The hotly debated issue in College Park regarding plans for a new student housing project above the Maryland Book Exchange is one that carries more subtle implications than a first glance may let on. The proposal, which envisions a five-story, 1,000-bed facility, is facing measured opposition from non-student residents who fear the project will create additional noise pollution and cause more congestion in the neighborhood, among other negative effects associated with students.
Controversial building projects, however, may be exactly the sort of thing new university President Wallace Loh needs to attract the national and international attention he has promised for the university.
To understand why, let us consider several international precedents. In the 1980s, the largely undeveloped city of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, merited little attention from international investors, let alone students. Since then, however, inordinately extravagant engineering projects, funded by oil and sustained by exploited migrant workers, has, in essence, created an economy that thrives on business and technology where there was none before. Today, students from around the globe are flocking to this intellectual center.
However, business development is beside the point of Dubai’s youth success. Chief among international cities, it is Dubai’s brazen disregard for economic sense, lack of foresight and nonsensically infeasible entrants into the international chest-baring contest that is the world’s tallest and most innovative building race that wins it the prize.
The Burj Khalifa, the tallest and most insane building in the world, which is twice the size of the Empire State Building, has managed to attract considerable international attention for being so costly that it was nearly abandoned at the start of the global financial crisis. Today, a year after its completion, not even 100 of its 900 presumably well-oiled apartments have been leased. Many of Dubai’s overzealous projects are simultaneously demonstrating similarly awe-inspiring stupidity, while incurring deliberate, if not manageable, setbacks. The World Islands and other fabricated land features on Dubai’s waterfront have been indefinitely stalled as a result of insufficient funding.
But never mind the dignity in becoming ensnared in unsound, easily foreseeable economic difficulty. The key lesson to internalize here is the audacity of living beyond your means and authoritatively superimposing visions over practicality.
If you still aren’t convinced, what better example to provide than North Korea’s equally confounding Ryugyong Hotel — a 105-story construction project abandoned in 1992, only to be resumed in 2008. Take it from North Korea: If you desire to increase your international prestige and outweigh severe potential human-rights issues, poverty and isolationism, financing ostentatious and unnecessary building projects is the chosen path.
Moreover, take the United States, which is discussing potential trips to Mars and the moon with the intent of colonization at a time when taxpayer dollars would be better spent collecting badly needed data for monitoring global temperatures and reducing the deficit.
As is evident, if the university wants to assert itself more on the international stage, it must join the ranks of the aforementioned and act more unilaterally and erratically. Whether or not the proposed apartments are on par with the gaudy masterpieces of Dubai, those spearheading them should be encouraged by the university community as a proponent of the new wishful thinking and economic irresponsibility for the sake of advancing our own international reputation.
Ian Rodenhouse is a sophomore government and politics major. He can be reached at rodenhouse at umdbk dot com.
