Obsolescence is the Root and the Tree: The Paradox of Shanghai’s City Development

Francisca Mejia
 Figure 1 The Famous Skyline of Central Shanghai © China Daily

“With five thousand years of prestigious civilisation behind it, the city has gone from rice

fields to skyscrapers in three decades, without losing its identity, its dumplings, its magnolias or

its jasmine,”1 is waxed ecstatically by a travel advertisement for Shanghai, one of the world’s

most famous cities. However, to dissect this simple message actually touches on one of the

greatest urban challenges of Shanghai as a city, highlighting the intense urban transformation it

has experienced – rapid land use conversion and the current architectural fabric’s attraction –

and the curt nod to its culture as if the identity and diversity of the city merely lie in its food

culture.

China’s population is hardly the case anymore in terms of justifying the massive

development it has begun all over the country’s regions and city centers. Since 1978, the Chinese

national government’s new open policy for urban and economic development has redefined and

1
Air France. “Travel Guide Shanghai - Plan Your Trip to Shanghai with Travel by Air France.” AirFrance.
Accessed April 17, 2020. https://www.airfrance.fi/travel-guide/shanghai.
ultimately changed both the urban and rural landscapes of China, shocking not only the locals,

but the world over. As the state emphasized trade and industry within coastal regions at the

outset, three of the most renowned Chinese cities emerged; Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

Some scholars and urban researchers have already named these three biggest developments that

benefitted most from the first wave urbanization after the policy’s establishment as mega-

agglomerations. Such mega-industrial layout was based on a “two steps backward, three steps

forward” approach for the preparation of more new sites to be developed. 2 Sitting along the

Yangtze River Delta (YRD) in Central East China, Shanghai has continued to thrive physically

and economically. From being a mere third-class municipal fishing town to the First Opium War

that saw much of western influence in the area to the Communist Party’s takeover in 1949,

Shanghai has since bloomed into a glitzy megalopolis boasting many modern urban amenities.

Shanghai’s actual violent development begun in the 1990s, 12 years after the policy’s

establishment, when the central government focused its attention to converting Pudong and all of

its 350 square kilometer agricultural area to begin the abrupt process that would aid the city’s

path to prosperity once again as this world city.

Shanghai’s new masterplan was revised with respect to its new projected role, utilizing its

geographical advantage as a coastal city to regain its essential role in the global economy. The

transformation of Shanghai from an isolated economy into an open economy totally reshaped its

spatial structure. From the newly developed Pudong New District, its Lujiazui area and the

Waitan area in the west of the Huangpu River, would become central Shanghai. Bold strategies

were adopted in order to advance this and to solidify the city as the international finance center,

2
Xu, Yanqiu. “Reflections on Industrial Heritage Protection in China.” e-Phaïstos I, no. 1 (January 2012): 111–19.
https://doi.org/10.4000/ephaistos.300.
trading center, shipping center, and economic center of China. 3 Thence, Shanghai became an

undeniable world city wherein images of cosmopolitan lifestyles, business, and trade all in a

single dense neighborhood of skyscrapers come to mind. It is now the second most populous city

in the world and is the largest trade port of China, with the region yielding 20% of the entire

country’s Gross Domestic Product.

It has taken only 25 years for Shanghai to transform itself what, for instance, Paris took

perhaps 200 years to achieve. Although, a major point to consider is the somewhat similar image

with which these two cities carry within themselves as world cities; both lying along a river

network, powerful and cosmopolitan in its allure, yet a fine line resides in each of those cities’

abilities to retain historical memory and cultural diversity in the city. Within the instantaneous

timeframe of prosperity and growth of Shanghai, the looming risk of losing its historical integrity

and culture via the built environment came to plague the city as many new developments were

slated to be constructed as soon as they were thought up. Vast swaths of land were needed to

construct these new developments, thus the sole operation to demolish and rebuild in Shanghai

led to the effacement of existing built heritage alongside the mushrooming issues of foreign

immigration and gentrification. Right as the body of Shanghai was being refined into a grid filled

with shiny, yet standardized blocks of concrete, glass, and steel, an emptying of its soul and spirit

as a city was happening as well. 4

Most urban heritage sites are found in central cities in China, thus the issue of balancing

the rapid and large scale urban redevelopment and the aggressive pursuit of valuable land with

3
Han, Sun Sheng, and Zhongxiong Yan. “China’s Coastal Cities: Development, Planning and Challenges.” Habitat
International 23, no. 2 (1999): 217–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0197-3975(98)00046-0.
4
Ren, Julie. "Gentrification in China?" In Global Gentrifications: Uneven Development and Displacement, edited
by Lees Loretta, Shin Hyun Bang, and López-Morales Ernesto, 329-48. Bristol, UK; Chicago, IL, USA: Bristol
University Press, 2015. Accessed April 19, 2020. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1t894bt.23.
heritage preservation was put on the table for administrative discussion. 5 Bernard Rudofsky

explicated in his preface to the book Architecture Without Architects, “Not only is the need for

confining the growth of a community well understood… it is matched by their understanding of

the limits of architecture itself… To quote Huizinga, "the expectation that every new discovery or

refinement of existing means must contain the promise of higher values or greater happiness is

an extremely naive thought. ... It is not in the least paradoxical to say that a culture may founder

on real and tangible progress.” 6 In Shanghai, this was only recognized after heritage districts

became more rampantly scarce, and people’s sense of community and identity dwindled.

Without paying genuine homage to its roots and the actual local communities that reside therein,

Shanghai’s prominence made of only glass and steel today could well be endangered without the

essence of heritage that seems fading in its people today; a heritage only the built environment

and its spirit can supply and enrich. Without effective heritage preservation and protection in its

development, Shanghai is bound to camouflage itself among other soulless capital cities that

merely pride themselves in their facetious glamor and all too ambitious citizenries. The drastic

strategies impelled by the Chinese government to recreate Shanghai has seemingly led to an

erasure of a past the city did not think it needed until recently. Yet, as Shanghai continually

progresses through its destruction-creation cycle in the name of economy and industry, the

effects of this mega-development reveal themselves through its treatment of heritage districts via

mass demolitions and the instigation of well-meaning heritage policies without proper

implementation that define obsolescence as both the cause and cure of a major world city that is

5
Zhong, Xiaohua, and Xiangming Chen. “Demolition, Rehabilitation, And Conservation: Heritage In Shanghai’S
Urban Regeneration, 1990–2015.” Journal Of Architecture And Urbanism 41, no. 2 (August 2017): 82–91.
https://doi.org/10.3846/20297955.2017.1294120.
6
Rudofsky, Bernard. Architecture without Architects. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1965.
desperately seeking a more rooted diversity in its streets and people, in its way of living and

being.

Figure 2 A Newly Developed Residential Complex Beside the Laoximen Shikumen District © K. Knyazeva

To speak of cultural preservation amidst urban transformation and development is to

always give way to architectural history, first and foremost. As part of the Yellow River

civilization, Shanghai’s roots as a city run deeper than most cities in the world, and from there,

dappled with colonial reigns from the French, British, and American, Shanghai’s center was

reformed continuously; wide boulevards, western-style inspired buildings (from Gothic to Art

Deco) from the mid-1800s, and now to the steel and glass behemoths, donning a flitting rainbow

on its nightscape. In the 20th century, the urban fabric of Shanghai was further redefined in its

role as an industrial city that has since continued to steadily develop in China along with other

cities when changes in ownership from private to foreign-owned enterprises, reducing the state-

owned industries created a more diversified economic pattern. Excessive land reuse was
institutionalized and cultural pattern was then reduced and blighted. In Yanqiu Xu’s ‘Reflections

on Industrial Heritage Protection in China’, “Before the 1990s, people used to simply dismantle

and demolish discarded old buildings. Transformation and reutilization, if any, were – out of

consideration or economy and practicality—improvised and of a low level. Some

7
transformations also brought damages of various degrees.” In order to become the major

trading and financial center, Shanghai was also meant to be the cultural model city of China with

its charismatic Lujiazui skyline, array of museums, galleries, and temples. The reputation of

