Conclusion: From Gulf Cities Onward

Abstract

Gulf urban dynamics challenge analytic paradigms, whether from market analyses, democratic theory, or real politik. Most noticeably for us, land-use and spatial patterning operate in distinctive ways that follow from the region’s particular systems of kinship, wealth extraction and historic conjunctures. Always around in some variant, Gulf city arrangements are in increasing contemporary evidence. New modes of inclusion and exclusion – distinctive assemblages of peoples, capital, and spatial separations – need to be taken on board as their own kind of normal, maybe even of the ordinary. As Gulf cities further evolve with their own sets of mix, they make spectacle, inequality, and authoritarianism all the more available for emulation, export, and disquiet.