Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 4. Deer at h
ames Town. Photo by Simon Sadler
extolling access to green space, clean air, and healthy living through slogans
or statues of faux Bambis eating grass (see fi gure 4), nature and ecology are
confl ated with nation-ness. Here, eco-desire is the fusion of nature and
nation to represent a vision of transformation, modernity, and cosmopoli-
tanism in Shanghai's suburban development policy in a particular historical
and cultural moment. Eco-desire runs through the diff erent towns in altered
forms even where the town theme is not explicitly “environmental.”
Whether the focus is on clean air (h ames Town), low-carbon living (A n-
Ting), water (Pu Jiang), or eco-friendly houses (Northern Europe town),
natural images and concepts are embodied and built into the national char-
acters of these developments as a way to “imagine” the virtues of ecology in
real estate development in a hyperurbanizing Shanghai.
What is at stake here? On the one hand, natural images represent an
importation of ecological greenwashing in a real estate context, echoing
