Better City, Better Life? Visioning a Sustainable Shanghai through the Expo
Cameron McAuliffe
As Hilary He discussed in the previous chapter, the last thirty years have seen the ‘opening up’ of
the Chinese economy, along with reforms that have triggered an ‘urban transition’ as China’s rural
hinterland moves to the city. This Chinese urban transition parallels the emergence of urban
theories that recognise the functional importance of cities in the global economy. Global cities have
emerged, in theory and practice, as dominant nodes in flows of trade goods, people, and money in
the new global economy. Over the last twenty years (in particular), the extraordinary urban
development of Shanghai has positioned it within the ranks of emerging global cities. And in 2010,
Shanghai Expo arrived at a time when Shanghai was looking to acquire its status as a truly global
city.
Global city discourses rightfully emphasise the ways in which cities are increasingly disarticulated
from their national contexts as they are drawn into global networks of flows. Yet what does this
mean for the global aspirations of Chinese cities – such as Shanghai – that are still set within a
highly regulated national context? Shanghai Expo may have signalled the new rise of Shanghai as a
global city aspirant, but – even with the opening up of the Chinese economy – is it possible to think
of a global Shanghai disarticulated from its economic, cultural and political Chinese context? This
chapter will consider these questions through an examination of the way Shanghai Expo mobilised
narratives of sustainable urban development.
As the case for Shanghai will show, the disarticulation of global cities from their national contexts
is never complete. Indeed, trajectories of urban development play themselves out simultaneously
through global and local contexts. Through its representations of sustainable urban development,
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Shanghai Expo presented multiple pathways for its future. This analysis takes as its focus two
dominant representations of future urban development that permeated the expo: an ‘external’ global
narrative of sustainable urban development, and an internal Chinese national narrative of
modernisation through urban development. How these dual (and sometimes competing) narratives
were presented at Expo 2010 provides some insight into the local politics of urban development in
globalising Shanghai.
INTRODUCTION: TRACING TWO PATHS TO AN URBAN FUTURE
Much has been written on the rise of Shanghai as an emerging global city.i The project to install
Shanghai within the upper echelons of global cities has been strongly and unselfconsciously stateled (Wu 2000a; Newman & Thornley 2005). In contrast to Beijing, which is routinely seen as the
cultural heart of China, Shanghai’s ascendance has been symbolically tied to the rise of twenty-first
century China as an economic power. As David Rowe discusses later in this volume, this ties in to
efforts to present the expo as the ‘Economic Olympics’. But beyond the economic realm, the built
environment – and more particularly the dramatic rise of the Pudong skyline – has become an
important symbolic realm of China’s ascendancy, where gleaming towers and modern mass transit
speak to innovative and ‘world class’ urban futures.
Whilst Shanghai is being positioned as an emerging global city, Shanghai in its Chinese context is
just one city subject to what has been described as the largest rural-urban movement in history.
Driven by a program of modernisation through urbanisation (involving a combination of state-led
urban investment and ongoing political reform in industry and agriculture), Chinese estimates
suggest that between 15 and 18 million people a year are making the move from the rural hinterland
into the city (although the actual figure is likely higher; see UNFPA 2007; UN Habitat 2010b). By
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2030, one billion people will live in the towns and cities of China (McKinsey 2009). Following
these projections, by 2025 China will have 221 cities with more than one million residents
(McKinsey 2009) and, according to UN figures, by 2015 Shanghai will be the seventh largest city
in the world.
A dual narrative of urban growth has been taking place in Shanghai (e.g., see Kong 2009): one
narrative tract depicts the growth of Shanghai as an emerging global city, increasingly tied in to
networks of global relations, and another imagines Shanghai enmeshed in its national context, as an
exemplar of China’s broader program of modernisation through urbanisation (see Logan 2008). As
a global event with a predominantly domestic Chinese audience, the expo provided an interesting
platform for this dual narrative. The expo fostered an explicit embrace of global discourses about
urban development, and produced a spectacle of the modern city for domestic consumption.
