Geoscience Reference
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epic stage, especially in the theme pavilions. Compared to the more archi-
tecturally compelling national pavilions that refl ected the worldview of the
nations that hosted, designed, and built them, the theme pavilions are a
more accurate worldview of the expo planners and the Chinese hosts
(although only one of the fi ve theme pavilions was designed by a Chinese
company, they arguably still responded more directly to their Chinese cli-
ents). As in Dongtan and the One City, Nine Towns suburban developments,
the image of ecology was everywhere, although the specifi c individuals and
ecosystems are not. Again, eco-desire is about representation trumping pol-
luted reality. h e prominent narrative about ecology is not about valiant
individuals fi ghting corporate polluters and enacting social, scientifi c, or
legislative change (or signaled by heroic prophets in the U.S. historical and
cultural context like Henry David h oreau, John Muir, or Rachel Carson).
Neither is the story about the quite signifi cant economic investments in sus-
tainability (which are indeed substantial) in China.
Rather, the major plotline of the story is the (old) techno-utopian fantasy
that technology itself can solve multiple problems. h ese include environ-
mental pollution and confl icts between rich and poor, urban and rural.
Technology enables the imagined “harmonious” reconciliation of urban and
rural development, and helps consolidate new middle-class consumption of
ecological subjects in China. Eco-desire at the Shanghai World Expo was not
just techno-utopianism unmasked, but its culmination. In that sense, the
dominant story of Expo 2010 was actually a new Chinese version of a very
old expo story, one that glorifi es technology as savior, in this case, for a world
facing environmental and social ruin.
Although technological utopianism at world expositions is not new
(technologies that debuted at world's fairs include the telephone in 1876 in
Philadelphia, and X-rays, the typewriter, and an early version of the fax
machine in 1904 in St. Louis, in addition to the showcasing of electricity and
the Ferris wheel in 1893 in Chicago), the “ecological branding” of world cities