Shanghainese cuisine always boasted of remains a staple and the city also hosts a plethora of

important renowned events such as the Shanghai Fashion Week and the Chinese Grand Prix,

among others. But it would not be Shanghai without its now diminished pockets of old towns

where the shikumen (石库门, vernacular houses that fused western and Chinese design elements

born in the 1860s) residential districts that have until today perdured through the mass

destruction and construction cycle. It is reported that from more than 9,000 shikumen lanes with

200,000 buildings across Shanghai, only 1,900 lanes and around 50,000 buildings remain. 8 In

spite of the gaudy images the city of Shanghai portrays, a cloud of obsolescence has hovered and

fogged over this world city, wherein the loss of old prestige paves the way to a new prestige that

paradoxically reduces the actual wealth of city, not in terms of economy, but physically and

socially.

Mega-developments are preluded by mega projects and demolition its main approach,

which erases traces of old spaces and their memory. Mega projects have been one of the main

7
Xu, Yanqiu. “Reflections on Industrial Heritage Protection in China.” e-Phaïstos I, no. 1 (January 2012): 111–19.
https://doi.org/10.4000/ephaistos.300.
8
Kanagaratnam, Tina, and Katya Knyazeva. “Demolition of Laoximen: Shanghai's Best Link to Its Pre-Colonial
Past May Soon Be Gone.” SupChina, December 13, 2017. https://supchina.com/2017/12/13/demolition-of-
laoximen-shanghai/.
strategies staunchly implemented by the local government to reinstate Shanghai’s international

image. Brand new transportation hubs (airports and railway systems), hospitality infrastructure,

and mega-events that go hand-in-hand with these were lobbied and well-promoted for immediate

construction. Take for example the World Expo of 2010 held in Shanghai, which was rapidly

prepared for in 2002. It was reported that the national government spent over $ 45 billion on

urban and Expo-related works (more than Beijing’s budget for the 2008 Olympics). These mega

projects not only build a modernized and brand new urban landscape for Shanghai, but also

intangibly raise the image of Shanghai in the global platform, however, underlying these mega-

projects is an upheaval not of building, but of demolitions.9 Demolition as a concept and topic of

conversation in urban design and planning has yet to be fully explored, yet it needs to be

confronted as it has definitely redefined many parts Shanghai. It is a strategy by which many

developing nations are adopting in order to gain respect and forcibly make a new brand for

themselves; a tabula rasa created by uprooting old towns and districts along with the rich culture

their built heritage bring. 10

In Shanghai, this could not be any more felt in the Laoximen District wherein in its

eastern side complete demolition is in tow. A report by Tina Kanagaratnam and Katya Knyazeva

published in December 2017 entitled Demolition of Laoximen: Shanghai’s Best Link to its Pre-

Colonial Past May Soon Be Gone reports “Everything between Middle Fangbang Road and East

Fuxing Road is being obliterated, with the westernmost blocks already emptied and sealed with

red plywood. Holes are being made in the walls to make the houses unlivable and prevent

residents from returning… This blanket redevelopment is set to sever Shanghai’s last

9
Levin, Dan. “In Shanghai, Preservation Takes Work.” The New York Times. The New York Times, April 30,
2010. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/arts/design/02shanghai.html.
10
Thomsen, André, Frank Schultmann, and Niklaus Kohler. “Deconstruction, Demolition and
Destruction.” Building Research & Information 39, no. 4 (2011): 327–32.
https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2011.585785.
meaningful thread to its history.” The news of demolition in this district was well-circulated in

social media, gaining the attention of locals, subsequently leading to a surge of visitors coming

into the area to document and photograph remnants of the 500-year-old neighborhood’s

architecture with which a nostalgia brings out a certain personal pride for being Shanghainese.

The report further states that “Residents welcome visitors, saying, ‘You’d better look now, it’s

not going to be here for long.” A Huangpu District low-rise housing development would replace

this shikumen district with “its ancient winding streets that have housed Shanghainese

communities for generations.” An exodus from shikumen residential districts to sordid

rectangular blocks of larger medium-to-high rise apartment complexes is hardly news in

Shanghai, as relocation takes a substantial part of the compromise from the demolitions of these

aged districts.11

Figure 3-4 (Left) Remaining Street Life in Laoximen District © K. Knyazeva

(Right) A Reconstructed Street in Xintiandi District © Jake L.M.

