Horizontal and Vertical Green Spaces in Shanghai

Horizontal and Vertical Green Spaces in Shanghai

Isabel Branas & Jenjira Holmes AUD 133 Dana Cuff Iman Ansari Tuesday, November 4, 2014

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In a Mega city like Shanghai, there is no doubt that most of the spaces are used for residential and business purposes. Since the Chinese government has been putting more emphasis on making the city “greener”, more green spaces are being implemented.

Fig.1 (Source: Google Earth)

Two levels of green spaces can be found in Shanghai. The first, are the horizontal green spaces that can be found throughout the ground level of the city such as the 2010 Expo Park and Century Park. The second type consists of “vertical green spaces”, found in “vertical cities” that can be found in buildings such as Shanghai Tower and Flip/City Shanghai plan. The Chinese’ understanding of green spaces is different from the Western’s ideas, so it has shaped how the new green spaces are implemented into the city. Due to different factors such as diverse cultural values, high-­‐density population and lack of public access to parks, the Chinese government now relies on buildings as a method for increasing the green areas in the city. The buildings act as a vertical city to provide more green spaces.

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The key reason for Shanghai’s emphasis on green environment is not entirely for the benefit of the people, but it was because they were pressured to upgrade the city’s image into the quality of an international metropolis.

Fig.2 (Source: http://chinadailymail.com/2013/08/27/chinas-­‐shanghai-­‐ tower-­‐a-­‐massive-­‐urban-­‐green-­‐space/)

Shanghai is pushing itself towards the urban green movement to increase its

standard of living in a world-­‐class city and compete in globalization as a modern Shanghai. The globalizing Shanghai is not just an economically restoration of the city’s past prominent international status, but it is a proactive spatial restructuring to promote the overall quality of the life of the local people.1 According to Lu Yuexing, the Deputy Director of the Administration, Shanghai alone has 153 city parks as of the year 2012.2 The total green areas have increased from 8.2% in 1978 to 38% in 2008. Some source mentioned that Shanghai public green space per capita increased by 8 times from 1980 to 2003.3 Back in the 1980s when the Reform and Open Policy and the Urban Land Reform were first initiated, there was an increase in the green planning funds, allowing

1 Yu, Hai, and Fei Yan. "A Story of Shanghai Spaces: From the Maoist to the Dengist Era." Global Urban Studies 4 (2011): 41.

2 Shi, Yingying. "Shanghai Reveals Green Open Spaces Plan." China Daily, December 12, 2012.

Accessed November 2, 2014.

3 Yin, Haiwei, and Jiangang Xu. "Measuring the Accessibility of Parks: A Case Study in Shanghai,

China." 2009 Sixth International Conference on Fuzzy Systems and Knowledge Discovery 1 (2009): 233.

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more green spaces to be established in Shanghai. The Shanghai government paid much more attention to the urban green spaces, and the area of urban green space dramatically increased as a result. At the same time, the government tried to improve the spatial pattern of parks by increasing accessibility to parks, as well as the social justice to these public green spaces.4 From all these numbers and data, we are convinced that Shanghai has achieved a significant progress in the development of green spaces, especially considering that the central strategy of the national urban development of China is to maximize the economic profits in both space and land. 5 Nevertheless, 153 city parks are just not enough for the government of Shanghai.

According to the Shanghai Municipal Afforestation and City Appearance and Environmental Sanitation Administration, their goal is to make ecological space account for more than 50 percent of the land in Shanghai. 6 As mentioned previously, the green spaces come in different shapes and forms. We distinguish them into two big categories according to how they are executed into the city. The first being the horizontal green spaces, that can be found throughout the ground level of the city and the second being the vertical green spaces, positioned in buildings such as Shanghai Tower.

4 Yin, Haiwei, and Jiangang Xu. "Measuring the Accessibility of Parks: A Case Study in Shanghai, China." 2009 Sixth International Conference on Fuzzy Systems and Knowledge Discovery 1 (2009): 233.

5 Yu, Hai, and Fei Yan. "A Story of Shanghai Spaces: From the Maoist to the Dengist Era." Global 6

Urban Studies 4 (2011): 41.

Chen, Lu. "Govt. to set aside 3,500 Sq Km for Green Space." Global Times, May 16, 2013, China: Society sec.

