Showpiece City: How Architecture Made Dubai by Todd Reisz is a masterful investigation of Dubai from the early 1950s to 1979 that illuminates how the “globalizing practices of architecture and urban development found its footing in the final years of British empire,” providing critical insights into contemporary social processes of urbanization and urbanism (9). The foundations of the book are built upon Reisz's utilization of the work and archives of the British architect John Harris, who he identifies as Dubai's first architect. Showpiece City tells the story not only of this British architect, or even of Dubai more broadly, but also of the social power of urban experts and space.

Reisz structures much of his book around the professional practice of Harris. This includes his urban plans for Dubai, the first in 1960 and 1971, and then selections of his architectural work in the city: Al Maktoum Hospital, National Bank of Dubai, Rashid Hospital, and Dubai World Trade Centre. Reisz's admiration for the work of Harris shines through in the book. He stresses that Harris tried to push for an architecture in Dubai that would work with the climate and context, without resorting to Orientalist cliches, in contrast to the architecture, which started to form in the late 1970s.

However, John Harris's design of Al Maktoum hospital is not significant architecturally. Reisz describes it as “barracks-like” (156). The Dubai World Trade Centre was modeled by Harris directly on the banal architecture of the world trade centers in Tokyo and New York by the architect Minoru Yamasaki following his tour of these buildings. Reisz credits Jill Harris, John Harris's wife and fellow architect, with suggesting that rather than write a book about Harris, he should write one about Dubai. But Reisz is unlikely to have wanted to write a book on Harris's competent but unremarkable work. The importance of Harris's buildings is not in their “architecture” (normatively conceived) but in the sociopolitical and economic context in which they were achieved.

It is through Reisz's skillful utilization of Harris's architectural work and archive—made up of photographs, maps, drawings, and written material—that the significance of Harris's work is made apparent; and what a notable loss to both Dubai and world architectural history, the demolition of Harris's architecture in Dubai constitutes (both Al Maktoum hospital and NBD have long since been erased). Reisz also puts on full display the incredible photographic archive that Harris created that shows not only his architectural work but also his daily life in Dubai in the 1950s and 1960s. Showpiece City shines new historical light onto a period that was critical to the formation of contemporary Dubai while simultaneously contributing to broader insights about the complex dynamic between architecture, politics, and power.

Reisz has a specific conception of architecture and how it “made Dubai” but one that he unfortunately does not place upfront. It is not until halfway through the book that in his detailing of Harris's design and construction of Rashid Hospital Reisz arrives at his specific use of the term: “Architecture is as much about built form as about the definition and management of a supply system around boosting the British economy” (209). Reisz's conception of architecture, as a supply system, allows him to write a book that illustrates how the British went from exporting “Land Rovers, packaged foodstuffs and secondhand medical equipment” to architecture, like Rashid Hospital, that delivered “an entire living complex, replete with advanced medical technology, industrial equipment, cooling systems, and household furnishings” (215).

Reisz's definition of architecture could have been productively engaged with the literature on neoliberalism but is not. For those interested, however, in Dubai as a prime illustration of our neoliberal urban condition, this volume provides significant insight. In this way, this book is complementary to Ahmed Kanna's scholarship on contemporary Dubai and informative to many of the debates around the relationship between capitalism and architecture or urbanization. Reisz shows, for instance, how the precarious rule of Sheikh Rashid was cemented by the British state through “the debt financing of oversize infrastructure” (85). Notably, the British state did not provide the financing (it merely raised it) and ensured (at a respectable distance) that British experts and construction companies built the infrastructure: “all in the pursuit of embedding a role for itself in Dubai's political and economic stability” (84).

Reisz details the critical role that corporations and their experts had in securing the rule of Shaykh Rashid, extending the otherwise faltering British colonial rule and its policies of financial extraction, and laying foundations of the Dubai of today. The intermediary role that the British government played, Reisz argues, was critical in the continued presence of corporations, such as Halcrow, and architects like John Harris. While Harris had the British government to thank for his introduction to Dubai and Shaykh Rashid, he achieved a lasting presence there because he was contracted directly by Rashid and not by the British.

