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Shanghai's green heart : In the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum you'll find a full-scale model of the entire city (it covers an entire floor) complete with miniature replicas of all the important architectural milestones dotted around the city. -
Shanghai's green heart : The now-famous Shanghai skyscraper skyline on The Bund. On the opposite side is an eclectic selection of architectural styles: a leftover of the many foreign influences left in the city as a result of the opium wars. -
Shanghai's green heart : The view from the 263 floor of the Oriental Pearl TV tower: an iconic presence on The Bund. The building with the hole at its peak is the Shanghai World Finance Centre, which will be surpassed in 2014 by the twisted Shanghai Tower. -
Shanghai's green heart : Even the less iconic buildings in Shanghai are an impressive collective. Driving around the city is like an architectural masterclass documenting 20th and 21st century styles. -
Shanghai's green heart : Many of the buildings have spires and glass facades (in many shades of colours), which reflect beautifully in the early morning and late afternoon, giving the city a distinct futuristic and almost sci-fi persona. -
Shanghai's green heart : One of the last Buddhist temples in existence in Shanghai. Its sense of history and gold colouring radiates a spiritual presence in the middle of this 21st century landscape. -
Shanghai's green heart : One of the most obvious green spaces in a city are its parks, but in Shanghai (and the rest of China) public parks are landscaped into works of art. -
Shanghai's green heart : The most noticeable thing in Shanghai is how its residents use and appreciate their green spaces. It's hard to believe that this restful scene took place on a pavement in one of the busiest shopping areas in the city. -
Shanghai's green heart : Living walls are commonplace in the city, and again, are beautifully designed, providing “green art” in the most unexpected places. This stretch of vertical garden is situated at one of the main access points to The Bund. -
Shanghai's green heart : Another example of “green art”: a plant sculpture on a busy intersection. You have to look carefully to really see what it is: a bust of a woman with her hands up, cradling a flock of white birds - also made of plants. -
Shanghai's green heart : An example of a green “wedge”. Just a regular traffic island, but lovingly landscaped and maintained. -
Shanghai's green heart : The pleasantly surprising sight of individual planters used to line the highways. Considering the length and number of highways, it's mind-boggling to conceive how many of these individual planters there are. -
Shanghai's green heart : An aerial view of a busy intersection that displays all three green applications: circles, corridors and wedges. Note the circular pedestrian walkway that floats above the intersection, allowing pedestrians easy and safe passage around the area.
WORDS: Dion Chang
When you think of China, you probably think about factories, sweat shops and cheap labour: an unstoppable economic force that’s steam rolling its way into the 21st century and across the planet. Dion Chang admits that the last thing he would have associated with Shanghai was greenery.
On a recent trip to China my own misconceptions were quickly shattered, especially in Shanghai, a city that is home to 23 million people. One of the places I was lucky enough to visit was Shanghai’s Urban Planning Museum. Shanghai is a futuristic metropolis with some of the world’s most progressive architecture. It’s also spotless. I was keen to see how it’s possible to plan and manage a city of this magnitude, and make it run so efficiently.
One of the most impressive sections of the museum was a floor devoted to Shanghai’s green philosophy. With so much concrete and with summer temperatures nudging 40 degrees, the city planners use plants to not only help cool the city down, but also to assist with eliminating pollution: plants also make for a very pretty city.
Five components make up the city’s green philosophy. Wherever they could, the city planners would implement greening via circles, wedges, corridors, parks and finally, on the edge of the city, forests. The first three are only noticeable once you understand the pre-planning involved.
Whenever you reach a spaghetti junction of highways, you find an incredible circular garden. In between the tall (and ubiquitous) apartment blocks, you’ll see corridors of green, and in between roads and buildings, wherever there’s a wedge-shaped space, it will be green.
One of the most remarkable sights was a string of planters (much like window-box planters) hugging the edge of the highways. There were literally thousands of them, and all planted with real vegetation. I’m not sure how – and by whom – these are maintained, but they make a subtle yet enormous difference to what could be just another concrete jungle.
From now on I will always think of Shanghai first and foremost as a green city, rather than for the futuristic, skyscraper skyline it has become known for.
* Dion Chang is a corporate trend analyst and design consultant. He is also a freelance journalist, columnist and social commentator. www.fluxtrends.com
