KEY POINTS:
The strangest place I've ever seen is Yamoussoukro, the capital of Ivory Coast. After the country gained independence in 1960, President Felix Houphouet-Boigny (who, in the African manner, remained in office until his death in 1993, aged 88) decided to transform the unremarkable highland village of his birth into the national capital.
Eminent architects were commissioned to design public buildings of appropriate scale and splendour. All over Europe, men in bow ties and designer spectacles set to lucrative work creating a stunning police barracks, a post office of daring originality, a drop-dead cool morgue, and so on.
When I arrived at the international airport - the only one on the continent able to accommodate Concorde- in 1983, the transformation was well underway. An array of impressive buildings, mostly named after President Felix and linked by elegant, empty boulevards, rose out of fields like enigmatic constructions left behind by visitors from an advanced civilisation out in deep space.
All that was missing was people. Yamoussoukro was a designer ghost town.
Presumably, once the important stuff - like the Basilica of our Lady of Peace, the largest place of Christian worship on the planet - was taken care of, President Felix got around to housing the ragged residents of the village a few kilometres down the boulevard. Or perhaps, like the Kevin Costner character in the baseball movie Field of Dreams, he operated on the basis of if we build it, they will come.
It almost goes without saying that Yamoussoukro is a folie de grandeur, perhaps the greatest monument to oneself ever erected.
There's also a vast presidential palace on the shores of a man-made lake stocked with crocodiles; we were told that a guest at a recent outdoor function had fed himself to the crocs, supposedly in protest at this megalomaniacal extravagance.
Listening to the outcry over the proposed Waterfront Stadium, you could be excused for thinking that Helen Clark is hell-bent on turning her home town into a New Zealand version of Yamoussoukro.
You could also be excused for thinking that the proposed location is presently an oasis of unspoilt and unsurpassed loveliness rather than a container wharf, and that a consensus exists to use the site - and the money - for an iconic man-made wonder-cum-cultural shrine, along the lines of the Sydney Opera House or Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum. It doesn't. Any such proposal would bring just as many antis out of the woodwork and some of the faces - and arguments - would be familiar. "I oppose, therefore I am" could be the credo of our times.
Who now remembers that one of Australia's leading architects condemned Jorn Utzon's design for the Sydney Opera House as resembling "an insect with a shell on its back which has crawled out from under a log"? Or that several years after construction began, the conservative opposition won power in New South Wales by running an anti-Opera House election campaign and forced Utzon off the project by withholding his fees?
Wellington's Westpac Trust Stadium is widely seen as a superb facility that has enhanced the city and galvanised rugby to the All Blacks' benefit. But it faced bitter opposition from sentimentalists in the rugby community (who, like Fred Allen, wouldn't countenance a move away from the game's spiritual home, in that case Athletic Park), supporters of alternative locations, notably Porirua, and the ubiquitous Not In My Backyard brigade.
One can only wonder why the Government waited the year since New Zealand was granted hosting rights for the 2011 Rugby World Cup before dropping this bombshell and why it didn't try to get at least some of its ducks in a row before doing so.
But the relevant issues now are timing, cost and opportunity. To warrant serious consideration there must be certainty that the Waterfront Stadium will be ready on time. The damage to New Zealand's reputation and economy should the World Cup final take place in Sydney while an unfinished edifice languishes on Auckland's waterfront doesn't bear thinking about.
If the Eden Park upgrade had remained at the original $150 million, then comparative cost would be a stronger consideration. According to Michael Cullen, the differential between an upgrade and a new stadium is currently $110 million - $387 million plays $497 million. Assuming those estimates are valid (and critics of both proposals contend the figures are as pie-in-the-sky as a Green Party manifesto), then this taxpayer sees far greater long-term value for money and benefit to Auckland in the bolder option.
The World Cup presents an opportunity for the world's greatest rugby nation to acquire a venue worthy of that status. Elitists and those who loathe sport for various reasons can complain that it's grotesque to lavish so much money and attention on a game but, as always, they miss the point.
Rugby is one of the few activities, if not the only one, in which we're consistently the world's best. It is part of our national identity, as football is to Brazil, and a vibrant and highly successful expression of our multicultural society. It's the people's theatre. We have the performers. What we need now is a fitting stage.
