Shanghai Expo 2010

By James Huang and Greg Hallberg, Waymark Shanghai

Published March 23, 2010

Few people will remember the themes or exhibitions of previous World Expositions, but most of us do know about the Crystal Palace or the Eiffel Tower in Paris, truly iconic structures built for and left intact as monuments to the 1851 London Expo and of course, the 1889 Paris Expo. One might also recall the 1962 Space Needle in Seattle or the profound economic recovery for Chicago after the 1933 Chicago Exposition. Now it is Shanghai, China’s turn to be front-and-center on the world stage – no coincidence that it rivaled Beijing for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games (politicians saw to it that Beijing won) with Expo 2010 commencing during the late spring and through the summer of this year. Ticket sales have been quite steady and expectations are for over 70 million people to attend from all corners of the planet. Freshly paved city streets, new sewer systems, subway lines, shopping malls, and entertainment establishments, rival preparations for the ’08 Olympics.

World Expositions, as they are called, are more than just fairs or ultra-modern carnivals and monuments to futuristic architectural innovation. They have a much deeper and longer influence on the host city and its society – some even suggest more of a positive economic and social impact than Olympic Games venues and exposure – in particular after the event. We can think back to the 1958 Brussels Expo with its Atomic Tower and surrounding memorial park, still seen on travel television shows and attended by over 300,000 visitors annually.

Shanghai’s centerpiece to its newfound global dominance will become the largest in terms of participant numbers as well as the largest acreage site in exposition history. It comprises 5.28 square kilometers on the eastern Pu Dong side of the Huang Pu River, and can be easily seen as an enormous construction site when traveling to-and-from the international airport or just moving across the highway bridges linking central Shanghai (commonly called Puxi) while out on a daily sales call routine.

Shanghai’s municipal government has plans for the area after Expo 2010 has concluded, including a new business center catering to conferences and exhibitions and providing accommodations for tourism. The Expo Site in the city’s downtown area will be turned into a “concentration of modern services mainly for exhibitions, conferences, activities, and accommodations,” in the wording of the government’s environmental report dated July of 2009. The 126,000 square meter Performance Center will deliver theatrical performances, including high-tech lighting and stage props. The performing arts center, seashell in shape, has a main theatre that can hold from 4,000 to 18,000 attendees, depending upon event seating needs.

The Expo Village has been developed to house officials from participating nations and related organizations, a 5-star hotel, and 20 apartment buildings, plus 3 more budget hotels for a total of 7,000 beds. Parks will be an integral part of the Expo grounds, covering in total an area as large as 50 football fields, creating a green corridor. All the outdoor areas will eventually be reduced in size and continue to become city block squares. There are over 30 pavilions being finished at the present time, the largest of which will be the China Pavilion, at 20,000 square meters and an accompanying 129,000 square meter Theme Pavilion to be turned into exhibition venues. Nearby vacant land, as well as the land consumed by the post-Expo dismantling of the pavilions, will be used for affordable housing by low-income citizens, if the city can make a profit from the 4-month long extravaganza. A new Line 13 subway has already been completed, linking the fashionable night life area in Puxi known as Xintiandi, directly to the Expo Zone. Expo visitors will emerge from underground at the Australia and Thailand Pavilions The new line cost $196 million, and has 5 stops along the route: Danshui Road, Madang Road, Lupu Bridge, Changqing Road, and the Expo site itself.

It is often times said that the longer term effects for the host city from holding a World Expo were always greater than the duration of the event, due primarily to the huge upgrades in overall infrastructure, the promotion of new advances in technology, and the redevelopment of existing land areas – and in this case, that’s certainly true for this river area in metropolitan Shanghai. It is expected that the impact will last more than 20 years, according to Sun Yunxin, Deputy Director of the Institute for World Expo Economy at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.