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The Horizontal Green space refers to any green spaces or pockets located throughout the ground level of the city. They are areas that are not inside any enclosed space. In another words, these areas are fully exposed to the general public. Examples of the horizontal green spaces in Shanghai are the 2010 Expo Park and Century Park.

The Shanghai World Expo 2010’s theme “Better City, Better Life” reflected the urban construction and vision of a better life for the future. Three beautiful parks were constructed on the site to provide a relatively “quiet change of pace from the constant bustle of the crowded pavilions”. Green design was the highlight of Expo Park, its design elements are reflected in many perspectives over the fair, such as Fig.3 (Source: http://earthtechling.com/2013/06/shanghai-­‐expo-­‐to-­‐live-­‐ on-­‐as-­‐sustainable-­‐community/)

a

site

construction,

plan and

pavilion landscape

design. The key to the design of this park is to combine leisure, entertainment, and sightseeing complexes into one huge green space, which draws many visitors from all over the world. This Expo is also an attempt to promote the use of green space, landscaping and sustainable architecture.

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On the other hand, Century Park is the largest park in Shanghai; it serves a different purpose, compared to the Shanghai World Expo. This park provides a place for Shanghai residents to escape from the hectic city where they can enjoy riding bicycles through the park.

The park is also equipped with a concert stage, where visitors can enjoy some outdoor music while socializing with their neighbors. The key feature of this park is that its landscaping combines Chinese, Japanese and British gardening styles, creating fusions of both Western and Asian cultures.

Fig.4 (Source: http://www.chinamaps.org/images/china-­‐map/travel-­‐maps/shanghai-­‐century-­‐park.jpg, Google Map of Century Park)

Apart from the Century Park, we do not see that many big parks in Shanghai, which implies that the Western ideal of the park is relatively new to China. This is because the public parks that were created in Shanghai during the 20th century were largely reserved for the Europeans, wealthy merchants and dignitaries. Therefore, the Chinese poorly understand the environmental functions of the green space. Both Western and Chinese cultures seem to have a distinctive understanding of what the park is and what it provides to the city. According to Chris Choa, the partner and managing director of HLW in New York, he cited that Westerners think of

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green space as real parks, often with lots of grass where we can sit and have a picnic. In China, on the other hand, green space is any area that is specifically designated as green space such as lawns, bushes, rows of trees, turf or even hard landscape that has no sign of “greens” can be counted as green space.7 Nonetheless, it is still difficult to find a plot of grass that you can actually play on. Parks in Shanghai and China as a whole are pristine and perfect. Grass is to be looked at and not laid upon. It should come as no surprise that a more privatized school of thought prevails in China where, according to Choa, “cities have historically never developed a public domain”. While the Shanghai government claimed that they have added many green parks into Shanghai, the green parks in the sense of the Chinese government is not simply big parks where families can hang out and relax like the Central Park in New York. The entire city of Shanghai lacks formal green spaces due to the historical patterns of urban development, high residential densities and the rapid rate of urbanization. In addition, a recent study also shows that many Shanghai residents lack access to the parks and access to green spaces.

With the combinations of factors mentioned above such as the differences in cultural value, the lack of access to the already existing horizontal green space and not having enough land to build more parks, the Chinese government is now leaning towards high-­‐rise buildings or “vertical cities” in creating green spaces to solve the social issues.

“Vertical cities” is an attempt to solve the problem of creating additional green space in densely populated urban areas. In many places around the world, green roofs, living walls, urban farms, and pocket parks are emerging in skyscrapers. Therefore vertical green space in Shanghai is not a relatively new idea. With more than 75 percent of the world’s population

7 Washburn, Dan. "Green Acres?" Shanghai Diaries. May 30, 2003. Accessed November 2, 2014.

http://www.shanghaidiaries.com/archives/2003/05/30/green_acres/.

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expecting to live in urban areas by 2050, something needed to be done to accommodate this change. New residential, commercial and office spaces within major cities will be needed to accommodate millions of people, and will lead cities to invest in innovative, integrated and sustainable solutions to cope with the rapid growth of urbanization. In recent years, urban planners and architects around the world have been developing ideas and creating different solutions to approach the challenge of high-­‐density urbanization, thus the concept of the vertical city has become a very popular one. Our examples presenting the idea of vertical green space are Shanghai Tower and Pink Cloud’s innovative proposal of Shanghai Flip/City.

