It may have made sense to bring the world to a single city before air travel, television and the Internet placed the world within easy reach, but a world's fair is probably justified today only if it leaves a significant legacy for the city where it is held. The fair's visitors may well find all this irrelevant, yet it goes some way toward answering the question of why anyone still bothers to hold a world's fair. Since most permanent buildings have been assigned a post-Expo function, the area is unlikely to slide back into decay, not least because the Pavilion of Portugal will become the seat of the Portuguese government. As a result, this fair is less visually spectacular and covers less than a third of Seville's 540-acre site. That one involved construction of scores of buildings, most of which now stand empty, so, rather than inviting participating countries to compete with fancy designs, Portugal has provided temporary quarters for each national pavilion. Portugal has also learned the lessons of Seville's 1992 Expo. Further, by situating the fair on a former industrial wasteland, the government has set in motion a vast program of urban renewal. Thus, Expo '98 has become the occasion for restoring historic buildings and improving Lisbon's thoroughfares and public transportation. Still, the $2-billion spent on the show would be a stiff price to pay were Expo '98 no more than public relations, but, for all their new national pride, the Portuguese remain a pragmatic lot. Their messages are many: With oceans covering 70 percent of the world's surface, Planet Earth should really be called Planet Water the oceans that gave birth to life are now being polluted to death the oceans, the first highway of communication between distant civilizations, remain the last unexplored frontier and, yes, if Portugal's empire once stretched from Brazil to Angola and Mozambique as far as Goa, Macao and East Timor, it was thanks to its intrepid navigators. The story of the oceans, past, present and future, is recounted in six thematic pavilions, while the participating nations (including landlocked countries such as Switzerland and Bolivia) have created pavilions that also deal with water, rivers, seas and oceans. Architects, challenged to design a complex for the millennium, have created the most futuristic and glistening little metropolis on Earth 146 countries agreed to take part, and, between now and the end of September, 15-million visitors are expected. On a 150-acre, semi-derelict industrial site on the banks of the Tagus, engineers and workers have laid 10 miles of paved streets and planted 30,000 trees and enough grass for 38 soccer fields. Echoing its 15th-, 16th- and 17th-century history as a great seafaring nation, Portugal chose as its Expo theme "The Oceans: a Heritage for the Future." In the face of stiff competition from Toronto, Lisbon won the right to stage Expo '98. He sailed home a rich man, returning four years later to hideously punish the town for anti-Portuguese activity in his absence, but in Portugal da Gama remains semi-divine (Expo's great tower is named after him), while India, showing its customary tolerance, is a participating country in the Expo, though perhaps with a faint sense of irony. Da Gama, instead, found the Indian spice port of Calicut. The Expo actually celebrates the 500th anniversary of the year Vasco da Gama was sent east by Manuel the Fortunate to find Prester John, the Christian king.
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