SHANGHAI

The city we decided to focus on is Shanghai. It is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper by population in the world. It is one of the four direct-controlled municipalities of China, with a total population of near 24 million as of 2013. It is a global financial center, and a transport hub with the world's busiest container port. Located in the Yangtze River Delta in East China, Shanghai sits at the mouth of the Yangtze River in the middle portion of the Chinese coast. The municipality borders the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the north, south and west, and is bounded to the east by the East China Sea. (Wikipedia)

The Shanghai Tower will dominate the skyline when completed. Illustration: Gensler, Source: The Guardian

1. OBSERVATIONS: IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEMS AND THE LOCATION

Like many mega cities in the world, Shanghai suffers from a long list of issues such as pollution, congestion, waste management and energy consumption ((SIEMENS, 2010)Along these physical issues also lies a long list of social concerns which originates from this city’s rapid speed of demographic growth and economic development.

The Phenomenon of the ‘Spare Cash Paradox’

This social phenomenon describes people’s inability to enjoy leisure time and income simultaneously ((“Working Hard or Hardly Working? Trends in China’s Leisure Economy,” 2012);(“People,” 2012)). The term leisure city was invented to describe a slower paced way of life, where people can enjoy a pot of green tea siting around old-fashioned square tables or simply relaxing in the shade, and whilst Shanghai is one of China’s fastest developing cities and enjoys some of the highest income levels, it is only ranked 177^th out of 343 places as a ‘leisure’ city. Shanghai’s busy lifestyle and competitive job market means that most of its citizens have to struggle with the ‘spare cash paradox’ (“Working Hard or Hardly Working? Trends in China’s Leisure Economy,” 2012).

Statistics from the survey also showed that the nation’s favourite leisure time activity is TV watching and internet surfing (“People,” 2012) with further evidence from (Fadiman, 2014) suggesting that the middle generations are becoming less connected to green spaces.

This issue does not lie on the lack of public green spaces; there are currently 153 city parks in Shanghai but despite the local government’s continuing effort to increase the amount of green space per capita (Shi, 2012), they are simply not being used. Among many other reasons such as the spare cash paradox, is the public’s fear of being exposed to pollution as China’s pollution issues intensify and the lack of easy access to these green spaces that would be fully integrated into the city workers’ lives (Dan Washburn, 2003) rather than simply being a decorative green patch.

Pudong, an Instant City

Before the 1990s Lujiazui, Pudong was an under-developed area full of docks, warehouses and farmland. However, its fate changed with the establishment of Pudong New District in 1990. In addition to the existing Central Business District to the west of the river Yangtze (also known as Puxi), the government envisioned a second economic engine for the 21^st century Shanghai. The desire to expose Shanghai to the western world and become an international communications, trade and financial centre has predominantly/exclusively determined Lujiazui’s urban design and development.

The mono-financial design theme excluded other functions required to form a self-sufficient city. Driven by the objective of better ‘business’ efficiency, a clear functional zoning was applied to the 1.7 square kilometres area where approximately 80 financial institutions stand (Xue et al., 2011). The accelerated development of Lujiazui through simultaneous planning and constructing also made any highly integrated design concepts such as elevated circulation system for pedestrian extremely difficult. Furthermore, cars had unchallengeable priory whilst comfort for pedestrians and cyclists was largely sacrificed due to this motor vehicle oriented traffic planning scheme.

Masked climber Vadim Makhorov on a crane atop the Shanghai Tower following the two-hour ascent. Photograph: Vitaly Raskarov/Caters News Agency, Source: The Guardian

Whilst the existing Century Avenue aimed to redeem the lack of human touch in Lujiazui’s design, the unprocessed nor adapted design from its French inspiration the Champs-E’lyse’es has brought extra inconvenience to the pedestrians with this excessively wide (100m) avenue (Xue et al., 2011).

Seen from the Bund, the urban design success of Lujiazui can be described as scenic (RC, 2011) and despite its financial success, the beauty and experience of living in Lujiazui was sacrificed (Zhai, 2012). As a result of the monotonous architecture, the monumental built forms and disproportionately large streets there is a lack of space where human activities can take place.

Finally, although there are many motor vehicle based links between Puxi and Pudong, there is no existing pedestrian bridge which links Lujiazui to the historically and culturally rich old city center of Shanghai.

Having these ideas and problems in mind and the aspirations described above, the team went on to brainstorm on potential solutions for the city of Shanghai. The ideas were more than one but we had to find the one that would satisfy the city’s needs and the team members’ demands. Our main focusses in the early stages of the project were pollution and the tendancy of the Chinese to forget the means of transport that dominated commuting in the city for centuries; the bicycle. However, the city’s increased amounts of forced us to re-evaluate our design options.

Our initial thoughts were to produce a design which was provocative, disruptive and innovative: We wanted to explore the idea of breaking the city’s functions by transforming one of the main highways into a green space. A principle of transport design says that “the more space we create, the more cars we allow in our cities”. Our thought was simple: to decrease the space of cars –and therefore the number of cars- and create spaces for people and –of course- their bikes!

Our concept at this stage included the transformation of one of the major interchanges of the city. This would incorporate green public spaces where people could go for a walk or even do sports. We also managed to fit the bicycles in our idea: at the bottom of the structure, there would be new bicycle stations which people would only rent by recycling something. We were aware that the financial situation of many of the citizens in the area was poor so were confident that they would be very keen in the idea of moving from one part of the city to another for free. And since they will be using these bikes often they would care for them too.

One of the major problems was the way to power this new “park”. After conducting some research, we came across some paving slabs to convert energy from people's footsteps into electrical power. It was later concluded that these would not provide all of the necessary power, however the panels would still provide an interesting conversation starter and a method of improving the energy consumption awareness of the public.

Augmented with solar panels, we now had the tools to create a space that would run with free energy, promote recycling and social interaction, contribute to the improvement of the local microclimate and most importantly, transform the lives of the citizens of Shanghai.

All that remained was to choose a format for our new space. After much consideration and debate, it was decided that the most suitable choice would be to design an elevated, partially enclosed green walkway system. The system would have several routes to facilitate easy and pleasant pedestrian movement through one of the busiest areas of the city. To add value to the project, a new bridge across the river Huangpu was proposed to link the city’s old and new town areas.