Designing China's urban future: the Greater Shanghai Plan, 1927-1937

Abstract

Founded solidly on decades of intense efforts to create a Chinese municipality that would parallel the achievements of the foreign settlements, the Plan's objectives went beyond mere imitation. For the Plan called for the redevelopment of the port as well as the creation of a new city centre that would be an irrefutable statement of Shanghai's, and therefore China's, determination to challenge and exceed the urban standards and prosperity of the foreign settlements. Promulgated simultaneously with the creation of China's first municipal law, the Plan was the result of the work of the City Planning Commission with the assistance of foreign technical consultants. The Plan's political aim was to unite all the areas comprising Shanghai into one unified administrative whole, encompassing and eventually absorbing the foreign settlements. Although destined to be a practical or nominal failure in its original form because of civil unrest and war, the Plan places the city more accurately within China's substantial range of urban experience and provides fresh perspectives on the international ramifications of planning incentives and processes. -from Author