A defining image across Asia over the past few
decades has been the construction crane looming over a horizon of tall,
box-style buildings, the air speckled with dust from whirring industrial
machines and the ever-present buzz of cars and motorbikes. From Shanghai to
Mumbai to Dubai, the construction of real estate and infrastructure projects
has radically altered lives and societies, and even geopolitics across the vast
Asian continent and beyond.
اضافة اعلان
Consider where you are right now, reading this
article. You may be in a dazzling skyscraper somewhere in Asia — the home of
the world’s tallest buildings — or an office in London or New York, or perhaps
a café in Riyadh or Karachi. Wherever you are, the construction industry has
shaped your experience — and your life — and will continue to do so.
Think of Shenzhen
in 1979, just a year before it was designated as one of China’s first special
economic zones. It was a modest fishing city of some 330,000 people with a
planned economy and limited contact with the outside world. Today, it is a
sprawling metropolis of nearly 13 million people and a major tech hub both for
today’s recognizable Chinese brands — think Tencent or Huawei — and the next
generation of tech behemoths.
Shenzhen was just
one of several Chinese cities that underwent radical transformation in the late
20th century and the first two decades of the 21st. China poured more concrete
and cement in construction projects from 2011–13 than the US did for the entire
20th century. The construction crane has been a ubiquitous feature of Chinese
life over the past few decades. The reshaping of China’s built environment has
been breathtaking in scope and history altering, helping lift several hundred
million people from poverty and cementing China’s strength as a global
superpower.
Wherever you are, the construction industry has shaped your experience — and your life — and will continue to do so.
The Middle East and
North Africa region has also been a major center of construction activity over
the past two decades. While Dubai captures much of the attention with its
dazzling architecture and Manhattan-style skyline, it is not alone. From Cairo
to Karachi, and from Rabat to Riyadh, construction is reshaping the region.
In the middle of
World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill stood before the House
of Commons and made a plea to rebuild its damaged chamber rooms, gutted by
German bombing.
“We shape our
buildings,” Churchill said, “and afterwards our buildings shape us.”
The same can be
said of major construction projects in infrastructure and real estate. There is
the mundane and the dramatic. First, the mundane: housing. Well-planned
development in this sector coupled with affordable mortgage financing and
reliable property deeds remain the cornerstone of a healthy middle class. For
far too long, this essential provision of mortgages and affordable housing had
been neglected across the region. While Saudi Arabia’s construction boom
captures headlines, its mortgage boom also deserves more attention.
Now, to the
dramatic: major geography-shifting infrastructure projects. Consider just two
feats of geography-altering engineering the Suez Canal of the late 19th
century and the Panama Canal of the early 20th. In both cases, engineers
reshaped our world, linking oceans and seas blocked by land, and charting new
paths for trade and commerce, while reordering global geopolitics and
economics.
Some commentators
like to suggest that geography is destiny. The reality is that we cannot
ascribe our destiny to one factor alone, and to simply pinpoint geography
misses the point. It is the built environment of your geography that can shape
your destiny, and the most important question of all is this: are you
connected? Egypt and Panama are far more connected than they would have been
without their respective man-made canals.
The country with 0.13 percent of the world’s population now accounts for about 2.5 percent of the world’s sea container commerce and 1.5 percent of total trade, and has emerged as a major hub for aviation, tourism, technology start-ups and outward investment.
If your geography
is rich with the infrastructure of connectivity – sea ports, airports, roads
and rail, high-speed internet access – then your destiny heralds more promise.
But even the best geography can be undermined by poor planning and management.
A glaring example would be the beautiful geography of Somalia — a long Indian
Ocean and Arabian Sea coastline, a gateway to East Africa, with easy Red Sea
access to the bustling port city of Jeddah. Somalia, of course, has done little
to leverage its geography and remains a failing and flailing state. So, too,
Lebanon, with enviable Mediterranean Sea geography and highly unenviable
governance.
By contrast, there
was no geographic “destiny” in the rise of Singapore or South Korea or Hong
Kong. In all three cases, each country or city-state leveraged its
never-depleting resource — geography — and built up the infrastructure of
connectivity to create an environment conducive to business and trade.
In the Arab world,
the prime example of construction-altering history would be the development of
the United Arab Emirates. Again, there was no “destiny” of geography in the
rise of the UAE. The country with 0.13 percent of the world’s population now
accounts for about 2.5 percent of the world’s sea container commerce and 1.5
percent of total trade, and has emerged as a major hub for aviation, tourism,
technology start-ups and outward investment.
Today the center
for construction in the region has moved to Saudi Arabia. The NEOM megaproject
has dazzled observers, but look closer at the $1 trillion of construction and
real estate projects across the Kingdom over the past six years and you will
see a country launching itself deeper into connectivity and transforming its
society in the process. While the headlines blare the eye-popping dollar
amounts spent, it is important to remember that infrastructure and construction — rather than geography alone — is a powerful shaper of a people’s destiny.
Afshin Molavi is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy
Institute of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and
editor and founder of the Emerging World newsletter. Twitter: @AfshinMolavi.
Syndication Bureau.
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