Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
on Chongming Island, and the Dutch/Harbor New Town) were also particu-
larly “environmental” in their building practices. Although not all of the
towns are explicitly “environmental” in theme, what links all of them is a
sublimated eco-desire.
h e roots and the cultural implications of envisioning happiness and
bliss as European have a long and troubled history in Shanghai, given the
West's colonial domination and the history of the international concessions.
According to project boosters, the plan represents a reckoning with this
painful history, in a cycle of redemption and reconciliation, under the guise
of suburban real estate development. 9 Foreign architects have been a central
component of Shanghai's development practice, beginning with the inter-
national competition to design the high-rise Liujiazui central business dis-
trict in Pudong. 10
Architectural critics, in contrast, critique the One City, Nine Towns
developments as neocolonial and the projects as theme parks (reserving
their greatest bile for h ames Town). 11 Other scholars focus on the tensions
between importation of foreign ideas and cultural adaptation. 12 When I
describe One City, Nine Towns, I'm usually asked whether the towns are
anything like Disneyland's “It's a Small World After All.” h is association is
unsurprising, as both depend on a stereotypical view of national culture,
one that paradoxically homogenizes in the act of celebrating diff erence. h at
particular Disneyland ride originated at the 1964 World's Fair sponsored by
Pepsi. In it, each doll sang his/her own national anthem, but the discordance
was overwhelming. To correct this discord, the song “It's a Small World” was
written after the Cuban missile crisis to stress the importance of interna-
tional unity.
In some important ways the One City, Nine Towns project is like “It's a
Small World,” but in one way it diff ers. What connects the so-called distinc-
tive national cultures is that each town foregrounds a vision and ideology of
nature and environmentalism through suburbanization. Verbally or visually
Search WWH ::




Custom Search