Shanghai Builds for the Future
Overview: Architecture Reflects City's Many Faces()
December 11, 2006 In a weeklong series, Louisa Lim looks at Shanghai's unprecedented building boom and how the city is preparing for its future, as a meta-city or a mega-metropolis. The city's population is now almost 18 million, and is forecast to rise to 25 million by 2020.
Part 1: Urban Development -- The Future Is Now()
December 11, 2006 In the first of a weeklong series on urban development in Shanghai, we look at the dramatically changing cityscape. Cranes erect skyscrapers at a dizzying rate, while Shanghai's center spreads to surrounding land.
Part 2: China Gets a Slice of English Countryside()
December 12, 2006 Shanghai's planners are resettling 500,000 people in new suburban towns, each built in a foreign style. In the second report on Shanghai's development, we visit Thames Town, which brings an English country town to China.
Part 3: Evictions, The Dark Side of Shanghai Growth()
December 13, 2006 As Shanghai undergoes a radical facelift, tens of thousands of residents are forcibly displaced from their homes each year. Many say real-estate developers are conspiring with officials to seize property for little or no compensation.
Part 4: Cinematic Ode to a Vanishing World()
December 14, 2006 Shanghai has a population of almost 18 million, but only 632 protected historic sites. Its distinctive traditional architecture is rapidly disappearing, and along with it, a way of life. A local filmmaker has produced an ode to these vanishing neighborhoods.
Part 5: Shanghai Writers -- Dream World to Cosmopolis()
December 15, 2006 Shanghai is changing at breakneck speed. That transformation, along with the hope, fear, greed and nostalgia that it engenders, is the stuff of novels. Three authors talk about the inspiration that China's most exciting city provides them.
