ON over 400 flights during the past 17 years, Shanghai Tongji University professor Li Zhenyu got a window seat and shot some 10,000 photos of 100 cities from the air. His best aerial shots have been compiled into a bilingual book and an ongoing exhibition, both titled “City Air Reading.”

“On over 300 flights, the conditions were conducive for photography: clean window, good lighting, ideal weather, an accommodating stewardess and an understanding neighbor,” says the professor, who is dean of Tongji’s college of architecture and urban planning.

The exhibition at the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center explores Li’s unique exploration of urban design. On display are gigantic photos capturing bird’s-eye views of major cities, contrasting “fabrics” of cities and equipment used by the professor.

Li’s interest in cities started in childhood, when he would take a three-hour train from his hometown near Changzhou, in Jiangsu Province, to Shanghai to visit his great-grandmother every summer and winter.

“My eyes were wide open to the scenery outside, even at night. During those trips, many questions baffled me, like how to identify where cities start and end,” he recalls.

Li then visited 100 Chinese cities after studying architecture at Tongji University. He took his first flight in 1990, traveling from Shanghai to Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. He began to fly more frequently after his PhD studies in Germany.

It was on a flight from Berlin to Beijing in 2000 that Li’s doctoral supervisor at Technische Universitat Berlin, Professor Peter Herle, introduced him to the concept of “city reading.”

“Herle took many photos with a white Nikon, a 50mm normal focal length lens and Kodak reversal film,” Li says. “He said, as an architect, you must have a window seat during a flight because it will give you views that you cannot see from land; like rivers, mountains, roads, dams, power stations, the boarders of cities, and the layouts and scale of cities. Seeing from the air helps you understand common elements ... as well as the uniqueness of cities. Since then I became a loyal fan of window seats.”

From his photo collection, Li selected images of 55 cities in China, the US, Europe and Africa for the book and the ongoing exhibition. As a senior researcher of urban planning and architecture, he classifies aerial views of cities by a number of key elements — landscape, shape, boundary, structure, street, district, fabric, height and special elements.

According to Li, looking at a city from above is one way to shatter stereotypes associated with places. Gray-seeming Taipei, for example, looks rather colorful when viewed from the sky. Guangzhou’s “chaotic” urban villages also have their own logic that isn’t apparent from ground-level.

“The urban fabric of Shanghai is akin to the experience of taking a jammed bus in the city decades ago. Regardless of the density, every passenger was always able to find a space to stand, and never missed their stop. This innate orderliness within the chaos is the reason why I like Shanghai so much,” Li says of the city he’s lived in for 33 years.

Tongji University Vice President Wu Jiang calls Li a “wholehearted digger.”

“These photos vividly display the structures and skeletons of cities, which enables us to understand why people love cities; that’s the value of this remarkable work,” Wu says.

Li explains that in ancient times, rulers and architects envisioned cities from an imaginary heavenly perspective, while today’s urban planners focus more on the ground and people’s daily activities.

“As for me, I learn about a city from an aerial view, especially during commercial flights; which seems somewhat ‘backward’,” Li adds. “Yet a great city often impresses architects and urban planners with a medium- or macro-scopic picture in their minds. This picture is made of fragmentary impressions — maps, photos, videos or navigation software — mainly based on personal experiences. Seeing cities from a plane is like flashing back to centuries ago, when city makers would describe their vision of urban landscapes to their emperors.”

Sometimes Li also catches glimpses from the air of projects he has designed himself, including the Shanghai Lotus Community, a relocation housing community in Pujiang New Town and the international students dormitory on Tongji University’s Jiading campus.

“Time on a flight is often boring but professor Li has made full use of it and created a book. His work inspires us to see cities from another angle,” says Cao Jiaming, director of the Architectural Society of Shanghai.

In the exhibition, the professor also shares his tips for people with the same hobby, such as bringing a reliable camera, doing homework to recognize signature buildings and taking flight path and sunlight direction into consideration to avoid backlighting.

“For instance, always try to take seat A on the left side of the cabin for a morning flight from Shanghai to Beijing; and a far right seat (F or L) for an afternoon flight from Guangzhou to Guiyang. Clean windows with no scratches, ice, dust and a clear sky are also a good start,” he says.

“City Air Reading” exhibition

Date: Through February 12 (closed on Mondays), 9am-5pm

Address: 2/F, Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center, 100 People’s Ave

Tickets: 30 yuan

‘Reading’ cities around the world

Flat Beijing

Seen from 5,000 meters above, Beijing appears relatively flat, as most buildings within the Second Ring Road are relatively low. The Temple of Heaven, Beihai Park, Shicha Lake as well as Chang’an Avenue are clearly visible. It’s a pity that the ancient city walls have left barely a trace.

Outside the Second Ring Road, highrises have mushroomed in the past 30 or 40 years. Like many other Chinese cities, residential, civic and commercial buildings are intertwined with railways, highways and construction zones. Beijing is like a basin, with its second and third ring roads rising like lips. This capital is surrounded by mountains on three sides. The natural scenery somewhat balances a large number of highrises within the city rings. I hope these mountains will bring us peace and tranquility some day.

I’ve flown over Beijing countless times in the last 15 years. I had only one chance to photograph the city in snow. Regardless of its low resolution and limited focal length, I highly cherish this photograph. When it snows, Beijing becomes flat and full of silence.

Miniascape Wenshan

Surrounded by hills, Wenshan is a small town in China’s Yunnan Province, close to the border of Myanmar. Like a miniature version of South Korea’s Busan, its urban development surrounds a plot of undisturbed hilly nature in the center. New residential buildings have peripheral plan layouts, which are rare in most Chinese cities. Despite its limited space, vigorous private commercial activity has turned most street-front buildings into shops.

Serene Adelaide

Adelaide, in the south of Australia, enjoys a sense of indescribable peace and tranquility. The harmony between the city and its architecture gives one the illusion that, somehow, everything was washed over and purified by the ocean. Even distant hills and clouds seem to be smoothed by the gentle ocean breeze.

Paris is the center

The urban structure of Paris reveals the vigor that made it the center of France and the international cultural world. Road networks extend out in three directions. The city center is dotted with new innovative architecture. It seems to tell the story of Paris as a city of strict regulations that bends the rules for true geniuses, like the Eiffel Tower and Center Pompidou.

From the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, you can enjoy the scenery along the Seine; see the top of the Sacre-Coeur in Montmartre and the grand doorway of La Defense. The tower and the gate face each other.

Coastal Rio

Rio de Janeiro has strong characteristics of a coastal city. It stretches lazily along the twisting coastline in the sexy sunshine of South America. Buildings are scattered randomly. You can get a good view of the Atlantic Ocean and half the city on top of the Corcovado. Among the lakes and mountains, the urban fabric is natural and unrestrained.

Rainbow Port

San Francisco is a city defined by the ocean, bay, air and culture. The first time I went to the US, I transferred in San Francisco and subsequently came here many times. The city features ports, wharfs, bridges, a long coastline, and many hilly undulating roads. The city seems to be terraced, with a wide transitional zone between the downtown highrises and low residential houses.

San Francisco is one of the few cities in the States that has done substantial land reclamation. It’s interesting to see the different colors in the land-filled area, which seem to echo the colorful life of San Francisco.