Why Shanghai Expo?

by Barry Weisberg
April 30, 2010

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/698/why-shanghai-expo

World Expositions or World Fairs have historically, since the first fair in London in 1851, served as a showcase for the ages of industrialization and globalization. Nation branding has emerged in the last twenty years. The Shanghai World Expo will certainly serve those functions. But it will also signal the new age of cities, with the first universal exposition focused on cities. No city more symbolizes the new urban age than Shanghai. The theme, "Better City, Better Life," culminates millennia of human imagination about the better city. In Shanghai the challenge of how to create a low carbon footprint, a largely self-sustaining urban environment, will be explored in detail.

Everything about the Shanghai World Expo, from May 1-October 31, is supersized. It embodies what Louis Mumford declared in The City in History, "the chief function of the city is to convert power into form." The Expo is an architectural design feast. There are 200 pavilions from countries, Chinese cities, various international organizations and corporations. Seventy million people and 400,000 daily are expected to attend. The Expo, spread across both sides of the Huangpu River, in both the old Puxi and new Pudong, required 30,000 workers and now utilizes 70,000 volunteers. An estimated 100 cultural events are planned daily, totaling 20,000 through the end of October. Various conferences on urbanization will occur. The size and extent of the security operation has not been disclosed, but the entire city, not just the Expo area, has been placed on lock down. There will be many in China who will be unwilling or unable to attend the Expo. Therefore the government has created the first virtual Expo, which will reach 100 million people.

Not everyone is happy about the Expo. A million people recently protested in Beijing against the removal of families for Expo construction. Officially 200,000 people, or 8,000 families, have been relocated. But the actual number is surely much larger.

What will be the fate of the "invisible city," the Shanghai of the dispossessed? The 2-3 million migrant workers without status as residents? The victims of the growing inequality gap? How are people responding to what Federico Garcia Lorca described in New York City as the "extra human architecture and the furious rhythm." The Expo will focus on how we make cities, but not on how modern cities remake our species or impact other species. The big question is what constitutes a better city and a better life, and better for who?

Preparations for the Expo included a vast scheme of urban modernization. Shanghai has doubled the subway lines, built a new airport terminal, renovated the historic Bund waterfront, and launched a promotional campaign with the blue mascot and various media that has reached into every corner of the city. No other country has the ability or will to undertake such a mass campaign. The Shanghai government has given every resident one free ticket and travel money, the best carrot to insure families attend.

Beyond the unending superlatives and complaints about crowds, the Expo will achieve three important objectives. First, is to bring hundreds of millions of Chinese into the modern world, by bringing the modern world to them. China will achieve in six months what could have taken decades to accomplish. Second, the Expo will present the most important examination of urban life ever assembled, or to be assembled in our lifetime. The Urban Best Practices area will display real space sustainable projects on buildings, roads, public space and infrastructure. Third, the Expo will significantly strengthen the national commitment to low carbon development.

The star of the Expo is the Chinese red "oriental crown" Pavilion, three times taller than any other structure. It is a statement to the Chinese people, and anyone else who has not yet figured it out, of where China stands in the world. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong declared to the people of China, "The Chinese people have stood up". On Opening Day, May 1, 2010, this is proclaimed to the world.

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