Restructuring a Global Identity: Branding Shanghai by "De-politicization" and "Windowism"

The rapid and dynamic development of globalization and the soaring economic wealth have transformed the image of Shanghai significantly in the past two decades, resulting in the increasing complexity of architectural representations with imported forms and styles. Historically, Shanghai is not only seen as the entrance to China, but also as China’s window onto the rest of the world. Its geographic position facing outward to the world allowed it to become China’s most cosmopolitan city, which adopted and adapted ideas from overseas well before its staid inland counterparts. For a long time, the architectural styles at Shanghai reflect the city’s openness to outside influences. Architectural forms in this city, like the Bond, actually are symbols that stress the representation of the existence of Western forces and influences. As a result, the city of Shanghai also becomes the window through which the whole China sees the West. The strong tie with the Western existence has shaped the local culture and life style and also become a significant essence of the city’s identity. However, the identity of Shanghai also reminds many Chinese of the colonial period – China’s declining power and the Western growing control. Therefore, there is an inevitable conflict existing in Shanghai’s identity — national humiliation vs. cosmopolitan. Since the 1990s, Shanghai has regained the role as China’s paragon of modernity, and also as the harbinger of China’s future. Depoliticization becomes the main strategy of reforming the identity of Shanghai. On one hand, Shanghai needs to re-stress its long history of being the most cosmopolitan city in China and having the strong tie with the West. On the other hand, the city wants to showcase China’s economic and political rise as a nascent superpower via Shanghai’s urban transformation. This move leads to the emphasis of symbolic architectural language for the purpose of branding the city. During the past two decades, Shanghai has completed dozens of landmark buildings with unique forms and big scales. Although those buildings have various architectural approaches and design features, all of them are more like displays of city images than exciting spaces that innovatively improve the quality of urban environment and people’s lives. The whole urban transformation of Shanghai is actually oriented by strong consumerism and “windowism”. Every building is seeking to bigness and highness which can be easily achieved by physical forces. However, it is hard to see any revolutionary design or innovative concept in Shanghai. The prevalence of symbolic buildings in Shanghai, in fact, reveals that the social life of Shanghai is for “look”, not for “live”. This paper examines the relationship between urban transformation and the political & social forces at Shanghai with a focus on the shape of Shanghai new identity during the recent two decade’s development. This research uses Shanghai as a case study to investigate how the globalization and local contexts influence the shape of urban identity in a non-western process.

Volume Editors
Anthony Abbate, Francis Lyn & Rosemary Kennedy

ISBN
978-0-935502-90-9