Adam Minter raised a number of legitimate worries in "Expo 2027 plan requires a much closer look" (Opinion Exchange, Oct. 16) about the possible effects of Minnesota winning the 2027 World Expo. He points to the less-than-stellar example of New Orleans, where the last American world's fair took place, in 1984. The fair went bankrupt before it ended. So why would Minnesota host an event that threatens to be nothing but a money pit?

Because the cautionary tale of New Orleans is different from what you think. Even hobbled by financial scandal, the New Orleans fair was a catalyst to build the city's convention center — which has generated over $81 billion in the decades since. Then you throw in the revitalized waterfront and Central Business District, and the old Jax brewery being turned into a successful mall, and by any metric the debacle became a triumph.

Done right, an expo elevates its host city both culturally and materially — which is why, on a larger scale, Shanghai and Dubai devoted billions to their 2010 and 2020 Expos, respectively, knowing this was not a vanity exercise but an investment in the future through infrastructure.

The 1906 expo in Milan saw the inauguration of the Simplon tunnel allowing the first direct rail link between that city and Paris. The 1939 world's fair in New York led to vast civic enhancements — for example, linking the Grand Central Parkway to the then-new Triborough Bridge and spurring the completion of what became LaGuardia Airport.

For Expo '70 in Osaka, the Japanese upgraded the city's airport, railways, highways, subway system and telecom network that turned it into a major power.

Expo '86 in Vancouver transformed the Canadian city into an international destination, not least because Canada's government pavilion was transformed into a major downtown convention center and cruise-ship docks.

Another common denominator of successful expos are the cultural institutions they leave behind that enhance a city's reputation and economy. World's fairs brought us: Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, Museum of Science and Industry, and Art Institute; Brussels' Atomium; Seattle's Space Needle; and, of course, the Eiffel Tower in Paris. These landmarks become inseparable from their surrounding cities and remain among their largest tourist draws.

Minter notes the omnipresence of screens which, it's implied, make expos irrelevant since there is no novelty that cannot be witnessed on a digital device. (By that token, why did 2 million attend the latest Minnesota State Fair?) Screens are everywhere, and no doubt they will be at a Minnesota Expo, too. But it is exactly their ubiquity that might help make Expo a success. Research suggests that millennials and members of Gen Z overwhelmingly prefer live experiences. Events like an expo are uniquely transient, and therefore valuable, because of their impermanent and in-person nature.

And therein lies the greatest challenge and potential of a world's fair for Minnesota and its proposed theme of "Healthy People, Healthy Planet – Wellness and Well Being for All." Expos have been the launchpad or at least the tipping point for ideas and technologies from kindergarten and yoga to recorded music, TVs and touch screens. They offer not the shrunken view of a world on a screen but the ability to immerse yourself for hours in wonders more on the drawing board than in the mainstream.

How cool would it be to see injectable sponges, developed first for the military, that stop bleeding in a few seconds? Or catch a glimpse of 3-D printers that can churn our human organs? Get your genome analyzed in real time? Play with the app that transforms your smartphone into a "Star Trek"-like medical tricorder?

Like the greatest American expos of the past, from Chicago in 1893 to Seattle in 1962, Minnesota's Expo could be a time machine that lets us step into the future and propels the city to build for the next century.

Charles Pappas, of Rochester, is a senior writer at Exhibitor magazine, author of "Flying Cars, Zombie Dogs, and Robot Overlords: How World's Fairs and Trade Expos Changed the World," and was a consultant to Expo 2020 in Dubai.