Reflecting on some of the universal challenges of contemporary urban development, the official
theme of the Shanghai Expo, ‘Better City, Better Life’, coalesced around the theme of sustainable
urban development. Yet (as Hilary He points out in her chapter), the Mandarin translation of the
theme, ‘City, Makes Life Better’, represented a domestic focus on the emancipatory power of the
city as the site of modernity. The tensions between these two narratives – one global and one local –
will form the focus of my analysis of Shanghai Expo, and will provide a platform from which to
consider both Shanghai’s aspirations to become a global city and the ongoing importance of the
Chinese nation as a context for Shanghai’s global interaction.
Historically, expos have played an important role in communicating development, acting as
windows into the progress of human endeavour. The Bureau International des Expositions (BIE)
plays a central role, guiding the structure and focus of expos towards ‘a future of limitless
progress’.ii Shanghai Expo continued this historical role, taking on its central ‘Better City, Better
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Life’ theme at a time when ‘the way we manage our cities will make all the difference in not only
our present ability to prosper and make choices freely but that of our future generations’ (BIE
2010d: para 5). In closing the final Theme Forum for Shanghai Expo, which focused on urban
innovation and sustainable development, the Chinese Premier noted that: ‘China will unswervingly
follow the path of peaceful developments of all civilizations, deepen mutually beneficial
cooperation with other countries and make greater contribution to the progress of human
civilization’ (Wen 2010: para 17). As a reflection of this mission Shanghai Expo culminated with
the announcement of the ‘Shanghai Declaration’, which is ostensibly intended as a ‘roadmap’ for
future urban development. In line with the theme of the expo, the Declaration notes that ‘the
abundant fruits of modern civilization’ are accompanied by ‘the unprecedented challenges [...of]
population explosion, traffic congestion, environmental pollution, resource shortages, urban poverty
and cultural conflicts’ (BIE 2010e: 7). Here the Declaration points to the way Shanghai Expo
negotiated dual narratives of urban development in operation in Shanghai: that is, while it embraced
the global narrative of sustainable urban development, it remained true to the modernist visions of
the BIE, mapping out pathways of ‘limitless progress’.
As Tim Winter has previously noted, expos find themselves at a particular juncture in an evolving
global context, wherein these very international events must contend with a decidedly transnational
world. One important feature that has worked in the favour of expos is the focus on the city as a
site. As cities have become more important in global flows of goods, people, and information, the
expo – ever a city-scale event – has become the perfect mega-event to signal the coming of age of a
global city aspirant. While (as is argued consistently throughout this volume) Shanghai Expo
continued the historical tradition of representing nations as the geopolitical norm, with the national
pavilions dominating both in terms of their space and their status, but it also reflected upon the rise
of the city and the relevance of global city discourses to the contemporary story of Shanghai.
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Indeed, Shanghai Expo advanced the expo tradition of city-valorization not only through the
promotion of its central theme but also with the introduction of its ‘Urban Best Practices Area’
(UBPA). As we shall see below, this city-scale initiative, which involved 65 exhibitors presenting
their metropolitan reflections on the sustainable development themes of ‘Liveable Cities’,
‘Sustainable Urbanisation’, ‘Protection and Utilisation of Historical Heritages’, and ‘Technological
Innovation in Built Environment’, formed a key representational framework through which the
narrative of urban sustainable development was mobilised.
SHANGHAI AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT
To better understand the dual narratives of urban development on display at Shanghai Expo and the
way these tied to the contemporary urban development trajectories of Shanghai, it is necessary to
try to understand a little of the historical context of Shanghai’s urban development. Historically,
Shanghai has played a central role in Chinese urban development. The Treaty of Nanjing in 1842
saw the opening of the Chinese treaty ports, including Shanghai. British, American and French
concessions followed as Shanghai became the most important port in the region. By the early
twentieth century Shanghai had developed into a complex cosmopolitan trading centre, dubbed by
some as the ‘Paris of the East’ (Wasserman 2009; Chen 2009). China’s designation of Shanghai
(along with 10 others) as a ‘special city’ in 1927 ceded further control to the municipal government.
With their Anglo-American architecture, many of the buildings in The Bund date from this period –
a time when Shanghai dominated Chinese trade flows. By 1936, Shanghai was ranked the seventh
largest city in the world (Yusuf & Wu 2002) and this period saw Shanghai hosting about 90 per
cent of the nation’s banks. The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) merged with the Second
World War and marked a change in fortunes for Shanghai. The Foreign Concessions were
disbanded during this period and the rise of the Communist State saw a shift in the economic arena
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away from Shanghai to Hong Kong.
