Elephant In Exile

Shanghai Urban Planning Museum

Nestled into the lush People's Park is an admirable collection of museums. A museum of modern art, the Shanghai Museum, and the Museum of Urban Planning (Pictured at right).

The museum of urban planning focuses on the past and future of the city of Shanghai with a massive exhibit of Shanghai 2020 (or some such date). The exhibit features a model of the entire city of Shanghai circa 2015 or so, with every single current and planned building represented on a huge scale model of the city. (Pics below). It was pretty cool.

The most intriguing part of the exhibits was the various displays on the many plans the government has for the region. Expanding the impressive new airport, building a new container port, redeveloping the length of Shu Zou Creek, etc. It didn't impress me that many of these plans were government sponsored (the kind of hideous urban renewal schemes that wrecked many U.S. cities in the 1960s) boondoggles, but rather a bunch of exhibits detailing the collective public and private projects that will reshape the city in the years ahead. It was kind of a 'hurray for the future' Epcot like exhibit, which I'm a total sucker for.