Street Life Analysis

1966 Words8 Pages

Streets and street life in Shanghai Shanghai, as an international metropolis, the financial capital of China and a historical city with significant effects on Chinese modern history, has multiple city images which reflect upon its diverse street life and urban designing. In this almost all-inclusive city, we could find highly-planned boulevards and viaducts extending in all directions that link up all parts of the international city, which is a practical application of the political scientist and anthropologist James C. Scott’s state-driven urban planning. Spontaneously, numerous shopping centers and urban central parks provide residents and visitors with reasons to be imposed to urban streets life, where we can find clues concerning the …show more content…

To better comprehend how state-driven regulation and Jacobs’s ideal street life ideology function in Shanghai, I am going two analyze the two modes from multi perspectives and explain how Jane Jacobs’s ideal street life predominates in Shanghai with the assistance of state-driven regulation. Examples of James Scott’s state-driven regulation of urban space can be found in the construction of the Century Avenue in the newly-developed Pudong New Area. At the year of 1990, Communist party leader unveiled the plan to accelerate the development of Pudong New Area. In less than 30 years, the urban landscape of Pudong New Area has been undergoing a revolutionary change. Compared with the shabby bungalows 30 years ago, nowadays, skyscrapers tower over Lujiazui residential district. Century Avenue, a straight and broad boulevard with tall buildings orderly distributed along it, which has a total length of 5.5 kilometers and connects Century Park to the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, leaves a strong impression of regularity and …show more content…

She regarded the continuous usage of the sidewalk as an essential necessity for maintaining safety of urban street life. To create a safe public space and make a city street well used, there should first be an obvious and clear demarcation between public and private space (Jacobs,107). In Shanghai, there are many examples which accord to this description of the quality of city streets. The sign shown above which is fixed on the gate of a private residential area in Shanghai writes that “non-residents are not allowed to drive into this neighborhood”, clearly setting a boundary between the public sidewalk and the private living area. [picture here] With the clear demarcation, public and private spaces cannot “ooze” into each other (Jacobs, 107). The people’s life inside the neighborhood become safer with the isolation from the outside potential

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