Monday, July 10, 2006
The Daily China Picture: The mother of all dioramas
If you don't want the largest city in the world to turn into an utterly chaotic mess, you need to do some planning. The government of Shanghai has done a lot of planning. Indeed, being Commies, they have enacted one "five-year plan" after another. In support of the planning -- or perhaps to build support for the planning -- Shanghai has erected a huge "urban planning museum" in which they have constructed a vast scale model of Shanghai in minute detail. It is the mother of all dioramas.
Click on the picture to enlarge it.
6 Comments:
By 
Pile On®, at
Mon Jul 10, 10:40:00 PM:
That is more than a little bit weird.
By 
, at
Mon Jul 10, 11:53:00 PM:
Um, can anyone see the Oriental Pearl Tower? It should be the most recognizable building, but it doesn't appear (to me, at least).
By , at
Tue Jul 11, 12:22:00 AM:
Another communist government and another "look what we've done for you" ploy.
By , at
Tue Jul 11, 03:31:00 AM:
I don’t see the Peal Tower either. But, that’s probably because it’s across the river to the right and south of the picture (beyond the right edge of the picture).
I snapped a photo of a friend of mine with the back drop of the Pear Tower (we were on the left side of the river and her back was towards the Pearl tower which is on the right side of the river – in relation to the model).
I will note the new mono-rail train is impressive as is the new airport.
I would gather the “5 year Shanghai planning model” is more for attracting investment money than central planning. There is a huge building boom in China that dwarfs anything we have had in the past 40 years in the USA (and needs funding). The Central government is trying to slow it down with little success.
Many American don’t realize that although the PRC central government has a lot of power the three main cities in China including Shanghai have considerable power of their own and a good amount of autonomy. Thus, the building boom continues.
Chinese politics is an odd mixture of communism, capitalism, and cronyisms.
By TigerHawk, at
Tue Jul 11, 05:59:00 AM:
The building boom is extraordinary. Weird factoid: Beijing has put up 5700 high rise apartment blocks in the last ten years. That's more than ten new blocks per week. Astonishing.
By , at
Tue Jul 11, 03:07:00 PM:
Actully, if you look very closely, you CAN see the Pearl Tower -- it's in the dark, and looks smaller than the Jin Mao tower due to the perspective. And it's on the LEFT side of the river in this pic (but to the right of the Jin Mao and the dagger-like building that's reflecting the flash -- which isn't built yet).
JK
