Look at Miami and see our collective future?

Photo by Max Sulik on Unsplash

Half-asleep, I heard them say on the radio that a 12-storey building had partially collapsed and thought it might be in Dhaka or Delhi. Miami didn’t immediately come to mind. Nor did the possibility that it was an oceanfront condo tower, occupied by the well-connected of the western hemisphere, not least relatives of the first lady of Paraguay.

By the time I got out of bed and knew it was Miami, not Delhi or Dhaka, I pondered why my reflexive reaction to such news veered towards South Asia.

Well, mostly because such tragedies happen there. Time after time, it’s shoddy construction; lack of attention to building codes; sometimes even the lack of building codes. Developers erect too-tall towers; politicians and bureaucratic paper-pushers wink and look away. Some years later, it all comes tumbling down. Lives are lost; orphaned children are left to weep.

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