Autocracy As Architecture

Workers are building a new city in the jungles of Burma. It “is intended to project power and control, but the absurd new city in the malarial jungle speaks more of paranoia and megalomania. The new metropolis may even bring a little hope to the oppressed people of Burma, for in the long and tasteless history of totalitarian architecture the most extravagant building works are often the precursor to a regime’s collapse.”