Shanghai 2050 and 1st UN World Cities Day in Shanghai: My impressions
Booming Shanghai
Shanghai is a city so bustling and dynamic that it physically gives me energy when I’m there. Construction sites everywhere, tall buildings, new flashy skyscrapers in the financial district towering above them all. Traffic jams wherever you go, day or night, large malls, luxury shops, but also traditional ones crammed with stuff; the smell of great food everywhere you go, mixed with the smell of gasoline and smog, and so many people on the streets, everything is on the move. The city has been growing at breakneck speed for an uninterrupted period of at least 20 years. Everybody wants to be there, so it seems. Population increased from 10 to 19 million in the last decade only, and the end is not in sight. When I came there the first time, in 2006, the city had two metro lines. Eight years later, there are 16. Real estate prices go through the roof, costs of living in downtown Shanghai are rapidly approaching New York City levels. Growth is not confined to the city: the wider region has grown at a similar pace, urban sprawl is enormous. And thanks to the high-speed rail system, large cities like Hangzhou and Suzhou lie now within one hour reach. Shanghai has become the centre in the biggest urban network on the planet. The most frequently used word by foreigners like me to describe all this: “Unbelievable".
Rising global city
What will Shanghai be like in another couple of decades? How to control this crazy machine? The Shanghai leadership realises the dangers and risks of uncontrolled growth, and therefore started a strategy-building process. I was happy to be invited by my friends from Shanghai Normal University, Dr Rachel Feng and Prof. Gao Jun, to contribute to their conference “Shanghai 2050: Rising Global City”. They had organised it as a part of the first UN Global Cities Day celebration, one day later, and had invited a number of foreign experts like Peter Kressl, Leo van den Berg, Ben Derudder, Stefan Kratzke. In my talk, I focussed on what it takes for Shanghai’s to reach the next level and become a leading city of science & innovation: how to better connect people, companies and universities, and turn the city into a dynamic platform for open innovation.
It is not the first time that Shanghai’s planners look far ahead: by the 1990s, when urban growth was already fast, they laid out their vision to develop the Pudong area, opposite the old town, a vast empty land then, into the financial district of China. Pudong’s urbanisation should facilitate the shift from a city of production to a service city and a financial centre. Now, the former agricultural land has been turned into one of the densest urban areas on earth, with high rises up to 400m. In 2010, the World Expo was held there, to show the world how China was rising as an urban nation. The title of that expo: “better city, better life” (soon dubbed “better city better wife”).
1st UN-Habitat World Cities Day: A big show
As a follow-up of the Expo, the Chinese government decided to seek support at the UN (Habitat) to organise an annual “
World Cities Day”, to pay attention to one of the key global challenges (not only in China): how to manage urban growth and development in a balanced way and without destroying our planet. I attended the very first edition of “world cities day”, 31th October 2014, at the premises of the World Expo. The opening session was impressive, held in very large square hall, as big as two football pitches. Red chairs, and an enormous blue billboard on the wall, larger than life. The room was filled with mayors and vice-mayors from China and abroad, communist party leaders, urban development planners, experts and academics from all over. You could tell the importance of the guests by their place in the room: the more in front and in the middle. The most distinguished guests sit at the front row: they have different types of chairs, and beautiful girls bring them cups of tea. Each speaker was introduced by a loud festive sound, followed by long applause from the audience. Journalists come in droves to the fore to take pictures and videos, after which the speech begins.
Contentwise, the morning session did not bring much anew. In their short speeches, all the high level speakers (including the Vice Secretary General of the UN) started their speech with the rather common observation that “more than 50% of the world population now lives in cities”. All of them made the also well-known analysis that cities are sources of prosperity, growth and innovation, but also face challenges like environmental degradation, slum formation, poverty etc. etc. Having said that, the session conveyed an important message: Urban development is now on the top of the global agenda, and it is here to stay.
Shanghai 2050
In the afternoon, I attended a session on Shanghai’s 2050 plans. In an eloquent presentation, Bert Hofman, Woldbank Country Director for China, put Shanghai’s development in a historic and global perspective. Shanghai is the most prominent commercial centre of the orient, the beating heart of Asia's regaining dominance in global trade flows. Incomes have risen rapidly, but it will take very long before China will be at par with the world’s richest nations in terms of income per capita and productivity. An ageing population (due to the 1 child policy) will put Shanghai’s urban growth to a halt in a few decades time. His message: On the longer run, Shanghais growth will not come from adding more people, but from increasing productivity. This asks for better education, the deployment of technology, and organisational/managerial innovations throughout the economy.
The second speaker was Mr. Ho, the head of the Shanghai planning department, who took the initiative to start the 2050 planning process. He started with the observation that urban planning in Shanghai has always been about facilitating economic growth: more factories, more offices, more jobs, higher income, more consumption. Now, its time for a more comprehensive approach: the environment and social aspects must enter the equation. He formulated a number of questions:
•
How can the city grow more prosperous without having excessive income differences between social groups?; How to maintain "social harmony” Uncontrolled urbanisation will have disastrous results.
•
What will be Shanghai’s role as “Global City” in 2050 in the eyes of Chinese people and foreigners
•
What kind of economic structure (industry, services, R&D/innovation) will the city have, and what will the development path look like?
•
What role will Shanghai play in national and global supply chains and production networks?
•
Can Shanghai become a "leading city”, an example for other cites all over the world as model for the transformation of human society?
•
What will be Shanghai’s role as bridge between east and west, how to combine cultural merging with Chinese identity?
•
How can Shanghai help to put an end to ecological degradation and climate change
•
Ho can Shanghai be a mayor hub in the digital economy, with its emerging new business models
•
What is the role of Shanghai as leader of the polycentric city network in the Yangtse Delta, with about 80m inhabitants as we speak.
The challenges are related. For Bo, the million dollar question is how Shanghai and its urbanised hinterland region can become a "quality economic system”. It is clear that endemic pollution and congestion will slow the influx of highly educated talent (Foreign and Chinese) needed to become an innovative knowledge economy; But the city and region cannot close the polluting factories overnight: it must offer sufficient number of jobs. And also, more social equality and balance are needed keep the city stable.
No shortage of questions and challenges. But Mr Ho was less clear on how to do all this -he is forgiven because the 2050 strategy process has just begun. No big changes are to be expected in the planning framework: it will be the good-old guided market socialism. As Bo put it, the market will continue to be the main “decisive" coordination mechanism, but, in his words: it must play the “correct decisive role” and if not, the government will intervene.
The strategy process
Unlike in many European cities, Shanghai's leadership makes no attempts to actively involve citizens (or civil society at large) in the strategy process. It's a more collective approach: what matters most is the future of the city(or country) at large, rather than the individual well-being of citizens. But I found it interesting to learn how systematically the leadership has organised strategy process: the ci
ty planners wants to pick the best brains, learn from experiences elsewhere, and then set Shanghai’s own path -many other cities can learn from this. The planning department, in a competitive bid process, invited universities to write research proposals related to the questions formulated above. By this summer, the best proposals were selected and awarded with significant resources. My friends from Shanghai Normal University won some of the lots, and in the coming years, they will be working on it. And I hope to stay connected!
