Shanghai Builds for the Future

Shanghai 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.

Shanghai 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.

China Gets Its Own Slice of English Countryside

December 14, 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.

Evictions Reflect 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.

A Cinematic Ode to Shanghai's 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.

Dream World to Cosmopolis: Authors' Shanghai

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.