Talk About The Theme Of World Expo City

By the end of last year, China's urban population had exceeded 600 million, and the urbanization rate was 46.6%.

In a few years, this figure will exceed 50%.

Once the "native China" is rapidly advancing towards the urban society, the experience and thinking of urban life has become one of the most important social topics of contemporary Chinese.

Because of this, when Shanghai World Expo first took the city as the theme, it aroused widespread concern and sympathy.

"Better City, better life" represents both a vision and a realistic appeal.

While enjoying the modern life brought by the city, we are also deeply aware of the problems existing in the urban construction and development.

Since May, severe flooding has occurred frequently in some cities under the attack of several rare rainstorms.

People are keenly aware that in the face of the advanced "city appearance", the "facilities" such as urban facilities and management are lagging behind.

Although our city has row upon row of tall buildings, there are "fifty years without backwardness" wide road plaza, and the momentum of the grand "lighting project". However, our drainage system and management methods still lingered in the standards of many years ago.

Waterlogging has become a trigger point for us to reflect on urban construction and development.

In many cities in China, public facilities such as pportation, electricity, water supply and other public facilities are generally poor, and many natural disasters may be the cause of the attack of urban problems.

Not enough, it's not just underground facilities. The more roads are repaired, the more the roads become wider, the traffic is getting more and more plugging; the shops and offices everywhere, the public toilet are hard to find...

In the face of people's needs, the city is still far from enough.

In order to find out the causes of recurring problems, we should find out the causes from the system.

What are the deep-seated problems reflected in the phenomenon of "face saving and light weight" in urban construction? How should we change the concept and mode of urban development? How can our cities become more livable? In these respects, what Chinese wisdom and world experience have been given to us by Shanghai World Expo?

Nurturing a "natural" City

Zhang Song

"Waterlogging" highlights the conflict between urban development and natural environment.

The development of urban construction is inseparable from natural protection and ecological balance, shaping the harmonious relationship between the city and nature, and cultivating "natural" cities. It has become an important and urgent topic for urban development in China.

The city is an organic organism.

As a city planner, I have been thinking about how to make our city better. Most of the time, when people talk about cities, especially big cities, they always imagine skyscrapers, wide roads and huge squares.

As a place of life created by human beings, the city is a huge artificial environment and a complex cultural landscape. But civilization originated from nature, and naturally shaped human culture.

Historically, the formation of a good city includes rational utilization and appropriate pformation of nature. The future development of urban construction is inseparable from natural protection and ecological balance.

Therefore, when we look forward to shaping a better city, we should first actively protect and cultivate a city full of "nature".

Once considered a reinforced concrete forest, New York, the largest city in the north of the most prosperous Manhattan District of China, is planning and constructing a Central Park. Its size is astonishing. Its area is 3.4 square kilometers, accounting for 6% of the total area of Manhattan.

This land occupies 150 blocks of Manhattan. It can be said that "sacrificing" the huge economic benefits of real estate development and bringing some inconvenience to urban traffic.

The construction of the Central Park has lasted for 15 years, and the huge rectangular green space, which is 4000 meters long and 800 meters wide, has become a veritable city green lung. It has reserved large green space for public use, and has also reserved sufficient natural environment for the development of the city.

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The spotlight of World Expo, Shanghai, is the theme of the theme of "Better City, better life" in Pujiang.

Here, we can expand our imagination of the city. There is an important dimension: City and nature.

The China Pavilion highly generalizes the wisdom of urban development in China: "natural law", the harmony between city and nature, human and nature, and the "best practice area" established by various national pavilions, which is the first to set up the "best practice area".

Ancient and modern cities all over the world are inspiring us. The city is not a mechanical object, but an organic organism that is all embracing. The rational choice of mankind is to take advantage of the situation and follow the trend instead of allowing the force of bulldozers and reinforced concrete to wantonly pform.

Shaping the harmonious relationship between city and nature

In recent years, waterlogging has occurred in some cities due to rainstorms. On the one hand, it has been a long-standing accumulation of urban planning and management problems. On the other hand, from the perspective of urban ecology, it shows that the "humanized nature" created by the city and the natural environment such as water bodies and terrain are in conflict.

In the process of urban development and construction, the characteristics of urban natural environment are often neglected, and the law of urban ecology has not been fully grasps. The "natural consciousness" of the city has not yet been awakened.

When we are looking for and calling for the "nature" of the city, turning around will find that in recent years, the city that has been planned and constructed by "big hand" is so "unnatural".

It is reported that in the past 10 years, we have completed 100 years of construction in Europe. The scale is enormous and the changes are amazing.

Dramatic changes have taken place in the urban landscape. All these changes - skyscrapers, old city pformation, suburban settlements, fast road networks, historic blocks - are becoming a fantastic civilization magic and spectacular window display.

Most of our cities are planned according to the grand goal of building an international metropolis. Any place that does not conform to these standards must be thoroughly reformed, so we have carried out "sweeping" and "big demolition" for old urban areas and old buildings.

The most magnificent "city building" movement in human history is based on the premise of demolishing and destroying the original cities.

The remnants of historical sites in the old city have been carefully pformed into fashionable consumption places. Shanghai Xintiandi, Beijing Qianmen Street and Chengdu Kuan Alley and Zhai Alley are all the same. The "aristocratic" old area pformation mode has replaced the historical protection of public interest priority.

