From the New York Times (link):
Wu Zigfried Zhiqiang grows animated as he clicks through a PowerPoint presentation of the Shanghai of the future, and for anyone who thinks his city is the last word on post-modernism, with its needle-spire towers and kitschy skyscrapers, he suggests that the surprises have just begun.
“On the one hand you will see something like New York’s financial district, and on the other, you will see new industrial infrastructure: one of the biggest ports, one of the biggest automobile factories, the biggest shipyards,” said Mr. Wu, who is the project designer for the 2010 World Expo, a vast undertaking that is driving much of the change. “You cannot find these things in New York.”
Within the next four years, Shanghai, the backdrop of so much upheaval and so many rebirths since it became the prized treaty port for European powers in the mid-19th century, will be utterly transformed once again. But critics say it will lose as much, in texture and vibrant community life, as it stands to gain in dazzling, futuristic projects. The notion of what warrants conservation has been highly restrictive, amounting to several hundred buildings in a city of 18 million and to parts of 12 districts, like the leafy and increasingly gentrified former French Concession neighborhood.
