How and why contemporary Shanghai has taken the form it has over the last thirty years and its role in the ‘‘New’’ Shanghai through the underlying top—down governance and planning process? Answering this question, rather than taking solely the historical path in documenting the process of development, this article represents an attempt to make sense of the process of development through the underlying forces that shaped and reshaped the physical forms of the city. Particularly, this article looks at distinctive spatial forms and social and political formations associated with Shanghai before, under, and after the Mao Zedong. By weaving planning history with critical analysis of Chinese sociopolitics, this article chronologically traces the formative history of Shanghai’s unique urbanism, building on existing literature and provides a wide coverage of the episodic accounts of Shanghai’s planning history. When the role of individuals in the making of Shanghai becomes obvious especially after the reform in the early 1980s, this article pays attention to their roles in the development of Shanghai and the ‘‘power and politics’’ they represented, which fostered the resurrection of the city.
Shanghai Statistical Yearbook, ed. Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau (Shanghai, China: China Statistics Press, 2009).
2.
Non Arkaraprasertkul, ‘‘Politicisation and the Rhetoric of Shanghai Urbanism,’’ Footprint, no. 2 (2008); Non Arkaraprasertkul, Shanghai Contemporary: The Politics of Built Form: How Divergent Planning Methods Transformed Shanghai’s Urban Identity (Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM, 2009); Non Arkaraprasertkul, ‘‘Visualizing Shanghai: The Ascendancy of the Skylines,’’ East Asian Studies Journal 12, no. 2 (2008): 1-39; Non Arkaraprasertkul, ‘‘Towards Modern Urban Housing: Redefining Shanghai’s lilong,’’ Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability 2, no. 1 (2009): 11-29; Non Arkaraprasertkul, ‘‘Beyond Preservation: Rebuilding Old Shanghai,’’ Exposition Magazine of the University of Oxford (2010).
3.
As opposed to just ‘‘foreign interventions’’ that happened throughout the dynastic history of China especially by the Mongols.
4.
Linda Cooke Johnson, Shanghai: From Market Town to Treaty Port, 1074-1858 ( Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995).
5.
Mark Elvin, ‘‘Market Towns and Waterways: The County of Shanghai from 1480 to 1910,’’ in The City in Late Imperial China, ed. G. William Skinner ( Stanford : Stanford University Press, 1977 ), 441-76.
6.
The classic example is a sign ‘‘No Dogs or Chinese Allowed’’ at the entrance of a park in foreign-leased territory (i.e., race court and the Bund waterfront) in Shanghai, which fought with the strong sense of ‘‘ethnic nationalism’’-an articulation of ‘‘Han Chinese’’ identity, dealing with the preconceived notion that they were the initiators of the civilization.
7.
Elvin, ‘‘Market Towns,’’ 454.
8.
Samuel Y. Liang , ‘‘Where the Courtyard Meets the Street: Spatial Culture of the Li Neighborhoods, Shanghai, 1870-1900,’’Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians67, no. 4 (2008): 497-501.
9.
There is a wealth of literature on the history, design, and planning of the lilong houses, which are considered the ‘‘first hybrid form of western intervention’’ in terms of architectural design that largely affected the planning in Shanghai. For those interested in exploring this in detail, see Arkaraprasertkul, ‘‘Towards Modern Urban Housing: Redefining Shanghai’s lilong’’; Qian Guan, ‘‘Lilong Housing, a Traditional Settlement Form’’ (McGill University, 1996); Paul Harley Hammond, ‘‘Community Eclipse and Shanghai’s Lilong’’ (University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006); D. Louise Morris, Community or Commodity?: A Study of Lilong Housing in Shanghai (Centre for Human Settlements, School of Community and Regional Planning, University of British Columbia, 1994); Wan-Lin Tsai, ‘‘The Redevelopment and Preservation of Historic Lilong Housing in Shanghai’’ (University of Pennsylvania, 2008); Chunlan Zhao, ‘‘From Shikumen to New-Style: Arereading of Lilong Housing in Modern Shanghai-the Journal of Architecture,’’ The Journal of Architecture 9, no. 1 (2004): 49-76; Liang, ‘‘Courtyard Meets.’’
10.
Chinese Cities: The Growth of the Metropolis since 1949, ed. Liming Dong and Fengxuan Xue ( Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1985), 1.
11.
Hanchao Lu , Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday Shanghai in the Early Twentieth Century (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999); Bryna Goodman, Native Place, City, and Nation: Regional Networks and Identities in Shanghai, 1853-1937 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995).
12.
Peter G. Rowe, Architectural Encounters with Essence and Form in Modern China, ed. Seng Kuan ( Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 36.