With the ascension of the Communist regime, urban development was severely handicapped as
revenues from Shanghai were diverted to the Central Government to fund national development.
Urban infrastructure suffered from a sustained lack of investment during this period and rural-urban
migration served to exacerbate urban problems such as overcrowding, traffic congestion, and
pollution. The combined impact of lack of investment and overcrowding resulted in a rise in
informal housing. By 1949, makeshift huts (pengwu) and shacks made up 13.7 per cent of the living
space in Shanghai (Zhu & Qian 2003).
As early as 1959 (and as laid out in the Shanghai Master Plan of that year) there was an awareness
of the need to decentralise urban growth in Shanghai in order to reduce the stresses of urban
development (Haixiao 2006). To facilitate the movement of industry from the inner city, 10 nearby
suburb industry areas and several satellite towns were designated with a view to relieving
population pressure on Shanghai. These urban developments were influenced by British urban
sociology, including the early-twentieth century Garden City designs of Ebenezer Howard (Haixiao
2006). This mid-twentieth century vision of Shanghai’s urban growth relied on the strict control of
settlement patterns through the hukou household registration system. Yet, even with this structural
top-down population control rural-urban migration continued and urban population growth
continued to stand as the main challenge to urban planning. This growth was in part driven by the
labour needs of the growing manufacturing sector in Shanghai as (by 1975) the city had become
China’s leading heavy industrial centre (Wasserman 2009: 95). During the period leading up to the
onset of reforms, this industry-fuelled growth further contributed to the serious deterioration of
urban infrastructure in Shanghai.
6
REFORM AND THE RE-GLOBALISATION OF SHANGHAI
There is little contestation of the fact that China has undergone an unprecedented urban expansion
in the reform period, which began under Deng Xiaoping in 1978 with the intention of producing a
‘socialist market economy’. Since then, the opening-up of China under the reform process has been
an exercise in outward-oriented industrialisation, tied implicitly to processes of urbanisation. Urban
development was positioned by the Chinese government as key to alleviating rural poverty, and
partial reforms to the hukou system were introduced to both account for and facilitate increasing
rural-urban migration. Of the more than 150 million estimated rural-urban migrants to Chinese
cities since the 1980s, approximately 20 to 25 per cent have eventually become permanent urban
residents. The rest have maintained a ‘floating’ pattern, moving back-and-forth between urban and
rural environments (UN-Habitat 2010c).iii
Wasserman (2009) has referred to the remarkable growth of Shanghai under reform as a process of
‘re-globalisation’. This process had its seeds in the move towards reform in the 1970s, but was not
fully realised until Shanghai was more targeted by the reform process. Deng’s reforms initially led
to the development of special economic zones (SEZs) in China, designed as frontier zones in the
process of opening-up the centralised Chinese economy. These first SEZs (including the cities of
Shenzen, Zhuhai and Shantou in Guangdong Province, and the island province of Hainan) were
designed as windows for foreign direct investment (FDI), with special tax incentives and a degree
of legislative autonomy helping to facilitate joint ventures between Chinese and foreign companies,
and an increase in export-oriented flows of Chinese manufactured goods. Following the formation
of the SEZs, in 1984 China opened 14 coastal cities to FDI, including Shanghai. However it was not
until the announcement of the developing and opening of the Pudong New Area (PNA) in 1990 that
Shanghai was embraced as a vanguard city in the Chinese economic reform process. The initial
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omission of Shanghai (and the wider Yangtze Delta Region) from this program of explicit
economic reform has been recognized by Deng himself as an oversight. On his 1992 southern China
tour, Deng conceded:
Looking back, my one major mistake was not to include Shanghai when we set up four special
economic zones. Otherwise, the situation of reform and opening to the outside in the Yangtze River
Delta, the Yangtze River Valley, and even the entire nation would be different.
(qtd. in Wu 2009: 297).
This oversight was reversed in the late 1980s with the removal of restrictive internal tax
mechanisms that distributed the wealth of Shanghai to the less wealthy interior. This was an
important step towards recognising the potential of Shanghai as ‘the head of the dragon’ in the
Yangtze River Valley. However, it was the Pudong New Area that came to represent the new rise of
Shanghai (in both economic and symbolic terms). These changes signalled a commitment by the
national government to allow Shanghai to reignite its global aspirations, to reclaim and attempt to
transcend its earlier status as the ‘Pearl of the Orient’.
