Better City, Better Life

This was “Shanghai Immersion Day” for our group. I am still trying to absorb everything I saw and learned; as a city planner it was pretty profound. There’s no way I can capture it all in a blog entry. There’s just not enough time.

Our group convened in the lobby at 8:30 AM. We divided into groups of four and took taxis from the hotel to a Starbucks Coffee in an area called Xintiandi, about a 10 minute ride. There, the principal of a local planning and design consulting firm met us, leading us back to her office for an excellent powerpoint presentation followed by a walking tour. Again, the scale of the firm’s projects was overwhelming—68-story buildings, thousands of units of housing, entire new cities, etc.

She told us about the 10-acre park across the street from where we were sitting, complete with man-made lake and underground parking. In two weeks time, the site had been cleared of hundreds of 90 year old apartments and developed as a park. We asked how they possibly could get things done so quickly. She replied matter-of-factly, “well, we have a labor force of 800 million people, and the crews work 24 hours a day.” There’s not much you can say after that.

Their project was really well done—they preserved several blocks of traditional Shanghai “Lilong” housing (townhouses developed on narrow alleys), relocating the families and converting the space into ground floor restaurants and bars, with high-end office space above. The scale was very human and comfortable. However, all around us, there were bulldozers knocking down similar blocks of housing and replacing them with mega-towers. This was the first of many disturbing things we observed about Shanghai today—there seems to be a disregard for the social fabric of communities and a “tear it down and make it bigger” attitude that pervades everything. In Central Shanghai, it’s pretty clear they are knocking down all the working class housing and moving the residents out to new towns (with no transit) 30 miles away. As they tear down the old, they build Park Avenue style luxury condos in their place.

From Xiantandi, we took a shuttle bus to the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition. This was a peak life experience for me. Planning geek that I am, I got goose bumps when I saw the building, and was practically hyperventilating by the time I got to the museum’s piece-de-resistance—a scale model of the entire City of Shanghai (showing every structure in the city) that was about 200 feet x 200 feet. This is the largest museum in the world devoted to city planning, and it was spectacular. The entire fifth floor was the Comprehensive Plan for Shanghai, presented in beautiful and extravagant displays with video, computer simulation, maps, renderings, and thematic exhibits. The Plan’s moniker—“Better City, Better Life.”

Walking through this museum, one can’t help but be convinced that China will eclipse the US in a few years time, at least economically and technologically. The country seems unstoppable and the US feels stuck in the mud by comparison. I felt a strange mix of envy and horror at some of the exhibits; envy at the scale of what they’re doing, and horror at the social and environmental cost. Again, there appears to be little regard for people; they are just cleared out of the way and warehoused in these new cities while the economic engine chugs on.

The irony is that despite Shanghai’s emergence as the 21st Century New York, its water is undrinkable, its air is unbreathable, and its traffic is unbearable. In other words, the city is fundamentally unlivable.

At 1 PM, a group us were taken from the museum to the Pudong district, where we had lunch and went to the top of the Jin Mao Tower (4th tallest building in the world). The visibility was poor because of the smog and dust, but you could see that this particular part of the City was being developed as a bunch of signature skyscrapers rather than a “community” per se. I peeled off from the group at 2 PM and went for a walk in Pudong to check it out. It is about the most pedestrian-unfriendly place I have ever been, with 16-lane roads, walls and gates everywhere, and no signs to tell you how to get from point A to point B. Even the digital “countdowns” (telling you how many seconds till the light changes) are positioned on the traffic lights (for the cars) rather than the crosswalks (for pedestrians).

I spent over an hour trying to figure out how to cross the river. There is supposedly a pedestrian tunnel but I never found it. I did manage to find a bunch of American businesses (Hooters, Starbucks, etc.), and lots of wide sidewalks with blank walls at the base of the 70-story buildings lining the streets. It was a text book case of what not to do when designing a city, and I was delighted to have so much "Don't Do This" subject matter for future presentations.

I gave up looking for the tunnel and got on the subway. Everything was in Chinese, but I at least managed to buy a ticket and figure out which train to board.

I disembarked near the Bund, walked down to People’s Square and then veered south into the French Concession. The road was filled with hawkers (selling watches and wallets) and I was even propositioned by two girls who told me “Your English is very good, will you come with us for tea?” Apparently, this is the standard Shanghai hustle.

The air quality kept getting worse, I think because I was passing enormous construction sites and there was dust blowing everywhere. I did manage to find a very nice shopping street called Hualhi Road, which I walked for about two miles. I got on the subway again, but by this time it was rush hour and the train was so crowded I couldn’t exit at my station. I rode a few extra stations and then walked back to the hotel, getting there at 6:30. I think I walked about seven miles altogether.

At 7 PM, the entire group reconvened and went via subway to a theater a few stops away. We saw a performance by Chinese acrobats. It was pretty good, particularly the last number where five guys in Elvis costumes rode around on motorcycles inside a clear sphere called “the Ball of Death”. Other spectacles included a contortionist who turned herself into a chandelier, and a kid who threw ceramic pickle jars 30 feet in the air and caught them on his neck.

I had a late dinner with Charlotte, Bob, and Anne. It was 10 PM and most of the places near the hotel were closed. We followed some young girls up an elevator and ended up in a local hot pot place. No one spoke English, and we took a wild chance on the menu. Everyone was laughing at what we ordered. We figured out why when a covered dish arrived at our table and we lifted the lid. Inside were dozens of live, squirming river shrimp—one of which jumped out on the table. We had a good laugh, and managed to make some reasonable soup with the other ingredients (all vegetables!)