Geoscience Reference
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between city and village, the central city district and the suburbs. h e hope
was to shape and control the expansion of the severely crowded central city,
to grow the nine towns to stimulate the outlying areas, to shape industrial
parks for employment purposes, and to attract residents from the central
city to alleviate transportation and other housing pressures on the core.
In the 1990s, numerous polluting factories in the city center were closed
down or relocated to the outer reaches of the Shanghai, freeing up central
city land for urban redevelopment.
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h is trend is not unique to Shanghai. A
key feature of “world city” development in the past two decades has been
the relocation of manufacturing from the city core and the growth of real
estate and tourism in its stead (New York City and London are exhibits A and
B of this process). A key feature of recent urban and land-use planning has
been the break between industry and housing amidst the declining infl u-
ence of the
danwei,
or work unit. For decades, people's living and work con-
texts were one and the same, but this identity was weakened and broken
under China's liberalizing economic policy. h us, the new attention paid to
environmental amenities is partially related to people's new ability to choose
their housing and work locations in ways that radically changed from the
advent of the Communist takeover in 1949 to the economic reform era in the
past few decades.
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stereotypical nature/nation
Under changing political contexts that reshaped the literal spatial develop-
ment in Shanghai, its residents faced immense changes in the physical and
ideological landscapes of the city. In this context, real estate development
and land speculation increased dramatically. h e role of American-style
suburbanization is not unique to Shanghai. Market research in 2003 found
that 70 percent of property developments in Beijing emphasized Western
geographies and architectural motifs.
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In particular, these developments
were explicitly modeled on Southern California suburban landscapes. h
ere
