Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
cosmopolitan place and a central interface with global capitalism and the
workers who service it. h us, it is perhaps no surprise that one policy and
market response to climate change was to develop a carbon emission rights
trading program in mid-2012, involving two hundred major local polluters.
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Although some scholars have critiqued carbon trading markets on the
grounds that using market mechanisms is just a reiteration of the problem
itself, Shanghai is moving full-speed ahead with its carbon trading market.
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With Shanghai's special status also comes special attention to the quality-
of-life issues that its privileged residents (including the native-born Shang-
hainese and the global transnational elites) demand.
Overcrowding, poor housing conditions, and residential restructuring
are some of the major environmental problems facing Shanghai. Housing has
been, and is still, a major problem in Shanghai, whether defi ned by density
or in urban redevelopment policy and practice. In Shanghai alone, redevel-
opment projects in the 1990s displaced more people than thirty years of
urban renewal in the entire United States.
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In 1985, the average population
density in downtown Shanghai was 40,000 persons per square kilometer,
but in some areas the density has risen to 160,000 persons per square kilo-
meter. One o' cial survey found that 1.8 million households were living in
overcrowded conditions, including more than two hundred thousand
households in dwelling units with less than two square meters per person.
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During the 1990s, tens of thousands of households were “rehoused” each
year, a result of three major reforms in housing: the upward adjustment of
rents, increased investments by the private sector in housing, and urban
restructuring at the local district level.
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Authorities acknowledged in 2009
that between 70 and 80 percent of petitions submitted involved forced evic-
tions in the name of economic and city development.
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Under the fi rst phase of land reform (1979-1987), Shanghai was one of the
fi rst cities to experiment with separating land-use rights from land owner-
ship and allowing for the transfer of land-use rights to foreign investors.
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