13.
Rhoads Murphey , Shanghai: Key to Modern China ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953); Rhoads Murphey, The Treaty Ports and China’s Modernization: What Went Wrong? (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, Center for Chinese Studies, 1970 ).
14.
The process of negotiation and renegotiation between foreigners, especially the British in China-their own relationship with their Chinese business counterparts played a salient role in the maintenance of foreign spatial identity in Shanghai. See details in Robert A. Bickers, Britain in China: Community Culture and Colonialism, 1900-1949, Studies in Imperialism (Manchester, NY:: Manchester University Press, Distributed exclusively in the USA by St. Martin’s Press, 1999).
15.
Liang, ‘‘Courtyard Meets,’’ 483.
16.
Leo Ou-fan Lee , Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
17.
Christine Boyer, as cited in Mario Gandelsonas, M. A. Abbas, and M. Christine Boyer, Shanghai Reflections: Architecture, Urbanism and the Search for an Alternative Modernity: Essays, 1st ed., Princeton Papers on Architecture 3 (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002), 57.
18.
Lu, Beyond the Neon Lights; Frederic E. Wakeman and Wen-Hsin Yeh, Shanghai Sojourners, China Research Monograph (Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies Center for Chinese Studies, 1992).
19.
Marie-Claire Bergère, Shanghai: China’s Gateway to Modernity, trans. Janet Lloyd (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).
20.
Christian Henriot, Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai: A Social History 1849-1949 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 30.
21.
Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Global Shanghai, 1850-2010: A History in Fragments ( London : Routledge, 2009), 68-9.
22.
Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom , ‘‘New Approaches to Old Shanghai,’’Journal of Interdisciplinary History32, no. 2 ( 2001): 227. In addition, for additional references, the form of collaboration between different groups of people from different nationalities during the time is well documented in Sherman Cochran, Encountering Chinese Networks: Western, Japanese, and Chinese Corporations in China, 1880-1937 ( Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000).
23.
Ad hoc interventions such as the commercial street Nanjing Road and brothel street Fuzhou Road emerged as the locus of a burgeoning hybrid commercial culture that combined both Western and Chinese elements to serve. See Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial Culture in Shanghai, 1900-1945, ed. Sherman Cochran (Ithaca, NY: East Asia Program, Cornell University, 1999 ).
24.
There were also significant inputs from many Chinese, such as business entrepreneurs with strong connections with other parts of China; hence, in this article I refer to areas controlled by foreigners as ‘‘significant portions’’ of built environment. The study of the economical confluence of these business entrepreneurs could be found in Ibid; Cochran, Encountering Chinese Networks: Western, Japanese, and Chinese Corporations in China, 1880-1937; Goodman, Native Place, City, and Nation: Regional Networks and Identities in Shanghai, 1853-1937.
25.
I rely on the account of these mainstream historians of Shanghai. Alan Balfour, Shanghai, ed. Shiling Zheng (London: Wiley-Academy, 2002); Bergère, Shanghai: China’s Gateway to Modernity; William Kirby, ‘‘The Chinese Century?’’ in Harvard Center Shanghai Celebratory Reception and Banquet (Shanghai, China, 2010); Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945; Murphey, Shanghai: Key to Modern China; Wasserstrom, Global Shanghai, 1850-2010: A History in Fragments; Murphey, The Treaty Ports and China’s Modernization: What Went Wrong?
26.
H.J. Lethbridge , All About Shanghai and Environs: A Standard Guide Book, Historical and Contemporary Facts and Statistics, Illustrated with Maps and Photographs (Shanghai: The University Press, 1936; reprint, Hong Kong: Earnshaw Books, 2008).
27.
It did not lead to an industrial revolution; otherwise, Shanghai today might be very different. See Marie-Claire Bergère, The Golden Age of the Chinese Bourgeoisie, 1911-1937, trans. Janet Lloyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
28.
Sun Zhongshan in Mandarin Chinese.
29.
Some call it the Guomindang in standard PRC pinyin system.
30.
Balfour, Shanghai, 75.
31.
Known to scholars as the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945).
32.
Kirby, ‘‘The Chinese Century?’’ In other words, it is useful to emphasize here the history of the pre-reform Shanghai is attributed to two factors: the role of foreigners in the making of China’s first treaty port city and the role of Mao Zedong in the early years of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Mao is a significant figure in turning Shanghai into a socialist urban center, reversing the capitalist process to force the city to return to the state of communal-oriented as opposed to the profit-oriented society, which was what Shanghai had been from the late nineteenth century onward until 1949.
33.
