“China’s demographic context, economic dynamism and pro-urbanisation policies provide the background of Shanghai’s hyper-growth. Hyper-growth translates into hyper-density, not only population and structures, but also of ideas and styles. In the centre of Pudong, a very typical case of growing areas in Shanghai, we have an administrative building in the middle that was designed by Japanese architects, then the science centre in the south side, the central avenue, and the Century Park, which were commissioned from American, French and British architects respectively. The job for Shanghai planners is to integrate all these differences. Every project is a mega-project in comparison to the West or by standards in developed countries. Different languages, different ideas, different styles, different materials and even a different attitude towards the implementation of projects is what we deal with everyday.”
“A successful city has low energy demands from its transport system and good city planning should not require much physical mobility. Transport engineers are often contented with meeting increasing demand levels, but what they are actually addressing is a deficit in urban planning. Pedestrian street, bicycle lanes and public transport routes are the types of road that enhance the urban quality of life. In a wonderful way, I think, no other big city has the opportunities for cycling that Shanghai has. The outcome of that is lots of cyclists and a huge density of transport that supports the city without any pollution. You can also produce a good transport system based on public transport, as in Hong Kong for example. Such systems attract people to use public transport. If, on the other hand, you build a very attractive system for the use of cars, the ultimate outcome, which looks very similar everywhere in the world, is that speed increases but so do expenses and ultimately you are only becoming richer in wasted time used for driving longer distances. You get the far but lose the near, you destroy the small structures by supporting the big ones: the city runs out over its borders. If we look at efficiency in terms of energy for the same purpose and compare the efficiency of the car versus non-motorised means, the former has an inefficiency of less than 1% of the latter. Public transport lies in between. If we face a shortage of energy in the future, cars will be the least sustainable means. Shanghai is in a wonderful position concerning energy consumption in the transport system still now. However, everybody wants to have a car in Shanghai so energy consumption is going up steeply.”
“Decisions about transport imply trade-offs. Coming to this conference site today, you probably noticed the poor road conditions in the surrounding area. There was a plan to widen the road 20 years ago but that could not be implemented because of problems in the land clearance process. Had the plan not be abandoned, this very building would probably not exist here today. During the past several years Shanghai has invested large amounts to improve the capacity of the road system. The dilemma is that if we try to improve the mobility of our city, we induce more people to drive cars, if we do not, mounting congestion makes our city unliveable. From 1986 to 2004 the area serviced by underground lines increased by 50% but the average trip length remained the same at about 13 minutes. This is an advantage of improved mobility that critics of transport planning in Shanghai do not see.”
“As a transport planner, I think that the way we design our cities, how we understand what is happening in them, actually gets reflected in our transport systems. In both China and India, the two fast-growing mega-economies of the future, the spread of urbanisation is taking place along the growth of the informal sector. When we talk about the transport sector or the kind of transport systems we design we really have to be very, very aware of this fact: the multiple cities and the multiple needs that we are designing for. In India, over the past 50 years since independence, we have been doing a lot of planning and making grand master plans but we have ended up building roads where there is nothing designed for pedestrians, really nothing designed for bicycles. We have standard six lane highways with standards copied from American or British highway capacity manuals, but if you notice how the road is being used, the reality is very different. The pedestrians and bicycles that occupy the road are captive users, people without choices whether we design a physical environment that is safe for them or not. We, as designers, may keep blaming people who do not know how to be on the road, but their reality remains the same.”
