For the past several years I have been skeptical about the horrendous amounts of money--a good chunk of it taxpayer dollars--spent on sports stadiums. Our country's obsession with spectator sports not only costs billions upon billions in funding for facilities, but also untold dollars in health care costs used to treat diabetes and related conditions among the number of people who can't get off their fat asses and get some physical activity because they are sedentary 9 months out of the year watching football, basketball and baseball on TV.
In addition, it seems once a sparkling new arena is built, it doesn't last more than a couple decades. The Silver Dome in Detroit, RCA Dome in Indianapolis, Key Arena in Seattle, The MetroDome in the Twin Cities, are all coming down because they are not good enough for the franchise owners and they apparently are not worth refurbishing. Plus, icons such as Yankee Stadium, Busch Stadium and others are bulldozed because they cannot accommodate the wealthy club seat buyers.
To me, in times of disastrous health care economics, a severely underperforming education system, public infrastructure demise, and many other critical public investment needs, sports should be much lower on the investment totem pole.
However, being the objective observer I am, and realizing that a capital society gives the market what it wants, I do have to say the new Dallas Cowboys stadium under construction is a design marvel. No matter how necessary or unnecessary it may be, one cannot deny its place among the truly cool.
More conceptual images are here. (You'll need to scroll down a bit).
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