Yangon: Architecture and economy
A city's architecture can often be determined by how much money is swishing around at the time of expansion; its aesthetic legacy can be determined by how well-regarded the architectural movements of those busy times. Ask Sheffield, ambitiously redesigned to be the last word in futuristic concrete Sixties regeneration; it worked, in that few people said those words again without a curled lip.
As Rangoon, Yangon's centre benefited from Victorian pride - think of South Kensington's museum sector but writ smaller and more often - and then again in the Thirties.
The result is pleasing. There's a solidity to its downtown buildings that is resisting any temptation to reboot. There is some delapidation; the ravages of time, climate and neglectful regimes like the junta only recently dissolved have left some beautiful old piles seeming to be held up mostly by plant-life. But as the country awakens from self-imposed commercial exile and rides the tiger of the booming Asian economy, hopefully these will be restored to help a pretty city get even nicer.
Compared to Phnom Penh, Yangon doesn't go in much for the grand public monument: perhaps all that religious immensity satiates the need for secular showpieces. What it does have is a People's Park, winningly bonkers in its lo-fi fun: enormous fibreglass fruit, chirpy music, crap mazes, a roller-coaster and various secluded places in which couples were lovingly lolling into the early evening.
As Rangoon, Yangon's centre benefited from Victorian pride - think of South Kensington's museum sector but writ smaller and more often - and then again in the Thirties.
The result is pleasing. There's a solidity to its downtown buildings that is resisting any temptation to reboot. There is some delapidation; the ravages of time, climate and neglectful regimes like the junta only recently dissolved have left some beautiful old piles seeming to be held up mostly by plant-life. But as the country awakens from self-imposed commercial exile and rides the tiger of the booming Asian economy, hopefully these will be restored to help a pretty city get even nicer.
Compared to Phnom Penh, Yangon doesn't go in much for the grand public monument: perhaps all that religious immensity satiates the need for secular showpieces. What it does have is a People's Park, winningly bonkers in its lo-fi fun: enormous fibreglass fruit, chirpy music, crap mazes, a roller-coaster and various secluded places in which couples were lovingly lolling into the early evening.
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