The opening of the PNA centred on the development of five functionally specialist key
development zones, including: the Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone on the banks of the Huangpu,
which housed China’s first stock exchange; the Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone, the first of its kind in
China; the Jingiao Export Processing Zone, designed to facilitate the flow of manufactured goods
from China; and the Zhangjiang High-Tech Park. Since 1990 other important infrastructure projects
have included the opening of the Pudong International Airport and a Waigaoqiao deep water
container port, as well as a number of bridges and tunnels across the Huangpu, which functionally
integrate the two sides of the expanded city. The growth of the Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone,
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which sprang from the banks of the Pudong during the 1990s and 2000s, has become a potent
symbol of the transformation of post-reform Shanghai (see Figure 4.1).
Since the designation of the PNA, foreign investment in Shanghai has increased rapidly, growing
from US$ 0.177 billion in 1990 to US$3.25 billion in 1995, and further escalating to US$6.54
billion by 2004. In 1997, 27.5 per cent of the FDI (more than US$1.3 billion) was directed towards
the exploding real estate sector (Wu 2009: 307). According to reports by the City of Shanghai, this
property-led investment has seen more than 6,700 buildings of 11 storeys or more built between
1990 and 2004 (Emporis 2011). Leading up to 2006, this urban redevelopment had seen more than
2.6 million square metres of old housing demolished and 115.9 million square metres of new
housing built. In order to do this, 660,000 households in the inner urban area of Shanghai were
relocated (Wu 2009: 313), moving families from an average per capita living space of 6.6 square
metres in 1990 to 12.1 square metres in 2001 (Wu 2009: 305).
The recent success of Shanghai (and the remarkable growth of the PNA) has been in part due to the
ability of the local provincial government to implement regional urban planning. A key to this was
the reform of land ownership in 1988, which included the Constitutional Amendment Concerning
Land Administration – a commitment from the central government that saw the shift from a
socialist land rights system (where the state holds collective ownership of all property) towards a
partially open property market (based on leasehold agreements), allowing for the lawful transfer of
property rights to individuals or private corporations (Kundu 2001: xxii). This reform led to
subsequent legislation that effected a significant devolution of control over emerging property
markets at the local level. In Shanghai this legislation stipulated that property transactions had to be
made in favour of the Real Estate Development Corporation of Shanghai, providing a necessary
flow of capital for investment in infrastructure by the provincial government (Kundu 2001: xxi).
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These changes have led to in excess of 100 billion Yuan (US$12 billion) in capital raised through
land leasing in Shanghai (Wu 2009: 305) – money which has been used to fund developments such
as the Shanghai mass transit system, now the fourth largest metropolitan transit system in the world.
SHANGHAI, GLOBAL CITY?
The sheer scale of the urban development that has occurred in Shanghai since 1990 has prompted
much discussion about the global trajectory of the city. The state has played a central role in
attempting to attract footloose global capital to Shanghai. The Eleventh Shanghai Five Year Plan
(2006-2010) explicitly positioned Shanghai as a globalising city with the goal of building ‘the city
into one of the economic, finance, trade and shipping centres in the world and a socialist modern
international metropolis by 2020’ (Shanghai Municipal Government 2007: para 1). According to
Wasserman,
Few cities, especially those determinedly striving to be seen as futuristic, are as intensely concerned
with their own past as is post-socialist Shanghai. This shows through, above all, in efforts to use the
treaty-port glory days as proof that Shanghai’s natural destiny is to be a global city. iv
(2009: 131)
Shanghai Expo itself has been seen as a key platform for securing Shanghai’s standing as an
emerging global city (Haixiao 2006). In addition to its focus on developing Shanghai as an
‘international metropolis’, the Eleventh Shanghai Five Year Plan also reinforced the importance of
hosting a ‘successful, splendid and memorable’ Expo (Shanghai Municipal Government 2009: para
3). According to the plan, a successful Expo will be ‘a means to promote the comprehensive
development of the city’, and further “the development of the Yangtze River Delta, the Yangtze
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River Basin and the whole country” (Shanghai Municipal Development and Reform Commission
2006: 224–5). The redevelopment of the expo site following the event has also been framed as an
opportunity to amplify the ‘brand effect’ of Shanghai Expo. Moreover, this is expected to have a
direct impact on Shanghai’s urban future, for example:
Multi-functional public activities centre with integrated functions such as conventions, exhibitions,
tourism, business and trade [...will] become a model for the development and renovation of the
inner city of extra-large metropolises, and an important platform for international exchanges in
Shanghai.
