From The Guardian yesterday... an interesting thought for a Friday the 13th.
"China
could be the next country to go bust, if its headlong rush to build
ever-taller skyscrapers is a guide to its future economic health.
According to a study by Barclays Capital, the mania for skyscrapers over
the last 140 years is a sure indicator of an imminent crash.
It
points out that the construction boom that threw up New York's Chrysler
and Empire State buildings preceded the New York crash of 1929 and
Great Depression. More recently, Dubai built a forest of skyscraping
offices, hotels and apartment buildings, including the world's tallest,
the Burj Khalifa, before it got into terrible financial difficulties. In
2010 Dubai had to be bailed out by its neighbour, Abu Dhabi, to avoid
going bankrupt."
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3 comments:
Agree. There comes a point when you have to say "Sure, we'd like the world's biggest building, but frankly we just can't afford it. The Burj Khalifa was just embarrassing for Dubai :)
It gets me that countries still have this narrow-minded view of how they are perceived by other countries. How backwards and stupid do they think the rest of the world is, if they think that we will be distracted by the shiny lights and not notice the decay that lies underneath in their economy?
Nice view...
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