There's good news and there's bad news over Japan's decision to scrap the world's most expensive sports stadium, also known as the main venue for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo.
The good news is that at last someone has stood up to the gang of egotistical architects and their greedy construction company henchmen who rip off the public purse in the name of art or style to erect concrete monstrosities, "concrete carbuncles," Britain's Prince Charles called them.
Enough, said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who last week declared he had listened to "the voice of the people" and scrapped Zaha Hadid's stadium, costs of which have soared to more than $2 billion. The design was adventurous to the point of being futuristically far-fetched, like a bicycle helmet or a hair dryer, or, in the damning chauvinistic words of Arata Isozaki, "a turtle waiting for Japan to sink so that it can swim away."
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