Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
On the other hand, one of the main defi ning features of the expo is that
it was, by its central fact, unsustainable. A minicity of more than two hun-
dred buildings was built on a space large enough to accommodate hundreds
of thousands of people, and virtually none of the buildings remained six
months later.
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Yet, the park and recreational infrastructure left behind is
“green.” Some nations transported their buildings back home or donated
them to provinces in China. Another journalist wrote of an “apparent, and
glaring, contradiction,” that is, that with “the promotion of sustainable
urban development practices a key goal, the huge international event cham-
pions priorities that hardly seem to square with spending hundreds of mil-
lions of dollars on the construction of nearly 200 booths and buildings,
nearly all of which are designed to last only for the six-month duration of the
show.”
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h e expo site was also home to the cradle of the industrial history of
Shanghai, most emblematically the 130-year-old Jiangnan Shipyard. h e
shipyard was moved to Changxing Island, an island on the way to Chong-
ming Island. h us, in one sense, the transformation of the Shanghai water-
front as a place of leisure and “green” activities echoes a broader global
transformation of working waterfronts in gentrifying cities. Polluting indus-
try and manufacturing is moved out of the central city as land values rise,
connected to the improving quality of life and the environment, what one
U.S. urban and environmental scholar calls “the greenwave” of
gentrifi cation.
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dreaming the green future in the theme
pav ilions
Despite the glaring contradictions embedded in rapid construction and
rapid deconstruction of the expo and the various transportation and envi-
ronmental costs of getting the seventy-six million visitors to the site, the
event highlighted its so-called green features. h ese green building features
were clearest in the Expo Boulevard, built by the U.S.-based architects SBA
