View from Shanghai: Darryl Chen's Shanghai is more a process than a static cityscape: an explosion of object buildings is tempered by new infrastructure, parks and conservation - View

Architectural Review, The, Feb, 2003 by Darryl Chen

Municipal agencies have now identified nearly four hundred structures and 11 districts as 'fine historic buildings and zones', for example, detached garden houses in the former French concession. Such policy seeks to preserve an urban form unique among Chinese cities, though a clear strategy for their ownership, upkeep and protection has yet to be approved.

A parallel phenomenon to the displacement of lower class residents sees citizens from the burgeoning middle class renting closer to the centre of the city in a glut of residential apartment complexes. Developers have been having a field day buying rights and providing upmarket housing in the form of post-modern pastiches taking on such names as Versailles and the French Riviera. Further up the economic scale, developers are also pillaging the worst of Western sprawl with gated communities and suburban replica villages in far flung Pudong, Gubei and Hongqiao districts.

Exemplars of contemporary architecture are still mainly the domain of foreign architects -- SOM, KPF, Jerde, Foster, MVRDV, Wood Zapata, Arquitectonica and RTKL all have projects here, with Tange, Graves and many others well on the way. While the presence of foreign design expertise is upping the ante with local design institutes and contributing to an international standardized cityscape, these buildings with notable exceptions are largely singular monuments. Planning authorities, property developers and architects have rarely beneficially focused interests. The Lujiazui financial districts opposite the Bund and the rest of Pudong have succumbed to engineering-led urban planning and scaleless development parcels which leave little opportunity for an urbane pedestrian environment. Huaihai and Nanjing roads have developed as credible 'market streets' and their skylines have given hierarchy to the city's urban form. As the public domain is upgraded and the built fabric stitched together over time, hopefully we will see a more legible environment for humans within this realm of isolated shopping malls and high-rise towers.

The urban architecture of Shanghai is the physical corollary of the paradoxes and conflicts in current political dogma, a turbulent modern history and an inherently flexible and resourceful people.