> At the same time, the ur-white region,
> Western Europe, is what Morgan Stanley investment strategist
> Byron Wien called little more than "an open-air museum" a few years
> ago (though I know Dennis Redmond will disagree).
I still remember the first time I stepped into a German museum in 1994 and was literally stunned by the power and might of the Eurostate: behind the artifacts and displays there was a smoothly humming, seamless infrastructure -- climate and humidity control, track lighting, gaggles of Eurotourists speaking who knows how many languages snapping photos with impossibly specialized high-powered cameras. This wasn't even a major museum, just a regional exhibit in an obscure south German town. It was a truly visceral experience, the belated realization of the squalor and decay of US public spaces.
One of the most terrifying legacies of Empire is the inability of US citizens to imagine any kind of advanced public infrastructure which isn't military in nature. Working mass transit, functional cities - that's science fiction to us.
-- DRR