Showpiece City delivers an important account of the role of architecture and power that does not focus on the narrow debate around representation. Much of the scholarship to date on Dubai and architecture has lamented the state of architectural practice, in particular the recourse to cliched representation of “Arab” or “Islamic” motifs. Reisz largely sidesteps this debate. He relegates, for instance, Harris's design for the “Ruler's Diwan” to the book's epilogue—the only project featured in the book by Harris that overtly applies “Arab or Islamic architecture features” (323). That is not to say that representation in not an important theme.

Architectural representation is not considered in terms of identity but in its ability to express “permanence and stability” (62). The National Bank of Dubai (NBD) is a showpiece to “express order – the order of wealth and stature” (167). Despite the debt and opaque financing that went into funding a shell for NBD much larger than required, the bank was designed to convey order and Dubai as “a place where briefcases clicked open and major deals were sealed” (168). Reisz charts how the showpiece grew rapidly in scale in the 1960s, culminating with the construction of the Dubai World Trade Centre. “The World Trade [Centre] was made for vast exhibitions and marketplaces, but, at a more visceral level, the complex was itself the exhibit. Claiming the Middle East's first skyscraper allowed Dubai to appear exceptional, beyond the basic improvements sought in past decades” (270).

Architectural representation in the book is understood as a tool by those who seek to be powerful to achieve permeance and stability through its appearance, and Reisz in turn is alert to similar practices in the archive. He deploys much skill in his engagement with his mainly anglophone archives: bringing to the center details, such as the question of labor or the role of non-Western experts, who are otherwise pushed to the margins. In the opening chapters, for instance, Reisz notes that due to the British political agents’ past experience in Sudan, it became the “regional blueprint” for organizing Dubai's new municipality and from where experts were recruited. Thus, while Reisz does focus on British experts, officials, and companies in the shaping of Dubai, he emphasizes the importance of Dubai municipal experts who came from Sudan (like Kamal Hamza) and Dubai's first paid consultant, the Iraqi Adbul Salam Er Raouf, who did notable work in setting up Dubai's municipality. Reisz is all too aware that cheap labor was central to the very “rise” of Dubai as a notable trading hub and expertly details the many ways this workforce arrived including their technical skills. In the case of the Dubai World Trade Centre, Reisz details how the mostly Pakistani builders maintained a high-quality concrete finish to maintain the tower's natural concrete color (384).

Reisz is hindered in his evident inability to engage Arabic language sources independently. The greater impediment remains, however, that the UAE is more welcoming to showpiece university campuses than serious scholarship, and the palpable fear expressed by potential interviewees. There is no publicly accessible archive in Dubai. Reisz states that many who agreed to talk about the history of Dubai did so either nostalgically or “do not want to say anything possibly construed as negative” (15). The absence of a depth of knowledge on Dubai's internal social and political dynamics makes its mark on Showpiece City. Calling for much needed further research, Reisz writes: “Focused on the histories of foreign expertise, this book provides minimal elucidation on a significant aspect of Dubai's urban development, namely the wealthy merchants whose family business presided over Dubai's port since as early as the nineteenth century” (17). The fascinating characters who existed within Shaykh Rashid's inner circle, like Mahdi Al Tajir (also now popularly known as the “richest man in Scotland”), and other wealthy merchants’ role in Dubai's formation remain largely invisible.

Showpiece City is an impressive achievement and contribution to the rapidly growing sub-field of Middle East urban studies. This book will be of interest not only to those who study the history of Dubai or urban and architectural historians of the region but also to those engaged in political economic history of the Middle East and the dynamic role between experts, rulers, empires, and corporations. This is a ground-breaking book that provides original insight into the minutia of Dubai in the 1950s to the 1970s while simultaneously contributing to larger debates on the urban history of power and space.