(ibid.: 229).
However, serious questions remain concerning this global city boosterism (Short 1999). Friedmann
(2005) warns against the easy application of western urban development discourses in the Chinese
context, noting the importance of historical urban development and the contemporary Chinese
socio-political landscape in understanding Chinese urban development. In particular, he warns
against seeing the rise of Shanghai’s gleaming business towers as a simple expression of global city
growth. According to Friedmann, the impacts of globalisation on Chinese cities (such as the
manifestation of ‘cultural sterilisation, gentrification and greed’ described by Hald [2009: 15]),
should not be seen as processes of ‘Westernisation’ but rather as processes of modernisation set in a
particular Chinese cultural context. For Friedmann, discourses of globalisation as applied to
Shanghai commonly privilege the impact of external forces ‘to the neglect of internal visions,
historical trajectories, and endogenous capabilities’ in Chinese urban development (2005: xvi). Wu
(2009) also warns against viewing Shanghai as simply an inevitable result of Chinese globalisation,
noting that attempts to internationalise Shanghai have not produced a classic global city that fits
easily within Western global city models (see also Hill & Kim 2000). He contends that despite
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Shanghai’s renaissance and increasing integration into the global system, it is far from realising its
global city status. On a host of different indicators traditionally used to measure global city status –
from trade flows to FDI through to international passenger arrivals and departures – Shanghai lags
behind other global cities (Sung 1996; Yusuf & Wu 2002; Cai & Sit 2003).
For globalising cities such as Shanghai, the ability to mobilise representations of the city as an
important global place have become increasingly relevant as national and city governments attempt
to attract FDI. Acts of boosterism by local place managers become important practices in
constructing a global city imaginary, or ‘imagineering’ of the global city. Beyond the normal place
marketing of cities, Short identifies a ‘specific form of globalising boosterism [...] that is concerned
with positioning the city in a global flow of urban images and discursive practices’ (2004: 84). For
Shanghai, the explicit selling of the globalising city, rooted in its historical legacy as the ‘Paris of
the East’ and symbolised by the shining business towers of Lujiazui, has been a way of signalling
that Shanghai is ‘open for business’ (Short 2004; see also Wu 2009).
Kong (2007, 2009) acknowledges the important role of representation in Shanghai’s globalising
narrative. She notes the certainty with which Shanghai has had ‘clear and overt aspirations to be
part of the race for global city status’ (2007: 387). Beyond the processes of economic integration,
she points to the role of new cultural infrastructure in the form of ‘big symbolic projects’ in the
visions of Shanghai’s ascendency – noting in particular the Shanghai government’s embrace of
cultural development as a central aspect of planning the future city. However, for Kong there is a
disconnect between the development of large scale cultural infrastructure (such as the newly rebuilt
Shanghai Museum, Shanghai Library and Shanghai Grand Theatre) and the meanings attributed to
efforts to (re)ignite culture by ordinary Shanghainese. For the locals, the government’s use of
culture as a tool of propaganda, combined with the strict control over cultural life has ensured these
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cultural icons are ‘distant, unfamiliar places in the urban imagination’ (2007: 395). Large cultural
initiatives like the Shanghai Grand Theatre predominantly cater to the needs of expatriates and
visitors to Shanghai, simultaneously tying these populations into global circuits while alienating
everyday Shanghainese (Kong 2009). As such, these cultural icons have become simultaneous
symbols of sustainability and unsustainability (Kong 2009: 8). The Shanghai Urban Planning
Exhibition Centre (centrally located in the People’s Square nearby to the Grand Theatre) houses the
world’s largest 3-D scale model of a city in its model of the present and future Shanghai (see Figure
4.2). The sheer size of the model is a spectacle in itself. City models of this sort have been
commonly used to clarify understandings of the city as viewed from above – displaying a whole
system operating as the planned sum of its parts. Yet rather than aiding the comprehension of the
city, this Shanghai model acts as a spectacle that dissembles, alienating its viewer ‘from the spatial
and temporal transformations being made in their name’ (Haar 2008: 75). These cultural projects
are integral parts of what the global city is meant to be when viewed from the outside, but remain
somewhat hollow when placed within the quotidian experience of Shanghai culture. As such, it is
possible to discern different ways that representations of the global city appeal to both internal and
external audiences (Short 2004: 84). To realise Shanghai’s global ambitions, cultural planning
moves on apace, with Shanghai building ‘more cultural facilities that will symbolise Shanghai’s
image’ (Shanghai Party Secretary, qtd. in Yatsko 2001: 143). These cultural symbols of reglobalisation have predominantly addressed a global audience; whether future cultural facilities will
be of relevance for local Shanghainese remains to be seen.
