“ Our reason to start this very large process was quite simply that we, as urbanists, felt that our generation, which had worked in the 20th century, largely failed to create liveable cities for ourselves. Places like New York, London and Berlin show that the intellectual inquiry into urban conditions did not produce a vision of the good city in which people could prosper both materially and culturally. We were moved to have this set of meetings out of the fear that in the present age, where there is a massive physical expansion of cities in the rest of the world, our mistakes would be repeated as though we had found an image of modernity, a Western solution which would serve as a model for growth in the new urban age of the world. To us, that seemed to be a potential disaster.”
“ The open policy reforms taken by the central government have given Shanghai a chance to redevelop since the1990s. The city now has three historical opportunities to consolidate its future structure and also to guide the course of Chinese urbanisation: the opening of Pudong New District and extension of the urban core; the metropolitan expansion with suburban growth, planned new towns and consolidation of urban sub-centralities; and the redevelopment inner-city areas related to the Expo 2010. Once again the Huangpu River becomes an element providing coherence to urban form. The former waterfront along the river is now being transformed from an industrial area full of factories, shipyards, warehouses and docklands into a public open space.”
“ What does quality mean? Does quality mean durability or does it mean affluence? If we talk about quality today in terms of durability, there is no comparison in what we produce now versus what used to be produced, say 50 years ago. But if we were to talk about affluence, everyone would agree that if you go down to a supermarket today the variety of products is probably one hundred times that of 20 years ago. So it is important to consider what people want when they ask for quality. My opinion is that we live in a time where people do not want durability. I used to think that I was in an industry [real estate] that built something to last for hundreds of years. I have been proved completely wrong. My customers move, on average, every two years. If we did not come up with new products on a 6 monthly basis, no one would walk in to our sales office. When people talk about speed and quality you do not really have to worry about quality because everything recycles much faster today. If you want people to move up the social ladder quickly, inevitable with a GDP growing 9% every year, then you need speed. If I do not have a new apartment to move into the person who wants to buy my apartment has to wait. It is only when I vacate that they can move in. When they vacate, someone else will move in. That is, in my opinion, what makes society work well and what we need to think about when we talk about quality and speed.”
