The fuss that has erupted over the Victorian and Albert Museum's outpost at Dundee is but a new episode in what one predicts will be as long-running a soap opera as River City.

After problems with the size, location and execution of Kengo Kuma's winning design, now comes the announcement that the building's original £45m budget has ballooned to over £80m. This, plus the fact that the building will at least four years behind schedule, has sent certain onlookers into the stratosphere, so much do they huff and puff.

Comparisons with Enric Mirales's spiralling expense sheet on the Scottish Parliament were inevitable, but they served to highlight two truths. The first is that the cost of ambitious and original structures can quickly escalate. The second, that people with political points to score have long memories when it comes to a bill much larger than predicted.

I was struck, however, by a comment by Ken Guild, the SNP leader of Dundee city council, who said that what worried the people of Dundee was not the expense of the gallery but the fear that "it might not happen at all". A great deal rides on Kengo Kuma's futuristic design. One can almost hear Kevin McCloud of Grand Designs calling it 'brave', in that tone of voice he reserves for projects bordering on the lunatic.

But the architect's vision for the V&A at Dundee is mad only in the sense that it defies typical Scottish restraint and drabness. No doubt in part because of the dismal designs their forebears had to endure, instead of voting for a sensible, wholly functional and low-budget building, Dundonians chose Kuma's exhilarating ship-like shape. It is a siren call to be daring and beautiful, and while as yet a single brick has still to be laid, it speaks volumes for the erstwhile home of jam, jute and journalism that its citizens are hungry for something spectacular.

One has a little sympathy with those who cavil at the astonomical cost, but only a little. The figure of £80m is about a quarter of the value of a footballer such as Lionel Messi whose career, however long, cannot compete with bricks and mortar. Nor can anyone deny that this magnificent gallery will act as a symbol of Dundee's ongoing regeneration. In time, the V&A will be the image of Dundee projected to the world, like Sydney Opera House, or the Eiffel Tower, the visual shorthand for an upbeat location. As for the pricetag, one need only look at great buildings, be they in the Medici's Florence or Glasgow's Merchant City, to see that hubristic extravagance is occasionally essential to achieve a statement that will last for generations.

In committing to a remarkable building, Dundee has proclaimed its hopes for the future. Right now, the high cost of this gallery - and it's possible the figure will continue to rise - will be painful. Decades on, however, when it has become a focal point in a city eager to reinvigorate and reinvent itself, it will probably have paid for that outlay several times over. Superbly located at the very heart of Scotland, close to the Highlands which are as beloved of today's tourists as they were to Queen Victoria, and within easy reach of St Andrews, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, the V&A at Dundee will attract visitors from across Scotland and far beyond, and help entice business, students and academics to the city.

There are detractors, of course, who do not believe the gallery will become Scotland's answer to the Guggenheim in Bilbao, but I suspect their views are not entirely unbiased. At the very least, they may have overlooked the fact that as part of the V&A franchise, Dundee will be home to some of the most glamorous exhibitions on offer, such as the recent David Bowie retrospective, or John Constable oil sketches. Such shows will leave other Scottish galleries green as Monet's waterlilies.

Contemplating the city's chequered record of town planning, the late historian Charles McKean said that in the Victorian age, Dundonians had "a profound architectural inferiority complex." Yet, patronised, overlooked and belittled as it has often been, Dundee is at last growing in self-confidence. When eventually the V&A gallery is finished, any lingering inferiority must be replaced with pride, and any residual bitterness over the cost be forgotten, except as a lesson that sometimes it is necessary to be bold and take a calculated risk.