“Dreams so Big Only the Sea Can Hold Them”: Man-Made Islands as Anxious Spaces, Cultural Icons, and Travelling Visions

Abstract

This paper explores a new phenomenon which is assuming global proportions: the planning and construction of artificial islands. Varying in size, shape, and purpose, man-made islands are looming on the horizons of an increasing number of aspiring global cities and regions at the margins of global capitalism. From the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea, from the Caribbean to the North Sea, artificial islands are increasingly embraced as spectacular, technical signifiers of global participation and urban economic progress: as the ‘new cultural icons’. Appropriated in different contexts, island projects, however, can be (and are) also resignified. They thus change in form, meaning, and use. While islands have been objects of renewed interest in cultural and historical geography, surprisingly, these new man-made landforms seem to have gone largely unnoticed. This paper suggests a research agenda to engage with artificial islands as a new ‘metageographical’ category of emergent, yet historically resonant, social space.

‘Danger building site—keep out!?’: a critical agenda for geographical engagement with contemporary construction industries

“…Yet, despite their ubiquity and indispensable role in the spacing and placing of life, the contemporary construction site, and wider industry, appears a rather seldom visited object of analysis for geographers. Nonetheless, in recent years, social and cultural geographers, in particular, have started to move closer to contemporary construction sites through engagement with historical (Jacobs, Cairns and Strebel 2007;Merriman 2005), extraordinary (Jackson and della Dora 2009;Kraftl 2006Kraftl , 2010 and maintenance-related (Datta 2008;Graham and Thrift 2007;Strebel 2011) construction practices.…”

Sacred islands and island symbolism in Ancient and Imperial China: an exercise in decolonial island studies

“…Indeed, in the late 3rd Century BCE, Emperor Qi Shihuang used the sacred islands at Epang Palace as sites for Taoist alchemical experimentation aimed at manufacturing elixir (Yao, 2016, p. 74). Imperial China's artificial island practices may have more in common with the sensationally symbolic artificial islands that have been constructed in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, the Australian Gold Coast, China itself, and many other locations in recent decades (e.g., Jackson & della Dora, 2009;Gupta, 2015;Grydehøj & Kelman, 2016a;Hayward & Fleury, 2016) than they do with island construction in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.…”

“And an Island Never Cries”: Cultural and Societal Perspectives on the Mega Development of Islands in the United Arab Emirates

“…(ibid). Jackson and della Dora (2009) argue that the islands are constructed with the purpose to be recognized by their very artificiality, while they are also built to be invisible from the ground or sea level. They are built to been seen only by a ''Godlike viewer'' such as a millionaire from his helicopter, or from the Burj al-Arab or Burj Khalifa or by the tourist flying into UAE by air.…”