The Shanghai Expo can be viewed as a symbolic performance set within these discursive practices
of global cultural representation. The expo played an important role in driving the narrative of
‘opening-up’ reforms in China, and asserted Shanghai’s claims to global significance, as it emerged
as a node connecting the Chinese economy to wider global networks (Sassen 2002). As a symbolic
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performance of economic and cultural strength inscribed on the urban landscape, the expo can be
seen to have played a pivotal role in this re-globalisation narrative. As a major international event it
articulated the intentions of Shanghai to join the ranks of contemporary global cities – and it did so
to a global audience. It is not yet clear what this globalising narrative meant for the Chinese visitors
who made up the bulk of the expo’s attendees.
BETTER CITY, BETTER LIFE?
From 2003 until 2009, the Shanghai Municipal government and the BIE convened a total of seven
annual forums to help flesh out its theme, ‘Better City, Better Life’. The resultant official definition
declared that ‘Better City, Better Life’ represents:
The common wish of the whole humankind for a better living in future urban environments. This
theme represents a central concern of the international community for future policy making, urban
strategies and sustainable development.
(Expo 2010 Shanghai China 2008b: para 1, emphasis added)
In framing the goals of the expo in this manner, this definition proposed a shift away from the
uncritical valorisation of the urban expansionist paradigm. Yet, the Mandarin version of the expo
theme, ‘City, Makes Life Better’, hinted at a contrasting domestic view, where urbanisation remains
a key trope of twenty-first century Chinese modernity. In contrast to the global themes of
sustainable urban development evoked through the English language version, ‘City, Makes Life
Better’ presented an emancipatory narrative to domestic Shanghai Expo visitors that celebrated the
role of the city as a modernising agent and embodied a future of progress disarticulated from
poverty and rural lifestyles.
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SUSTAINABLE SHANGHAI
More than twenty years on from the Brundtland Report, Our Common Future (Brundtland 1987),
sustainable development has moved to the centre of debates about urban growth and effective urban
governance. In China, the massive shift to the city has seen the national government turn towards
global models of sustainable urban development as a means for alleviating urban issues now and in
the future. Sustainable development in China can be traced back to the 1992 UN Conference on
Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, which resulted in the ‘Agenda 21’ document. In
response, the Chinese government established the State Council Environment Commission, which
produced its own Agenda 21 document, placing great emphasis on sustainable development. The
China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED) was also
established in 1992 to ‘further strengthen cooperation and exchange between China and the
international community in the field of environment and development’ (Hald 2009: 42). Friedmann
(1997) identified sustainability as a key factor in the urban transition in China, and his ideas have
subsequently resonated in discussions of sustainable cities in East Asia (Hald 2009: 23), reflecting
the mobility of this global discourse (see McCann 2011). In 2005, the CCICED convened to
establish a policy framework for the implementation of sustainable urban development. The result
was a series of recommendations set around the now traditional three pillars of economic,
environmental and social sustainability. The recommendations included: plan scientifically for
sustainable urbanisation through policy setting; implementation and enforcement; transform
China’s urban areas into resource-saving cities and towns; continuously improving urban
environments; and provide public information and allow for participation for sustainable
development (qtd. in Hald 2009: 42). This focus on sustainable urban development has led more
recently to the designation of 20 ‘eco-cities’ across China, including Dongtan on the Island of
15
Chongming in the mouth of the Yangtze, which is administered by the Shanghai Municipal
Government .
