Shanghai Future

An original conceptual exploration of Shanghai which examines the emergence today of the 'City of Tomorrow'.

Shanghai is the most modern and dynamic city in China. In preparation for hosting the World Expo 2010, a World's Fair in the grand tradition of international fairs and expositions, the megalopolis embarked on an overhaul to transform itself from the "Pearl of the Orient" into the "City of the Future." Here, the world's tallest buildings soar, the planet's longest bridges span toxic waterways, and the fastest train on earth rockets the city from its storied past toward a future that seems, by turns, either as bright or as hideous as the lights that set the hazy sky aglow each night. At a time when interest in China has seen a sharp increase that shows no signs of abating, Shanghai places China's development and its effects on the world into context by explaining how the country arrived where it is today and why it is building massive infrastructure projects with tremendous social and environmental impact. Shanghai provides an intimate look inside a mega-city heaving with change and offers essential insight into the challenges of remaining human in an increasingly urbanized world.

In 2010 Shanghai hosted the largest, most spectacular and most expensive expo ever. Attracting a staggering 73 million visitors, and costing around US$45 billion dollars, Shanghai Expo broke the records in the history of world's fairs and universal expositions. The thirteen essays in Shanghai Expo, written by a team of interdisciplinary researchers, offer a uniquely detailed analysis of this globally significant event.

With the advent of the Internet, and the resulting interconnection within a city and among cities, internet innovation has led to a number of important applications in economic and social fields, helping traditional industries upgrade and organizations gain new core competencies, thereby engendering new business models and new industries. This is what we refer to as the 'Internet Plus'. The 'Internet Plus' action plan was first introduced by Premier Li Keqiang in his Government Work Report at the Third Plenary Session of the 12th National People's Congress on March 5, 2015. This book expounds how 'Internet Plus' plan transforms and influences traditional economy, impacts technological and economic aspects of industries, extends its reach to people's daily lives and creates more profound social implications. In addition, the authors put forward constructive measures and suggestions for Shanghai to promote development of the 'Internet Plus' era and to enhance the city's economic impact and service level as a core city.

Contributing to current debates about the globality and mediatisation of memories, Media and Memory in New Shanghai interrogates the city's spectacular regeneration into an emergent world centre, describing how Western elites partake in the production of New Shanghai by feeling its futures and performing its futures past.

As China's largest city best known for its pre-eminent achievements in the early part of the twentieth century, Shanghai grew modestly in comparison with southern China after the adoption of China's open policy in 1978. With the 1990 announcement of Pudong as an area for special development, Shanghai has raced ahead, seemingly on its way to an economic and cultural resurgence that is likely to accelerate development and modernization in the Yangzi Delta and China at large. This volume focuses on the physical and socioeconomic transformation of Shanghai across a wide range of topics. Drawing on the experience and expertise of researchers primarily in Hong Kong, this study is a major contribution to the subject of economic development and social change in China. It seeks to understand, analyze and interpret how Shanghai has transformed itself in recent years.

China has become one of the most important forces in the world today, and this book combines views of her internal and external political relations, of the fundamentals of her economic development, and of the political, social and economic pressures that will influence her future.

Contributing to current debates about the globality and mediatisation of memories, Media and Memory in New Shanghai interrogates the city's spectacular regeneration into an emergent world centre, describing how Western elites partake in the production of New Shanghai by feeling its futures and performing its futures past.