The global economy of the late-20th Century depended on unimpeded growth. Double-digit supports of production were extolled as paradigm’s of capitalistic success and 3rd World economies shed their backwater status with the dawn on the new millennium.
Bigger, taller, larger, faster were the axioms for the new era of excess.
Pattaya joined the frenzy with the spread of condos and enclosed villages blotting the former farmlands and fishing villages along Thailand’s Eastern Seaboard. Nothing and no one was allowed to stand in the path of progress and bolstered by that philosophy a real-estate developer announced the planned construction of Asia’s highest residential tower in Nah-Jomtien.
Ocean One. 367 meters tall. The crowning jewel of Jomtien. 2005.
Developers promoted the site. Government officials cut ribbons. A new street was built for the 91-story tower. Buyers dropped million to gain access to heaven on earth.
2009.
Pop goes the bubble.
No tower.
The project went bust and the investors are left owning air.
A victim of greed and unsustainable growth.
Somehow no one in Dubai ever heard about its failure.
Sorry, but ‘sum num nah’.