Iván Szelényi, Urban Inequalities under State Socialism, The Library of Political Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 4-9.
34.
R.J.R. Kirkby , Urbanization in China: Town and Country in a Developing Economy, 1949-2000 A.D (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).
35.
Ibid., 5-6.
36.
Fulong Wu , ‘‘Changes in the Structure of Public Housing Provision in Urban China,’’Urban Studies (Routledge)33, no. 9 (1998): 1601-28.
37.
China’s Urban Space: Development under Market Socialism, ed. T. G. McGee (London : Routledge, 2007), 122-25.
38.
Jos Gamble, Shanghai in Transition: Changing Perspectives and Social Contours of a Chinese Metropolis (London: RoutledgeCurzon , 2003), 8.
39.
Mao’s socialist views focused on social structuring through the diminishing of class conflict at the policy level and did not put the emphasis on the planning of physical planning urban space. Throughout the Maoist years, despite the fact that Shanghai had always been China’s largest city-5.3 million during the early Maoist period to 11.2 toward the end-Shanghai’s infrastructure upgrading needs had not been acknowledged by the government in Beijing and its function was simply generating revenue for the whole nation.
40.
There was an increase in building construction since the early 1980s, which presents a sharp contrast to the neglect of investment in the urban built environment in Mao’s centrally planned economic regime. Marketization began to influence the allocation of resources in urban construction. Service sector demanded the development of high-rise buildings, and not for long land market has inevitably come to play the central role in the process of the acquisition of spaces in Shanghai.
41.
Yawei Chen , ‘‘Shanghai Pudong: Urban Development in an Era of Global-Local Interaction’’ (Doctral thesis, Technische Universiteit , Delft, 2007), 54-65.
42.
Reforming Asian Socialism: The Growth of Market Institutions , ed. John McMillan, Barry Naughton, and San Diego Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies University of California ( Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press , 1996), 86-8.
43.
Richard Marshall , Emerging Urbanity: Global Urban Projects in the Asia Pacific Rim (London: Spon Press, 2003), 88.
44.
Willy Wo-Lap Lam , The Era of Jiang Zemin (SingaporePrentice Hall, 1999), 363-65.
David Harvey , A Brief History of Neoliberalism ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 120-21.
47.
It is quite interesting to note that during this time when the reform expanded to more urban and complicated economic issues in 1984, there were debates among the members of the CCP to what degree China should allow itself to be ‘‘spiritually polluted’’ by the Western or the influence of the bourgeois, which did not stop the process of rapid urbanization.
48.
Shanghai Statistical Yearbook.
49.
Zemin Jiang , ‘‘Speech Given at the Luncheon Hosted by the America China Society, the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, the U.S.-China Policy Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Asia Society.’’The Asia Society, http://www.asiasociety.org/policy-politics/international-relations/us-asia/speech-president-jiang-zemin-the-peoples-republic-ch.
50.
The New Chinese City: Globalization and Market Reform, ed. John R. Logan (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 20-21.
51.
Despite ‘‘some skepticism’’ that Shanghai might not indeed need that much space to accommodate such increasing demands; see details of the debate in Anne Haila, ‘‘Why is Shanghai Building a Giant Speculative Property Bubble?’’International Journal of Urban and Regional Research23, no. 3 (1999): 583-88.
52.
Gregory C. Chow , Knowing China (Singapore: World Scientific Press, 2004), 183.
53.
Ibid., 93.
54.
Xiaoping Deng , ‘‘Excerpts from Speeches Delivered in Southern China between 18 January and 21 February, 1992’’(undated) .
55.
Economists and human geographers argue that the this stage is most pivotal to the reform because it was the period that private sector was acknowledged and accepted for the first time; in addition to the restructure of the banking system, foreign trade, and foreign investment in favor of economic growth. The most important feature is arguably the administrative and regulatory reform of rural-urban migration allowing migrant workers to come to cities-such as Shanghai-to earn money and become part of the ‘‘cheap labor’’ mechanism of the rapid economic progress. See Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 141-42; Sai Ding and John Knight, ‘‘Can the Augmented Solow Model Explain China’s Economic Growth? A Cross-Country Panel Data Analysis,’’ in Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, University of Oxford (2008), 31-2.
56.
See Khoon Choy Lee, Pioneers of Modern China: Understanding the Inscrutable Chinese ( River Edge, NJ: World Scientific Publication , 2005), 140-42.
57.
