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.