for the visit - always welcome.
Ralph Deeds says:
3 weeks ago
Interesting. There must be some things in old Doha worth preserving. Photographers are having a field day with the ruins of Detroit.