Melinda Liu
|
Mar 8, 2008 04:51 PM
Beijing isn't alone in its "edifice complex," the massive urban
makeover that has transformed the Chinese capital in the run-up to the
Summer Olympics. In Shanghai the remodeling of the city's famous Bund
waterfront has led to some raised eyebrows. My colleague Duncan Hewitt
writes from Shanghai:
When Shanghai does something, it doesn't do it by halves. For years,
local urban planners have admitted that the city made a mistake in the
1990s, when it routed one of its major highways right along the famous
Bund waterfront. Since then conservationists have dreamt of the day
when the traffic would be rerouted, or even put underground in a
tunnel, to spare the historic structures from pollution and improve the
view of the famous old stretch of colonial-era buildings.
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