Word: kuala
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (1,476 ft.). Peaked like Angkor Wat, the world's tallest building attests to the ambitions of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad...
...people in Chicago who are intent on catching up with Kuala Lumpur I say, "Please, stop." I'm referring, of course, to the competition among cities to have the tallest building in the world. A few years ago the Malaysians erected twin towers that were 33 ft. higher than Chicago's Sears Tower, which had been the world's tallest building for more than 20 years. I realize that this was a serious provocation. A lot of Chicagoans have always been mildly offended by A.J. Liebling's description of Chicago as the Second City, after all, and even Liebling didn...
...Chicago shows signs of fighting back. The city council has approved a zoning change for a building in the Loop that would be 67 ft. higher than the towers in Kuala Lumpur. For all I know, the airport authority is secretly figuring out how to jam enough additional passengers into O'Hare to pass up Atlanta, even if some software drummers trying to make connections get crushed like bugs in the process...
...boosterism what Las Vegas is to ATM machines, has been playing catch-up ball for years. It's just the sort of place that would boast about having the busiest airport, which seems a bit like boasting about having the world's largest traffic jam. Asian cities like Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong and Shanghai have become Atlanta. Eager to call attention to their commercial muscle, they all have tallest-building projects. They're like a family that moves into a fancy neighborhood for the first time and feels the need to display in its driveway the most expensive luxury...
Which is why, I told them, that Chicago should not trouble itself to get into a height fight or a passenger race with the likes of Kuala Lumpur or Atlanta. It is, after all, the City of Big Shoulders, the Second City. Somebody reminded me that if Liebling were writing now, he'd have to call Chicago the Third City; Los Angeles has more people. Does that mean that some Chicago booster is concocting a scheme to annex Moline and move its population to the Loop? If so, please, stop...