This ‘‘central connection’’ is nothing new to Chinese politics. Most of the time central officials are sent down to provinces to gain some experiences to return to the central government. In fact, since Jiang, the so-called Shanghaibang or ‘‘Shanghai Faction,’’ a hotbed of business-minded technocrats had played an important role in shaping high office politics of China; yet after the retirement of both Jiang and Zhu, the influence of Shanghaibang has since declined significantly. See Willy Wo-Lap Lam, ‘‘The Traits and Political Orientation of China’s Fifth Generation Leadership,’’ in Challenges and Policy Programmes of China’s New Leadership, ed. Yushuo Zheng (Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press, 2007), 41-3; Zhiyue Bo, Chinese Provincial Leaders: Economic Performance and Political Mobility since 1949 (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2002), 111-12, 45-6.
58.
By 1992, Japan had become the third largest investor in Shanghai after Hong Kong and the United States. Shanghai has approved the establishment of 182 Japanese-funded enterprises involving $542m in Japanese capital by when. In 1991, Shanghai’s trade with Japan alone reached the US$2 billion mark, with imports at US$980 million and exports US$1.04 billion. Today, the tallest building in Shanghai, the World Financial Tower, is owned by Minoru Mori, the president and CEO of a leading Japanese property developer Mori Building Company Limited. The detailed study and compelling critique of how Japanese foreign direct investments transferred Shanghai is available in Walter Arnold, ‘‘Japan and the Development of Shanghai’s Pudong Area,’’The Pacific Review5, no. 3 (1992): 241-9.
59.
According to Yawei Chen, a former Chinese planner in Shanghai, it is quite clear that the attraction of top young talents to government with new ideas concerning implementation of market-oriented (rather than the former top-down, Beijing centric) political and legal frameworks was the main attribution to the success in the making of the post-reform Shanghai. See Chen, ‘‘Shanghai Pudong: Urban Development in an Era of Global-Local Interaction.’’
60.
Thomas J. Duesterberg, ‘‘Zhu Rongji, Political Magician,’’The Washington Quarterly22, no. 4 (1999): 15-20.
61.
The Dragon’s Head: Shanghai, China’s Emerging Megacity , ed. Harold D. Foster, Chuen-yan David Lai, and Naisheng Zhou, Shanghai, China’s Emerging Megacity (Victoria, BC: Western Geographical Press, 1998), 275-78.
62.
Ibid., 234-35.
63.
The New Chinese City: Globalization and Market Reform, 3-21.
64.
Peter G. Rowe, East Asia Modern: Shaping the Contemporary City (London: Reaktion, 2005).
65.
Chen, ‘‘Shanghai Pudong: Urban Development in an Era of Global-Local Interaction,’’ 59.
66.
Marshall, Emerging, 94.
67.
Ibid., 100.
68.
Kris Olds, Globalization and Urban Change: Capital, Culture, and Pacific Rim Mega-Projects, Oxford Geographical and Environmental Studies ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 220.
69.
Non Arkaraprasertkul , ‘‘ Shanghai Contemporary: The Politics of Built Form’’ (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007), 66-78.
70.
Jorge Otero-Pailos , ‘‘Bigness in Context: Some Regressive Tendencies in Rem Koolhaas’ Urban Theory,’’City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action4, no. 3 (2000): 379-89.
71.
This is where I have drawn my thesis on the ‘‘politics of built form’’ elsewhere: See Arkaraprasertkul, Shanghai Contemporary.
72.
Chow, Knowing China, 186.
73.
Fulong Wu , ‘‘The (Post-) Socialist Entrepreneurial City as a State Project: Shanghai’s Reglobalisation in Question,’’Urban Stud40, no. 9 (2003): 55-78.
74.
Arkaraprasertkul, ‘‘Visualizing,’’ 33-34.
75.
In the same way that cities like Detroit and a theme park like the Disney World were conceived. See Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Sharon Zukin, Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
76.
See details of the work I mentioned: Kris Olds, Globalisation and the Asia Pacific: Contested Territories, Warwick Studies in Globalisation 1 (London: Routledge, 1999); Olds, Globalization and Urban Change: Capital, Culture, and Pacific Rim Mega-Projects; Henry Wai-Chung Yeung and Kris Olds, Globalization of Chinese Business Firms (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); Shanghai: Architecture & Urbanism for Modern China, ed. Peter G. Rowe and Seng Kuan (Munich: Prestel, 2004); Rowe, Encounters; Rowe, East Asia; Marshall, Emerging.
77.
Shahid Yusuf, Shanghai Rising in a Globalizing World, ed. Weiping Wu and Group World Bank. Development Research (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, Development Research Group, 2001); Shahid Yusuf and Weiping Wu, ‘‘Pathways to a World City: Shanghai Rising in an Era of Globalisation,’’ Urban Stud 39, no. 7 (2002): 1213-40.
