Greenizing the Chinese city
Urban regeneration, state developmentalism, and ecotopia in Shanghai Expo 2010
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7164915 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Qianyu Lu (0009-0001-1940-8140, University of Cambridge), Richard Hu (0000-0002-5167-844X, University of Canberra, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 1669-1688 |
| Publication date | 2025-11-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Planning Perspectives (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0266-5433 • E-ISSN: 1466-4518 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/02665433.2025.2540997 |
| OpenAlex | W4413243508 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 19 |
World Expos are both urban realities and urban utopias. In the 175-year history of World Expos, Shanghai Expo 2010 is the only one dedicated to a ‘city’ theme – ‘Better City, Better Life’. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Chinese government orchestrated a ‘city’ Expo in its prime city for considered reasons. The global event provided a golden opportunity to show (off) a global Shanghai and a rising China. It was also an arena for advancing innovations for an urbanizing country and an urban world. Local planners repackaged the Expo – an urban regeneration project of an inner-city precinct per se – into a world's fair of ecotopia. They proposed notions like ‘harmonious city’ and ‘eco-positive city' – despite acknowledged limitations in both conceptualization and applicability – to strike a chord with the then political rhetoric of ‘harmonious society’ and a pressing imperative for green development. In retrospect one and a half decades later, the Expo was an icon for re-imagining and re-narrating a state developmentalism – that had underpinned both the progress and problems of China's rapid and massive urbanization for decades – under a greenism hat, but with a compromised vision and mixed outcomes
Biology · Developmentalism · Environmental planning · Environmental protection · Geography · Political science · Urban regeneration · Computer Science · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Urban Planning and Governance · Urbanization and City Planning
Narratives and Pathways towards an Ecological Civilization in Contemporary China
The transformation of Beijing as a dual Olympic city
Mega-Events and Legacies in Post-Metropolitan Spaces
Shanghai
Shanghai Expo 2010
Aspects of Urbanization in China
Low carbon eco-city
Eco-urbanism and the Eco-city, or, Denying the Right to the City
Politics and the social in world-class cities
Remaking China’s urban space of the spectacle
Ecological civilization
The Political Economy of Urban Ruins
Expo 2010
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |