Articles

By China Today staff reporters Wang Song & Jiao Feng 
  
 

For China, 2010 will be another year of fulfilled expectations: the Shanghai Expo will run from May 1 to October 31, offering a bonanza of state-of-the-art economic, cultural and technological entries from 192 nations and 50 international organizations. The Expo will also stage 20,000 cultural activities and a series of forums – a big agenda for this biggest of Chinese cities.

By China Today staff reporters Wang Song & Jiao Feng 
  

For China, 2010 will be another year of fulfilled expectations: the Shanghai Expo will run from May 1 to October 31, offering a bonanza of state-of-the-art economic, cultural and technological entries from 192 nations and 50 international organizations. The Expo will also stage 20,000 cultural activities and a series of forums – a big agenda for this biggest of Chinese cities.

Shanghai is a hub of finance, trade and shipping, and has always been so. With a population of over 20 million, the city boasts China's largest industrial base and foreign trade port. Throughout China's opening-up, Shanghai has staged many international art festivals and large-scale sports events, such as the Shanghai International Film Festival, China Shanghai International Art Festival, 2010 Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix (Shanghai) and Shanghai ATP Masters 1000.
 
Preparing for the 2010 World Expo, the city began its major urban reconstruction a decade ago. From environmentally progressive management of the whole to alterations of the transport hub, from city image building to quality of life promotion, the city has constructed an Expo foundation that practices what it preaches. As the opening ceremony draws near, dotting the i's and crossing the t's of construction signals the site's entry into the trial operation phase. Meanwhile, Expo Shanghai Online both in Chinese and English versions will be web-accessible from the Expo site by May 1. A decade of hopes and dreams is manifesting on the shores of the East China Sea.
 
Slicking the City
The 21st century is a crucial era for urban development and planning. As people all over the world are looking forward to a better life in dense population centers, the choice to focus on the "city" as the theme of Expo 2010 Shanghai wasn't incidental. The Istanbul Declaration on Human Settlements, issued at the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) reaffirms, "Our cities must be places where human beings lead fulfilling lives in dignity, good health, safety, happiness and hope." 
  
 
The Bund by the Huangpu River
Despite, or perhaps because of, rapid growth and sudden high densities, today's cities are facing a series of developmental challenges such as spatial conflicts, cultural collisions, resource shortages and environmental degeneration. Without effective management controls, these problems will swiftly erode the quality of urban life. The problem of achieving a balanced quality of life in urban settlements amounts to resolving discord between man and nature, between man and man, and between spiritual and material desires. Such frictions, if left unattended, could arguably move us from a compromised existence to the degeneration of human civilization. Expo 2010 Shanghai proposes to demonstrate a "city of harmony," the basis for a "life of harmony," and to work out rubber-to-the-road feasible solutions for our cities.
 
Entries address three questions: What kind of city makes life better? What life styles make a city better? And what kind of urban development improves life on earth?
 
These quests and themes have run throughout the urbanization of mankind, but more than ever they are addressed in the planning and blueprint stages for future cities, rather than as hindsight about our urban challenges. Over past centuries, human beings have never stopped their search for models of harmonious cities, judged in every dimension of human life. A series of theories and propositions, from Utopia to Ledoux's Ideal City to the City on a Hill, to Paolo Soleri's Arcosanti and Howard's Garden City, all strove to redress certain imbalances, and achieve elegance and harmony in terms of space, order, and spiritual and material input and output.
 
The "Better City, Better Life" slogan drives a grand international gathering to explore the full potential of urban life as it might unfold in the 21st century. Participant displays will use the best of what we have on hand now to reach the outer limits of modeling a future urban environment. They'll exchange their experiences in urban development, encourage discussion on where we go from here, and just inspire us to explore new approaches to human habitat, lifestyle and working conditions. It is all within the context of creating an eco-friendly society while establishing what is really meant by sustainable development.
 