The Shanghai Tower will soon be the second tallest building in the world; it is described as a vertical city more than a building because of its mixed use of metropolis with more green space than even some cities are able to incorporate at the ground level. It is because of its many green spaces, that is has been called a “city of parks”.8 The first couple floors are gardens and green walls, and at this Fig.5 (Source: http://patricksloan.net/?attachmen t_id=4805k)

level the parks tend to be around 50,000 square feet. In addition, every 14 floors there is a park, equivalent to

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Schwartz, Ariel. "The New Second Tallest Building In The World Is An Urban Green Space Wonderland." FastCoExist. August 9, 2013. Accessed November 2, 2014. http://www.fastcoexist.com/1682822/the-­‐second-­‐tallest-­‐building-­‐in-­‐the-­‐world-­‐is-­‐an-­‐urban-­‐ green-­‐space-­‐wonderland.

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what you would call a city park. The parks are also designed to have different themes. One of the parks is tropical while another showcases native grasses.

Another example of a vertical city is Flip/City plan by Pink Cloud. It was founded by four international designers in Copenhagen with a hope of using architecture as a substance for social development. They pitched an innovative proposal for the future Shanghai called Flip/City, because it literally flips the horizontal cityscape of Shanghai onto its side. Pink Cloud uses the footprints of the

Fig.6 (Source: http://sourceable.net/wp-­‐ content/uploads/2014/02/Flipcity-­‐Detail-­‐of-­‐long-­‐section.jpg)

city’s existing building types and adopts them as the new facades of the vertical city. 9 The designers’ aim was to combine different functions in city-­‐clusters, preserving the human scale while simultaneously increasing the density and green space at an urban scale. By expanding Shanghai up along the vertical plane, empty urban spaces can be generated. This creates many possibilities for new neighborhoods and green open areas for the community. In addition, they have to make sure that their plans are meeting the needs of a modern city, its economy, social structures and sustainable plans for the future. These plans expect to act as a healing force to renew weak urban zones by filling

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Martty, Mercedes. "Rethinking Urbanism Through Vertical Cities." Sourceable. March 3, 2014.

Accessed November 3, 2014. http://sourceable.net/rethinking-­‐urbanism-­‐vertical-­‐cities/.

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voids and dead space with functioning, thriving neighborhoods. Most importantly, this new typology would have the capacity to maximize green space and solve infrastructural issues while creating an efficient, accessible circulation system for public transit.

Thinking in

terms of the horizontal green

space,

the

strategies of locating more parks into the city may be paradoxical.

While the main notion Fig.7 (Source: http://www.tu-­‐braunschweig-­‐ isl.de/STAEDTEBAU_UND_ENTWURFSMETHODIK/wp-­‐content/gallery/flipcity/004.jpg)

of the creation of new green space is to

address the environmental injustice problems along with making the neighborhoods healthier, it also can increase the housing costs and the property values due to the decrease in land for residential. Eventually, this can lead to gentrification and displacement of the residential areas that the green space strategies were designed to benefit in the first place. This can also be linked to a larger social issue, such as creating a wider gap between the poor and the wealthy.

Therefore, urban planners and architects need to focus more on urban green space strategies that are ‘just green enough’ and that explicitly protect social as well as ecological sustainability.10

10 Wolch, Jennifer, Jason Byrne, and Joshua Newell. "Urban Green Space, Public Health, and Environmental Justice: The Challenge of Making Cities ‘Just Green Enough’." Elsevier:

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Fig.6 (Source: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-­‐3-­‐642-­‐54203-­‐9)

On the other hand, the “vertical city” can be seen as a better alternative to the horizontal garden because it can act as a great tool for solving the issue of not accommodating high-­‐ densely populated areas. Many urban planners and architects believe that the vertical city is a way to go for future architecture and urban planning, but there is at least one thing that we must keep in mind. Do we want to put all the services into one vertical city? Putting so many uses in the building is seen as a bad thing, because you’ll never have to leave it. In the end, what is the point of having a public horizontal green space and other public locations in the city if we are not ever going to leave the building? This then raise the question of how can we differentiate public and private space when these distinctions are being blurred by the vertical cities.

Landscape and Urban Planning 125 (2014): 234.

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