11
Levin, Dan. “In Shanghai, Preservation Takes Work.” The New York Times. The New York Times, April 30,
2010. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/arts/design/02shanghai.html.
 Another example of a shikumen district that was at first threatened to be reduced to

rubble but has now been successfully redeveloped and adapted to the taste of foreigners and

upper middle class inhabitants of Shanghai is Xintiandi. Here, the city authorities chose to lease

the entire district to a single developer, Shui On Land, that would adapt the shikumen buildings

with other modern and contemporary styles of architecture, to be demolished and rebuilt with the

same aesthetic as if to create a facsimile of what the district represented in the past. Atop the

‘renewed’ shikumen houses would be mixed-use commercial buildings and high-end apartments.

What used to be a teeming neigborhood of little workshops, noodle shops, and children playing

in front of their houses are now art galleries, cafes, and restaurants mainly reserved for tourists

and new dwellers. The Xintiandi development displaced 3,500 Shanghainese families. A 74-

year-old heritage advocate and Shanghai local, Lou Chenghao, who has been collaborating with

scholars, professionals, and local heritage committees to preserve shikumen districts and protect

buildings with historic importance does not concede with the state’s current ‘dismantle and

reassemble’ approach that permits the tearing down a building and piecing it back brick by brick.

He says in an interview, “You can’t expect the building to be the same after it is demolished in

the first place, he says, citing the case of Jian Ye Li on Jianguo Road W., which was listed as

protected architecture in 1994. The shikumen neighborhood was dismantled and rebuilt later by

a real estate developer, but critics slammed the new look as fake.” 12

Notwithstanding these mega-developments are the approaches by which these are

achieved and maintained. Aside from the good business the growth and expansion of Shanghai in

its bid for economic progress in the global stage has granted, there has been much concern for

the vanishing cultural diversity and heritage conservation caused by the monopoly of more

12
Meiping, Yang, and Xu Qing. “Savior of Shanghai's Historic Buildings.” SHINE, June 9, 2018.
https://www.shine.cn/feature/lifestyle/1806096047/.
financially-driven interests of the government, using land development as the key to profit

whatever the social costs. The introduction of leasing urban land-use rights in 1988 paved the

way for the tension between municipal land owners and large state enterprises and institutions.

The latter having much planning control in proportion to the size of the urban land they own.

Until 2002, city governments made most of its income from land profits and aided in the

provision of grants from the central government, auctioning lands wan an option, but many tracts

of lands in Beijing and Shanghai yet monopolized. 13 The lack of urban conservation in China

was explained by Whitehand and Gu in their study saying, “in contrast to the extensive

documentation of urban expansion, restructuring, and economic development, very limited

research has been carried out on urban conservation, particularly its history, methods and

theoretical basis. In response to the destruction of historical areas in many Chinese cities and

threats of further destruction, the preparation of conservation plans has become a major

undertaking of city management since the mid-1980s… however, without sound theoretical basis,

a great deal of inappropriate historical restoration and redevelopment has taken place.” 14

13
Pickvance, Chris. “The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China - By You-Tien
Hsing.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 36, no. 2 (2012): 402–3.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01129_2.x.
14
Whitehand, J., and Kai Gu. “Urban Conservation in China: Historical Development, Current Practice and
Morphological Approach.” Town Planning Review 78, no. 5 (2007): 643–70. https://doi.org/10.3828/tpr.78.5.6.
 Figure 5 A Shikumen District Demolished with New High Rise Buildings in the Background © G. Girard