Lay of the Land
The Expo site was carefully planned. The Huangpu River, a tributary of the Yangtze, flows through Shanghai and divides the city into two areas – Pudong and Puxi. The Expo site spans both sides of the Huangpu River, with [2.5 square miles] in Pudong and [0.8 square miles] in Puxi, covering a total area of [3.3 square miles], including the enclosed area and external support facilities.
 
The enclosed area is functionally divided into five zones numbered from A to E. Zone A is located between the Expo Boulevard to the west and the Bailianjing rivulet to the east in the Pudong Section, seating the China Pavilion and national pavilions for Asian countries excluding Southeast Asian ones.
 
Zone B covers an area between Zone A to the east and Lupu Bridge to the west, hosting national pavilions of Southeast Asian and Oceanian countries, Pavilions for International Organizations, Theme Pavilions, the Expo Center and Performance Center.
 
Zone C is located in Houtan to the west of Lupu Bridge in the Pudong Section. This is the area for European, American and African national pavilion clusters. A large public amusement park of about 10 hectares stands at the entrance.
 
Expo Boulevard is located in the center of the Pudong part of the Expo site and is the largest stand-alone structure within it. Expo Boulevard is a concourse acting as the main axis for human traffic flow, commercial activities, and other purposes. It has two underground throughways, one above the ground and a canopy.
 
The Theme Pavilions, located in Zone B to the west of Expo Boulevard, set records not only for the nation's biggest non-column-supported space and largest solar energy system on the roof, but also for the world's largest living green exteriors. These constructions, covering a total area of [31.9 acres], demonstrate how ecology in design and construction is achieved.
 
To the west of the Expo Boulevard in the Puxi Section is Zone D, original site of the Jiangnan Shipyard and cradle of national industry in China. Some of the old shipyard buildings have been renovated into corporate pavilions. The docklands and slipway are reserved and made into spaces for outdoor public exhibitions and cultural exchanges.
 
Zone E, located to the east of the Expo Boulevard in the Puxi Section, will host stand-alone corporate pavilions such as the Urban Civilization Pavilion, Urban Exploration Pavilion and the Urban Best Practices Area.
 
With a spread of [37.1 acres], the Urban Best Practices Area (UBPA) provides an opportunity for cities to participate in the World Expo independently. This special showcase will not only present commonly acknowledged, original and valuable programs and practices designed to improve urban life quality, but also act as a platform for the 50 participants to share and exchange experiences in urban construction and development.
 
The UBPA will be divided into four exhibition fields, namely Livable Cities, Sustainable Urbanization, Protection and Utilization of Heritage, and Technological Innovation in Built Environment. The UBPA mainly presents various on-going practices, along with some examples of experimental architecture that has huge application potential.
 
Managing the Multitudes on Foot
The organizer estimates that the Shanghai Expo will receive around 70 million visitors, or about 400,000 per day on average, which will be the greatest attendance ever recorded in the history of the World Expo.
 
So an obvious problem will be how to cope with the usual challenges of heavy and slow visitor flow, and long, exhausting queues. According to Director Hong Hao of the Bureau of Shanghai World Expo Coordination, the organizing committee has adopted multiple mechanisms. There will be a floating ticket price. For example, during national holidays such as the May Day and National Day and in the last week before the closing ceremony, the tickets will be sold in limited quantity and at greater expense through the hours from nine to five. Since visitor flow will be stemmed after 5 p.m., tickets will be available then at the regular price. Through discounts on group tickets, visitors are encouraged to visit the Expo site via pre-scheduled travel agency tours.
 
To those venues expected to be popular, like the China Pavilion, Theme Pavilions and some artistic performances, tourists can use a fast pass, reserved from any of the 184 machines located in 22 places around the Expo site.
 
Program management is another type of regulator, as well as the timely update of information. During weekdays and non-peak months such as June and September, the more extravagant crowd-pleasers will be scheduled, effectively drawing traffic away from the peak load months of July and August.
 
"A system for visitor flow forecasting will be established to release information and activate various measures to avoid excessive congestion, via broadcasting, screens and text messages," says Hong Hao.
 
Traffic Jam Busters
Handling traffic jams during the 184-day expo also calls for a solution. According to the executive committee, most new transportation projects for the Expo, including the central ring road and new subway lines, have been completed and are already open to traffic. Ferry and streetcar lines across the Huangpu River will be completed by April.
 
More than 90 bus routes cross the fair zone, and 42 buses will run within 2.4 kilometers of the area. Six metro lines have stations in or near the Expo site. The newly opened Line 13 has three stations within the site, two on the Puxi side and one in Pudong. Lines 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9 can carry 100,000 people per hour to nine stations near the Expo site at peak times.
 
It is suggested visitors, especially those from outside Shanghai, enter from the five entrances in Pudong rather than the three in Puxi, because about 75 percent of the ticket machines were on the Pudong side. Organizers will inform ticket holders which entrances have the shortest line-ups by sending text messages and displaying the information on large screens at the entrances to the site. Volunteers will also help to ease the visitor flow. All group tours will enter the site from Pudong.
 
For the convenience of the anticipated four million international visitors, Shanghai's traffic administration will, amid many other measures, offer free traffic guides and online and hotline services in foreign languages, install touch screen kiosks at local hotels, and dispatch volunteers competent in foreign languages.
 
Bedding Down in Shanghai
It is estimated that an average of 500,000 people per day will need accommodation in Shanghai during the Expo, but the beds available at local hotels are 50,000 to 10,000 short of this amount. So the organizer is looking to supplement them with private homestays and hotels in neighboring areas.
 
Shanghai Municipal Tourism Administration has trained local families to conduct homestays for international guests, which not only provides a convenience to tourists, but also exposes them more deeply to local culture. By providing frequent and convenient transportation, the tourism resources of other cities in the Yangtze River Delta region will be integrated to ease the bed shortage. Travel time from Shanghai to Wuxi, Suzhou, Nanjing, Ningbo or Hangzhou now is less than one hour, thanks to the Shanghai-Hangzhou high-speed railway and speed increases in the old railway lines between them. To bring the hotel resources in nearby cities into the hotel management strategy for the Shanghai Expo, will not only ease the pressure on Shanghai's hospitality sector but also bring more visitors to the region in the future. Those urban communities can provide an additional 390,000 hotel beds, and organizers will encourage hotels to rent their rooms as part of a package complete with Expo tickets and bus or train passes to the site.
 
Everlasting Expo
Expo Shanghai 2010 is the first in the Expo's 158-year history to be accompanied by an online exhibition. On the homepage of Expo Shanghai Online, one is already astonished by the beautiful 3D effects – ships sail on the Huangpu River, and Haibao, the Expo's mascot, introduces and interprets the landmarks. Computer programming allows for 360 degree turns. Clicking on a point of interest, you can change the viewing angle from straight-on to each side, as well as adopt a bird's-eye view.
 
Advanced 3D techniques will also give people access to virtual versions of the pavilions, as well as exhibitions by 18 corporations, 31 Chinese provinces, autonomous region and municipalities, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, 242 countries and the 50 UBPA demonstration sites.
 
Access to online pavilions is categorized functionally by two types – the Browsing Pavilion and the Experiencing Pavilion. The Browsing Pavilion basically replicates on the Internet the physical pavilion and its exhibits. The Experiencing Pavilions, as set up by participating nations, can put up displays not found in the physical version of the Expo, and give more options to online explorers, like "picking up" an item to have a closer look.
 
No Web site would be complete without online games; playing against Haibao allows virtual visitors to learn even more about the World Expo.
 
Aspects of Expo Shanghai Online were launched ahead of the real Expo's schedule, on November 12, 2009. The full bells 'n' whistles version will be officially accessible on May 1, 2010, with all online pavilions inaugurated, including "virtual attendance" at the international gala. When the curtains go down on the real Expo, the Web site will still be available, with an aim to make it "an everlasting Expo."
 
Reprinted with permission from China Today Magazine, April, 2010