Monaco tries to salve its chronic short man syndrome by seeping into the sea
MONACO is, like Dubai, a country suffering from small-man syndrome. It wants to be bigger. It’s wearing the flashy gold watch, driving a sports car and attracting celebrity friends but it remains small. Monaco is further damaged by being a very small version of France, that venue for scholastic exchanges, romance, booze cruises, burning sheep and car-b-cues. Monaco’s a foreigner’s view of an al fresco French drawing room, a gilded, gaudy, snooty, ultra-conservative bastion of monied minds, opulence, esoteric watch brands and tackiness.
Maybe it can improve if it can grow? The country is taking bids for a six-hectare (14-acre) development project of land drained of the sea. You have until 23 July to design a new district for Monaco’s new district by 2024.
New Monaco will be environmentally friendly and favour pedestrians and cyclists. Residences will be blocks of flats. Can it be that New Monaco will look like an old Russian slum, the locals all emigres recapturing the mood of Stalin’s Steppes, their heads swaddled in Dr Nip ‘n’ Tuck’s scarves as they affect a look of a housewife taking a Siberian winter full in the face – at least until the stitches mend?
Monaco is seeping into the Med like a sewage outlet of greed. It’s good for the little men, of course.
Come on in, the water’s shallow…
Posted: 9th, May 2013 | In: Money, Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
