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Building binge dulls city's competitive edge and No. 1 ranking
By Ni Tao |
March 4, 2011, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
ON its road to global recognition as a financial hub, Shanghai faces many hurdles. But the city also has many achievements to justify feeling upbeat about realizing this goal.
The latest achievement is its coronation as the most competitive regional economy out of 31 provinces and municipalities in China.
A survey released Sunday by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences ranks Shanghai as No. 1 in terms of comprehensive economic competitiveness, followed by Beijing and Jiangsu Province, in the past two years.
The survey examines fiscal and financial sophistication, industrial capacity, environmental sustainability and brainpower in a locale's economic development.
Despite the fanfare, the survey results merit close scrutiny, for they include enough disturbing facts for city officials to reflect on.
Another survey report assessing the ecological impact of growth found that Shanghai had fallen two rungs from 2005 to rank 8th in 2008, the last time data was available.
Li Jianping, chief editor of the report, said in an interview with Xinhua published on Tuesday that swelling population and the resulting monstrous traffic congestion are putting the city's environment under mounting strain and raising serious questions as to whether their momentum can last.
Building binge
One doesn't have to be a statistician or environmental scientist to know Shanghai's environment has deteriorated after the World Expo that ended last October. During that six-month period, Shanghai enjoyed the best air quality in years because it halted all work at construction sites and polluting factories citywide.
But this progress was but a blip on a radar screen. Last November, pollution returned to the city with a vengeance and air quality was the worst in five years.
The sharp contrast cannot be explained away by meteorologists simply as a result of cold currents from the north that caused airborne pollutants and particles to accumulate, thus becoming harder to disperse.
The clear culprit is a building binge that has again gripped the city.
Thanks to this pile-driving, jack hammering, bulldozing and tearing-down movement, we can expect the city's skyline to become even more chiseled, all the better to impress newcomers with its modernity.
The People's Daily editorialized on February 21 that some Chinese cities are becoming more "aristocratic" by the day. By "aristocratic" it meant they lavish taxpayers' money on image projects that have little to do with most people's lives. Every city is cultivating its own architectural calling card, but almost all of them come up with a similar one, said the report.
In the urge to rival each other in the number of skyscrapers and landmarks, they keep rolling out look-alike buildings and plazas. Yet however imposing these edifices, they tower over what really matters in urban life - wet markets, snack stalls and corner grocery shops.
Eyesore
Some city planners have clearly vowed to stop at nothing to purge city landscape of these "eyesores."
Ruan Chengfa, Party chief of Wuhan, the provincial capital of Hubei, pledged to put his reputation on the line to press ahead with his plan to beautify the city.
His ambition to reinvent Wuhan has produced 5,000 construction sites citywide working at full throttle, creating traffic jams, noise and swirls of dust that choke the city. These trifling popular grievances, however, have hardly caused Ruan to budge.
The mayor-turned-Party chief demonstrated his resolve at a meeting with local lawmakers in which he said "while infrastructure projects were restricted to downtown Wuhan in the past, they will extend to the city's fringes under the 12th Five-Year Plan."
"If we don't do it (massive demolition and construction) now, we'll end up regretting our indecision five years from now. I don't care what the people call me," Ruan declared defiantly.
Although he aimed to sound like a foresighted politician, his argument, and those in a similar vein, have been proven time and again to be a perfect disguise for land grabs and pervasive official worship of GDP.
Despite their exposure to the trumpeted Expo theme "Better City, Better Life," some city planners evidently only know how to pulverize "unpresentable" elements and replace them with white elephants.
The latest achievement is its coronation as the most competitive regional economy out of 31 provinces and municipalities in China.
A survey released Sunday by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences ranks Shanghai as No. 1 in terms of comprehensive economic competitiveness, followed by Beijing and Jiangsu Province, in the past two years.
The survey examines fiscal and financial sophistication, industrial capacity, environmental sustainability and brainpower in a locale's economic development.
Despite the fanfare, the survey results merit close scrutiny, for they include enough disturbing facts for city officials to reflect on.
Another survey report assessing the ecological impact of growth found that Shanghai had fallen two rungs from 2005 to rank 8th in 2008, the last time data was available.
Li Jianping, chief editor of the report, said in an interview with Xinhua published on Tuesday that swelling population and the resulting monstrous traffic congestion are putting the city's environment under mounting strain and raising serious questions as to whether their momentum can last.
Building binge
One doesn't have to be a statistician or environmental scientist to know Shanghai's environment has deteriorated after the World Expo that ended last October. During that six-month period, Shanghai enjoyed the best air quality in years because it halted all work at construction sites and polluting factories citywide.
But this progress was but a blip on a radar screen. Last November, pollution returned to the city with a vengeance and air quality was the worst in five years.
The sharp contrast cannot be explained away by meteorologists simply as a result of cold currents from the north that caused airborne pollutants and particles to accumulate, thus becoming harder to disperse.
The clear culprit is a building binge that has again gripped the city.
Thanks to this pile-driving, jack hammering, bulldozing and tearing-down movement, we can expect the city's skyline to become even more chiseled, all the better to impress newcomers with its modernity.
The People's Daily editorialized on February 21 that some Chinese cities are becoming more "aristocratic" by the day. By "aristocratic" it meant they lavish taxpayers' money on image projects that have little to do with most people's lives. Every city is cultivating its own architectural calling card, but almost all of them come up with a similar one, said the report.
In the urge to rival each other in the number of skyscrapers and landmarks, they keep rolling out look-alike buildings and plazas. Yet however imposing these edifices, they tower over what really matters in urban life - wet markets, snack stalls and corner grocery shops.
Eyesore
Some city planners have clearly vowed to stop at nothing to purge city landscape of these "eyesores."
Ruan Chengfa, Party chief of Wuhan, the provincial capital of Hubei, pledged to put his reputation on the line to press ahead with his plan to beautify the city.
His ambition to reinvent Wuhan has produced 5,000 construction sites citywide working at full throttle, creating traffic jams, noise and swirls of dust that choke the city. These trifling popular grievances, however, have hardly caused Ruan to budge.
The mayor-turned-Party chief demonstrated his resolve at a meeting with local lawmakers in which he said "while infrastructure projects were restricted to downtown Wuhan in the past, they will extend to the city's fringes under the 12th Five-Year Plan."
"If we don't do it (massive demolition and construction) now, we'll end up regretting our indecision five years from now. I don't care what the people call me," Ruan declared defiantly.
Although he aimed to sound like a foresighted politician, his argument, and those in a similar vein, have been proven time and again to be a perfect disguise for land grabs and pervasive official worship of GDP.
Despite their exposure to the trumpeted Expo theme "Better City, Better Life," some city planners evidently only know how to pulverize "unpresentable" elements and replace them with white elephants.
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