Abstract

A city is much more than buildings – it is a way of social relations, a way of understanding the world, a language, a rich bank of memories and images. Shanghai's authorities, in changing the buildings, are seeking to control the latter categories, shaping the personality of the city as it heads towards ‘global city’ ambitions. What, then, is the direction that it is going towards? What is the vision for the future of Shanghai, not in terms of buildings but in terms of the soul of the city? Is the city the product of our mutually imagined image of it? Rem Koolhaas wrote of Manhattan that it was ‘delirious’, wild with organic growth. Shanghai's growth in contrast is deliberate, purposeful, intentional, entirely planned. This chapter will explore issues in Shanghai's urbanism, addressing why architecture is the language in which the contemporary spirit of the city expresses itself best, how the city has tried to ‘brand’ itself, the conditions that have been made possible by the post-1984 economic situation. It will also address at length the World Expo, which took place in 2010. I will argue that downtown Shanghai is being crafted into a symbol of just how modern China is – and it is, there's some substance there – but the degree to which it is a managed image, with clear utility to the state of making it seem that way, is my subject. The narrative of the Expo seems to be precisely that redemption, or a ‘better life’, will come through infrastructural and economic change and the greater access to technology that it will provide, and not through political change (which at best is acknowledged as an unfortunate side effect). However, as writer Wang Anyi notes, ‘There is something to be said for illusions. Though lacking substance, illusions can serve as the basis on which more substantive structures can be built’. In spite of the obsessive attempts on the part of the state to manage Shanghai's growth, the city remains a zone of explosive potentialities, and an exploration of the liberatory potential inherent in the urban form now emerging will conclude my discussion.