ABSTRACT
Onward and upward – then downward Shortly after being acquitted of child molestation charges in California in the summer of 2005, the late pop star Michael Jackson mysteriously surfaced in the Gulf city of Dubai accompanied by the son of the king of Bahrain. Those sensitized to the bizarre ways of media publicity nowadays immediately sensed this as a signature event in Dubai’s ‘coming of age’ in an age of mediocrity. During his royally guided tour of the city, Michael would not have had to look far to see what is intended to be the world’s tallest building, Burj Dubai, coming out of the ground that sunny day. History records many examples of societies seemingly being compelled to leave a visible testament for the ages to their increasingly positive view of the future by creating the world’s tallest building. In each case, construction begins on these behemoths as the social mood starts accelerating upward. But skyscrapers don’t appear overnight, and by the time construction is actually completed several years later, the positive mood has almost always given way to a deeply pessimistic one. Here is a picture of the three latest contenders in the skyscraper derby – Indonesia, Taiwan and Dubai – projected alongside a chart of the financial market averages in the respective countries. The current troubles of property developers in Dubai are not at all surprising, at least to those who understand this ‘Skyscraper Curse’. Bad things tend to happen in countries – especially to ‘little guys’ who want to become ‘big guys’ – when they start trying to express their confidence in the future by erecting the world’s tallest building. This curse leads one to wonder about the future of Saudi Arabia, which in late 2008 announced its intention to outdo Dubai by building a skyscraper in Jeddah vastly taller than Burj Dubai. And this is not to mention the fortunes of that darling of evangelists of globalization everywhere, India, where a local architect in Delhi announced plans to build the world’s tallest building, making the statement: ‘It is about status. It is about glorification. It is high time that people started realizing that we too are a great nation.’ Sic transit gloria!