Despite intentions to pursue sustainable urban development at the national level, there remain
significant barriers to implementation. The sheer scale of urban growth has implications for
attempts to manage even basic urban infrastructure such as adequate sewerage and water treatment
and waste removal. For example, the CCICED identified 155 cities where there were no treatment
facilities for hazardous waste, and noted that about two thirds of Chinese cities are unable to
adequately deal with residential garbage removal (qtd. in Hald 2009: 28). Further, historic tensions
between central and provincial government has resulted in a lack of coherence in urban governance.
According to Wu, Xu and Yeh (2007), the Chinese government has retreated from its social
responsibility in urban redevelopment, resulting in the foregrounding of economic benefits over
social objectives.
Sustainability has become a global discourse, but there is little consensus as to what ‘sustainability’
actually means. Fowke and Prasad (1996) have identified more than 80 different definitions of
‘sustainable development’, reflecting the complexity of questions concerning what to sustain, who
should benefit, and what may be the best means of achieving sustainable goals (Agyeman, Bullard
& Evans 2002). Recognising a definitional spectrum, Davidson (2010) notes that the everyday
meaning of sustainability signifies a sense of change, or a notion of transformation.
SHANGHAI AND THE EXPO
On the Shanghai Expo site itself, different representations of urban development also served to
reinforce a dual narrative of sustainable urban development. In the Chinese Provinces Pavilion, the
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Shanghai Pavilion (with its theme ‘New Horizons Forever’; see Figure 4.3) took the form of an
immersive 3-D animated film experience. Sixty people at a time were strapped into a mobile
platform to view the seven-minute animated film. The film traced the developmental history of
Shanghai through a series of fictionalised vignettes, which included a celebratory flight through the
gleaming towers of Lujiazui and culminated in visions of a green urban future. The final images of
the film saw the heroine step under a shower of artificial light to be miraculously transformed into a
younger woman – a vision of a technological ‘fountain of youth’. The combination of the
multimedia ride and technologically determined solutions to problems facing cities and their
residents sat well within a history of expo spectacles that have entertained more than educated the
public (for more on this, see Scott East’s chapter in this volume).
The Shanghai Pavilion, with an exterior that evoked the glorious past of Shanghai through the
inclusion of a replica Shikumen (stone gated house) doorway alongside a wall of images of
mundane Shanghai life (selected from 40,000 photos submitted by Shanghai residents; see Figure 5)
made explicit reference to the sustainable urban development theme of the expo, but gave no
indication of means bv which to realise this particular version of a sustainable urban future. This
was a larger investment in the expo theme than most of the other thirty provincial pavilions, where
sustainable urban development appeared to be of subsidiary interest.
In line with the tenets of the BIE, the Chinese province pavilions mostly produced visions of human
progress – and where sustainability was present it was as an enabling discourse, providing a
pathway to a ‘limitless future’. Here the focus was on the specific industrial specialisations of
particular cities –product of strategic planning at a national level. Other dominant themes included
distinctive natural landscapes and the presence of cultural minorities, which were often
problematically represented as homogenous and static. Throughout these pavilions, the
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overwhelming trend was to present a series of provincial snapshots designed to appeal to the
domestic tourist market, rather than to showcase sustainable urban development. Indeed, the
spectacle of urban sustainability consumed by the masses in this part of the expo sat well in a long
history (stretching back to the earliest expos) of technological determinist visions of social futures
and imperial power.
By contrast, across the river in the Urban Best Practices Area more than sixty city case studies from
China and around the world emphasised good urban design and sustainable urban living in the
present. Among these the ‘Shanghai UBPA Case Pavilion’ consisted of a local ‘green building
project’, moved from its original location in the city’s southwest Xinghuang area in the Minhang
District for exhibition at the event. Known as the Shanghai ‘eco-house’, this structure was an
example of functioning sustainable urban development, and was clearly aimed at those more
attuned to this universalising narrative. Here, China’s exhibit sought to enable networks of relations
with global institutions (such as UN-Habitat) and other cities tied to the global economy.
The differences across China’s pavilions align with the nation’s different thematic interpretations of
the expo. The global discourse of sustainable urban development (‘Better City, Better Life’) was
more clearly articulated in the Urban Best Practices Area, whilst domestic discourse about the
emancipatory power of the modern city – where Shanghai ‘Makes Life Better’ – was more
explicitly exhibited in the Shanghai provincial pavilion.
The success of these dual narratives cannot be objectively measured, but the empty streets of the
Urban Best Practices Area starkly contrasted the packed pathways of the Chinese Provinces
Pavilion and the two-hour queue to enter the Shanghai provincial pavilion (see Figures 4.3). It
appears that plans for the near future cultural and ecological development of the city mapped out in
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the Urban Best Practices Area remained distant to the predominantly Chinese visitors to the expo,
who preferred to consume the spectacle of the ‘Better City’ that tied in more clearly with the
contemporary urbanisation taking place in China.
SHANGHAI, MAKES LIFE BETTER?
Beyond the expo, the theme of green development has taken hold in China. The recently announced
Twelfth Five-Year National Economic Plan (2011-2015) holds sustainability at its core, urging
government to: ‘Use technology and administration to transform (the) mode of development to an
eco-friendly and low-carbon lifestyle. Ensure that economic development confirms with
environmental protection’ (Karlenzig 2010: para 7). However, the reality of sustainable urban
development on the ground is more difficult to discern. There are eco-cities and projects for green
cities (such as that intended to ‘green’ Shanghai, on show in the Shanghai Urban Planning
Exhibition Centre), and the Shanghai Municipal Government has made plans to use the examples
exhibited in the Urban Best Practices Area to ‘shape its low carbon economy and promote the new
energies, materials, energy-efficient low carbon technologies and products’ (Xiaodu 2010: 4). As
Tim Winter notes in the Introduction to this volume, the Urban Best Practices Area is set to become
a ‘creative and cultural park’ in the post-expo redevelopment of the site. Recent reports suggest the
site will be redeveloped as ‘a center for conferences and exhibitions, tourism and leisure, external
exchange activities and high-end internationally-focused service sectors’ (Xiaodu 2010: 4). The
Expo Village, which provided staff accommodation, is to be transformed over the next five years
into an international community, and other areas are being ‘reserved for future development’
(Feishang 2011). As in waterfront makeovers in globalising post-industrial cities elsewhere,
questions could be asked about local access to this global space and the impacts of new-build
gentrification on local populations. Yet these are questions which are not often broached in a city
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that has built a modern metropolis on top of the bones of the old Shanghai in just 20 years.
Ultimately, how this new global site will sit within the rest of the city remains to be seen.
Historically, expos have been a mix of cultural display and technological innovation, hinting at
urban futures rather than performing a prescriptive role. The Shanghai Expo was no exception in
this respect. But the divergent ways in which the future of Shanghai was presented at the expo
appeared to conform with Kong’s (2007) analysis that there exists a disconnect between the global
discourse of sustainable urban development and the drive to modernise China through urbanisation.
Of course, the separation between these discourses is somewhat artificial – they intersect and
interpenetrate each other such that they can be thought of as ‘glocal’, rather than global and local..
For Shanghai, perhaps more than for other globalising cities, the global city narrative is wedded
firmly to its national context. Shanghai is certainly a globalising city, but the type of global city it
will become will be strongly influenced by both its global and national contexts.
iMost particularly, see Murphy 1988; Yeung & Sung 1996; Yatsko 1996, 2001; Olds 1997, 2001; Wu 1999; Gu & Chen
1999; Wu 2000a, 2000b, 2002, 2009; Wu & Yusuf 2004; Yusuf & Wu 2002; Gu & Tang 2002; Ye 2004;
Wasserman 2009; Chen 2009.
iiThis is reflected in the emblem of the BIE, which symbolically represents ‘the future evolution of humanity, technical
development, moral and material progress, the ascension towards a better world. The circle symbolises peace,
fraternity and cultural exchanges between people. The horizontal lines represent the steps towards a future of
limitless progress’ (BIE 2010f: para 4).
iiiUN-Habitat reported that the Chinese floating population increased from 6 million in 1979 to 211 million in 2009. In
2009, the total rural migrant population living in urban areas was 230 million (UN Habitat 2010b).
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ivIndeed, Wu (2009) notes that the use of the term ‘international’ in describing any Chinese city is synonymous with
aspiration for global or world city status.
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