Shanghai - City of the Future

The Shanghai skyline - one of the world's most beautiful.

Shanghai is rapidly becoming one of the most exciting cities on Earth. It has undoubtedly one of the most beautiful skylines, and the pace of development is extraordinary. 

As China positions itself to overtake the US economy within the next few years, Shanghai resembles Manhattan in the 1890s - a dynamic, modern, powerhouse city designed for the future, but with evocative echoes of the past, not least in what remains of its wonderful Art Deco architecture.

Stunning Shanghai architecture.

Shanghai's architecture is fresh and vital, a beautiful combination of the new, the functional and the decorative.

Its city planners have a bold vision - and both the resources and support to accomplish what would be far more challenging in many of the world's major cities, where zoning laws and (albeit often warranted) protection of historical buildings make achieving major changes to the cityscape difficult.

Proposal for major development in Shanghai.

Even the solutions to Shanghai's growing traffic problems are innovative. Take the complex yet astonishingly beautiful Wu Jiao Chang traffic circle in the Yangpu district of Shanghai. The challenge was to add a pedestrian element to three different levels of infrastructure: five roads connecting, a highway overpass on top and a subway line underneath.

You can read more about the work of the artist, Zhong Song, who created the seductive colored mass of lights that cloaks the vast intersection, on Tom Vanderbilt's blog, How We Drive - itself a companion piece to his New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do (And What It Says About Us).

Zhong Song's sculpture of lights at the Wu Jiao Chang traffic circle.

If you are interested in visiting Shanghai, first take a look at the Chinese Government's Shanghai website. It contains a great deal of useful information about the city, including details of applying for a visa.

Xiangshou nin de fangwen!