In the process of rapid development, few cities can afford to "waste" precious land to improve the environmental conditions. The urban parks are also becoming "pocket" landscapes. The trees and plants in the skyscrapers are so isolated and pathetic.

In the planning of old city pformation, the distance between buildings is getting smaller and smaller. Some developers even think that they are mostly double employee families. During the day, adults go to work and children go to school. There is no need for sunshine and sunshine. The green space of the plot is also built up as much as possible by the use of underground garage. It is impossible to grow large trees, mostly man-made landscapes such as lawns and pools.

All these changes have caused the alienation and unnatural state of urban space.

To put it simply, people used to be born and bred in the past, familiar with the city of girls next door, are now packaged as fashion super girls.

The city gives people a great sense of strangeness, and this kind of strangeness leads to the lack of community communication and the disharmony between people and people.

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Today, people are increasingly hoping that the city can give people the expectation of their homes and identities.

Shanghai and World Expo take the concept of "harmonious city" to meet the demands of "Better City and better life".

How to treat the city as a place for citizens to live, how to improve the state of the city itself, and constantly shape the harmonious relationship between the city and nature has become an important and urgent issue for urban development in China.

(the writer is a professor and doctoral tutor of the Department of urban planning, Tongji University)

Urbanization and internalization are more important than externalization.

Xu Zheng Zhong

In addition to the increase of the proportion of urban population and the expansion of urban scale, the process of urbanization should be the process of internalization of the formation of urban culture, the change of urban lifestyle, the cultivation of modern urban thinking and the pformation of social governance mode, and the comprehensive development of human beings as the starting point and destination of urbanization.

Spanning the "saddle area" of Urbanization

In the process of urbanization, countries in the world generally have to go through a saddle area with a rapid urbanization rate from 30% to 70%.

At present, the urbanization rate of China's relatively backward cities such as Tibet and Guizhou has exceeded 30%, while only 70% of Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin and other cities are in the rapid rise stage of urbanization.

With the advancement of industrialization and modernization, the speed of crossing saddle area is faster and faster. It took less than 30 years for Japan to take over 27 years.

Countries such as China, which are rapidly modernizing, will be faster.

But in addition to the increase of the proportion of urban population and the expansion of urban scale, the process of urbanization should be the internalization process of the formation of urban culture, the change of urban lifestyle, the cultivation of modern urban thinking and the pformation of social governance mode.

In this way, the deep level of urbanization is "urbanization of the soul, urbanization of culture, urbanization of society, management and governance mode".

In the final analysis, we should take the comprehensive development of human beings as the starting point and destination of urbanization, and take the road of people-oriented urban development.

Urban civilization promotes human modernization

The purpose of urbanization is to change the social structure through the concentration of urban population, thus forming a multi subject and flat social structure. This flat social structure will greatly promote the flow and pmission of information and knowledge, and improve the efficiency of interpersonal communication and institutional operation.

This new, pluralistic, flat social structure is quite different from that of the "original ecology" social structure scattered in the vast majority of rural areas in the past.

As Mr. Fei Xiaotong said, China's traditional countryside is a etiquette and custom society. Its basic structure of social structure is "the pattern of difference order".

This rural society is also a blood related society, which affects the interpersonal interaction in groups and regions with the characteristics of family and human feelings, and repels commerce and innovation.

The innovation of urban civilization, subverting the backward tradition of agricultural civilization, getting rid of the influence of small farmers' consciousness, gradually forging new modern urban personality and thinking mode, breaking the traditional rural civilization's habit of experience and analogy, paying attention to the shortcomings of blood and regional inheritance, and shaping the modern urban culture that is willing to accept new things, think independently, believe in science, emphasize efficiency and actively participate in public affairs.

Urbanization has spawned new life styles, personality psychology, values, interpersonal relationships, and human system. Its essence is the deepening of human modernization.

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Building a city of universal service

Some cities face "bright face", behind the weakness of "Li Zi", which reflects the problem of "heavy city" and "light city" in the process of urbanization.

And a profound revelation of Shanghai World Expo in urban construction is not only the beauty and grandeur of the ground buildings of various urban venues, but also the solid foundation of underground infrastructure.

All kinds of basic urban power supply, water supply, gas supply, heat supply, drainage, sewage disposal and communication are cleaned up through scientific underground infrastructure.

This is a microcosm of the development of modern cities in the world. It shows that the civilized modern city has its own planning and details. It is a city that provides universal and convenient services for residents.

To build a city with universal service, we first require the government to innovate the concept and mode of urban development, pform the development way that relies solely on economic interests and scale expansion, pay more attention to the overall interests of urban development, especially the development needs of ordinary citizens and vulnerable groups, and promote equal, fair, accessible, full coverage and sustainable social universal services.

The universal service system should be constructed to guarantee the basic rights of people's right to existence, development and free migration.

Build a universal service system to ensure the development of the network industry, industrial upgrading, and reshape corporate social responsibility.

We should build a universal information service system to promote the dissemination and diffusion of information and knowledge, and protect citizens' right to know.

To build a basic public service network, the "nine links and one leveling" of the "nine links and one leveling" to the information link, market access, laws and regulations, matching, logistics, capital, technology, service, and the new economic platform for the twenty-first Century will be pformed into "new nine links and one leveling".

In short, we should make every element of urban civilization return to the standard of serving people and serving people, making the city a place where human beings enjoy life and live in poetry.