Aside from the lack of professional guidance and academic basis for heritage

conservation in China, another great challenge of promoting it in Shanghai society is met with

the collective notion that ‘new’ is always ‘better’, regardless of its quality and impact on ecology

and context. In the article discussing the disposable quality of these new residential mega-

developments born from demolition in Shanghai by Wade Shepard, “Under this strategy there is

really no limit on development, as fresh urban construction land can continuously be churned

out and sold to developers. In fact, 40 percent of China's new development land is created via

the demolition of older buildings. The Chinese have applied the economic stimulus of

obsolescence to urban design, and the shiny new cities that are going up throughout the country
today are like home appliances that are designed to break down after a few years so that you

have to buy a new one.” 15

The psychological and social impact that these churn and burn

landscapes generate is grave. With this relentless flux of environment weakens the natural sense

of community that would unite people, introducing other social issues (crime, isolation etc)

caused by an anesthetized spirit of place.

Although within the last two decades, there have been developments and change in

consciousness about heritage in both communities and the local government of Shanghai with

regard to its built environment, now being made to confront that in the wake of their growth as a

cosmopolitan capital in the world, they have lost all sense of a self that needed some grounding.

Heritage preservation regulations in Shanghai have finally been legislated. In 2004, the Shanghai

government designated 12 preservation zones, proffering historic neighborhoods with mandated

protection. Notwithstanding the government’s motive in such optimistic undertaking to be led by

profit, it at least recognized Shanghai’s diverse architecture contributes to its tourism. But there

has also been pressure from the citizens of Shanghai, who have grown increasingly proud of their

city’s landscape and wish to keep them safe. In 2010, the vernacular construction methods of

shikumen buildings were acknowledged by the Chinese government’s cultural heritage register.

The implementation of these mandates and programs are yet to be proven effective as some old

districts are still in danger of being effaced, while there is also a dire need of reconstruction and

maintenance for others. Additional issues include substandard living conditions and intense

pressures caused by gentrification of developments intentionally juxtaposed with these old areas.

15
Shepard, Wade, Michael Goodier, and Josh Rayman. “‘Half the Houses Will Be Demolished within 20 Years’: On
the Disposable Cities of China.” CityMetric, October 21, 2015. https://www.citymetric.com/skylines/half-houses-
will-be-demolished-within-20-years-disposable-cities-china-1470.
 China’s heritage, if not also the world’s, hinges on the importance of Shanghai’s identity,

hence its diversity and richness that must be preserved and protected. Robert Venturi could not

have said it any better in his book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. “The contrast

between the means and the goals of the program is significant. Although the means involved in

the program of a rocket to get to the moon, for instance, are almost infinite complex, the goal is

simple and contains few contradictions; although the means involved in the program and

structure of buildings are far simpler and less sophisticated technologically than almost any

engineering project, the purpose is more complex and often inherently ambiguous.” 16
If the

process of demolition for something new itself is simple, why then are the social impacts it has

created of obsolescence more complex and ambiguous as attested in what is happening in

Shanghai? The goal to restore and protect heritage in Chinese mega-agglomerations such as that

in Shanghai, whose methods may not be too sophisticated as a need to only reorder policies and

their implementations, must transcend its purpose for pure economic gain that rests on the city

and its people’s identity for generations. Because to address any case of a fading culture is to

address its environment wherein the structures or monuments of the past were supposedly set as

reminders of a past, of events, that sit at the heart of any sense of self for any person and city. In

Thomsen’s study on demolition’s contribution to the urban landscape, they recommend to

“minimize obsolescence and extend longevity.” But this doesn’t seem to be the agenda of

China’s government, wherein the power of policy resides and definitely affects the urban form

and therefore the lives of the people living in its cities. The study further points out, “The role of

16
Venturi, Robert. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. New York: Museum of Modern Art; distributed
by New York Graphic, 1977
public policies and their influence on practices are formidable although not well understood.” 17

There must be better alternatives to the approach of demolition when it is not needed, as well as

the way any preservation policies are implemented and communicated to the very people they

must serve. Never mind the ever changing landscapes, as landscapes must always change, but if

one is always changing, where then is the sense of self, of community, and of culture to be

found?

17
Thomsen, André, Frank Schultmann, and Niklaus Kohler. “Deconstruction, Demolition and
Destruction.” Building Research & Information 39, no. 4 (2011): 327–32.
https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2011.585785.
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