Word: monumental
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...reconstruction to restore normalcy after war or natural disaster. Yet for the WTC site, renewal and reconstruction efforts are clearly not enough. Overwhelmingly, the public wants to see something big, glittery, soaring, and perhaps even beautiful, to replace the iconic twin towers, which have assumed the qualities of monument even in their afterlives...
Vigorous debate will continue about the true meaning of a symbol, the proper definition of a monument, and the appropriate significance of a memorial. Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design Richard M. Sommer has called the entire process “a form of public therapy.” It is also a form of requiem, New York-style. It is loud and shrill and full of invective as well as praise...
...governor, General Mardiyanto, has proposed a huge public-works project that would sweep away the asongan and replace them with a three-story mall on the outskirts of the zoned district around the stupa. The new complex, bearing the Disneyesque name Java World, would be the gateway to the monument for all visitors, who would park there and progress to the site aboard a silent tram. In place of the chaos that currently reigns at Borobudur, there would be a bland but orderly array of tourist shops, the boisterous ladies selling soft drinks out of ice chests supplanted...
...Borobudur has powerful allies. In 1991, UNESCO listed the monument as a World Heritage site, in exchange for official undertakings to maintain international standards of conservation. A zoning plan was drawn up, but it has already been flouted: the site of a projected conference center is now a resort. Particularly obnoxious is an absurd choo-choo, drawn by a truck in steam-locomotive drag, which tootles around the stupa. One Java World opponent says when the "conductor" was asked what they did with the train when UNESCO people visited, he replied that they...
...nation has to a unifying emblem. I have yet to visit an island in Indonesia, from the Indian Ocean to the fringes of Oceania, that doesn't have a Borobudur Restaurant. If there is any symbol in this divided land that could bring people together, it is this ancient monument to cosmic harmony...