To build the unimaginable

The first time I experienced unimaginable heat – or so it seemed to me at the time – was in Greece. As I stood on the hill of the Acropolis, I was sure that there could not be a stuffier city than Athens in the summer and that living there must simply be hell. Several years, a few books and some non-air conditioned editorial offices later, I now know that the Greek heat was not such a tragedy. Looking at the design of the monumental Mall of the World, an artificial city-cum-shopping centre in Dubai which in ten years’ time is to stretch across 4.5 km of the desert as an air-conditioned oasis of hyper-consumerism, I realise that my former understanding of heat – and business – might have been rather inadequate. It’s difficult to believe that the demand from the local market (with currently just over two million permanent residents), will be enough to fill even half of this energy-intensive monster. Of course, the question of where a need ends and a luxury begins might not be the best one to ask in the Middle East. There is simply no accounting for taste or oil dollars. The real question is: how will this thing actually be built? The answer is by no means as pleasant as the cool marble-lined passageways of the centre. The Gulf states are certainly not going to run short at any time soon of Indian and Pakistani construction workers, ready to slave in the inhumane heat with no safety or social insurance. Money can’t buy you love, but it can obviously buy you silence over the fatal accidents taking place daily on your construction sites – as well as a false sense of value. The breath-taking visualisations of the One Riverside Park luxury apartment building, which is under construction in Manhattan, contrast sharply with the lack of imagination of its designers in one other aspect. They could not imagine that both low-earning and highly affluent residents could share the same entrance to the building. For the residents who paid several million dollars for the pleasure of being able to look out onto the Hudson River from their bedrooms, sharing a wall or a ceiling with lower-income neighbours (a condition for the preferential purchase from the city of the plot) had sort of been acceptable. However, the prospect of meeting them face-to-face at the mailboxes or (horror of horrors!) in the lift – was one that was quite extraordinarily not okay. ‘Poor doors’ are nothing new in many European cities, where developers also make the case that social housing strategies and social integration should not be the business of private business. The buyer wants, the buyer gets. Businesses are not charities! Business means dynamic investment, geometrical sales growth, record contracts. Business equals winning – even if sometimes this means dodgy financing, structural flaws and illegal employment. All great achievements require sacrifices. Perhaps if taxes were not so high, the market not so competitive and everyone else was not up to the same tricks, then it would be possible to operate in a more honest fashion… But we are often reminded of the fruits of such an attitude. The 9/11 attack in New York was not just a tragedy for the immediate victims of the attack and their families. Years afterwards the death toll continues to rise, as the lives are claimed of rescuers who braved – without masks – the asbestos and toxin-filled ruins of the WTC. So how often do we want to imagine just how much harm our business practices are going to do? Greed does not always take the guise of the cynical Wolf of Wall Street. Sometimes it just involves making thoughtless decisions while ignoring the flashing ‘what if’ signs in our heads. Sometimes it’s “not our problem” or “advance worrying does no one any good” – just to make things faster, cheaper and for some peace of mind. There are, of course, a range of measures in place to curb such cutting of corners: legal regulations, technical specifications, governmental bodies and banking ombudsmen. But equally there are also bankruptcies, tax havens and record damages – followed by “just three years of bad press”. In the end, no real harm has been done to anyone, has it? And who asks today at what human cost the Acropolis was built? ν