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The architecture of insanity
Oct. 12th, 2006 10:37 pmWell... to be more specific, it's the urban planning of insanity.
A while back I read an article about Pyongyang -- it talked about what it's like to be a foreign reporter there. The reporter talked about a 101 story hotel under construction outside his hotel window. Y'know... all the emerging third world countries are building huge buildings to prove that they're up and coming. So North Korea built one too, but they apparently constructed it so poorly that they had to abandon the project midway through when the concrete started shifting. I looked around on Google maps and found it.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=pyongyang&ie=UTF8&z=17&ll=39.036415,125.731069&spn=0.0044,0.013454&t=h&om=1
Browse around the city... the place makes no sense. There are giant apartments built in the middle of farms and brownfields, random oversize monuments everywhere, way too many stadium-type buildings, and weird hilltop palaces. It just doesn't look right. It's insanity, inconsistency, and poor priorities writ large... a city-sized Winchester Mystery House.
A while back I read an article about Pyongyang -- it talked about what it's like to be a foreign reporter there. The reporter talked about a 101 story hotel under construction outside his hotel window. Y'know... all the emerging third world countries are building huge buildings to prove that they're up and coming. So North Korea built one too, but they apparently constructed it so poorly that they had to abandon the project midway through when the concrete started shifting. I looked around on Google maps and found it.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=pyongyang&ie=UTF8&z=17&ll=39.036415,125.731069&spn=0.0044,0.013454&t=h&om=1
Browse around the city... the place makes no sense. There are giant apartments built in the middle of farms and brownfields, random oversize monuments everywhere, way too many stadium-type buildings, and weird hilltop palaces. It just doesn't look right. It's insanity, inconsistency, and poor priorities writ large... a city-sized Winchester Mystery House.
