Canary flies East
BARNSTORMING through Shanghai the other day, Michael Heseltine saw and praised the transformation of Pudong, the east side of the city. It reminded him, he said, of what his own Government had done to regenerate the east end of London. The comparison was a little unkind — for one thing, Pudong's bankers and develop- ers have not yet burned their fingers, and for another, the roads are being built first. The scale is prodigious. Pudong will stretch out to a new international airport, with not just one runway (like Gatwick) or two (like Heathrow) but four. A zone is reserved for the new financial centre. Designs were commissioned from around the world — there was one from the architect of Lloyd's — and then conflated. The final plan shows a touch of the San Gimignano syndrome, now spreading through the Far East: 'my tower block is taller than your tower block'. Houses and farms (and of course their inhabitants) are being removed to make way for all this. It may lack the vitality and human scale of present-day Shanghai, or the faded grandeur of the old mercantile palaces along the Bund, but it will be no more difficult to get to than Canary Wharf.
Previous page
