World Cities Shanghai. . - Books: Pearl of the Orient - book review

Architectural Review, The, August, 2002 by Martin Pawley

By Alan Balfour & Zheng Shiling. Chichester: Wiley-Academy. 2002. [pounds sterling]75

As one would expect from his earlier dramatic studies of Berlin and New York, Alan Balfour's bumper book of Shanghai is neither the work of a ragged trousered philanthropist, nor easy reading for the rabid metropolitan booster. Instead it straddles both extremes in a bid to master the tormented history and megalopolitan future of the Chinese 'world city'. Like dam-builders, Balfour and a highly placed Chinese collaborator have set to work to stem and organize the torrential waste of meaning that was twentieth-century Shanghai and channel it into the twenty-first by way of mixed-use office towers, shopping malls, freeways, born-again trains and high profile pedestrianization.

In this sense Balfour breaks free from the stereotypical city picture book by embracing the post-historical non-judgmental, no longer accountable, out of control, nobody to blame, let 'er rip view of the city instead--an approach that turns out to be so apposite that a generation ago it might have been described as 'oriental' itself

With a third of his book devoted to Shanghai history, beginning with the Imperial Dynasties two thousand years ago, Balfour has a lot of ground to cover, much of it as political as it is architectural. Out of it, and out of the sorry saga of twentieth-century Sino-European relations, he produces surprising insights. The collaboration of Vichy France with the Japanese rulers of occupied China for instance meant that the 1942 competition to masterplan Japanese Shanghai was nearly won by a scheme inspired by Le Corbusier, whom Balfour describes as 'the most heroic architect of Germany's ally'.

Less tantalizing is the heavily illustrated remainder of the book which has project descriptions and illustrations of large buildings erected in the city since Western influence returned, and unexecuted projects. And there are two short chapters by the enthusiastic director of the Urban Space and Environment Committee of the Shanghai Urban Planning Commission, Zheng Shiling; and mosaic 'Photo Essays' with pictures by the author.