A small village (BCE) located along the Delta of Yangtze River, engaged in fishing and salt, is today the most populous city in China and the world's largest commercial port freight volume. So, since centuries main meeting point with the West.
<< Better City, Better Life >> proclaims the municipal slogan for the flourishing empire of luxury in the new Market Dynasty. There are enough historical traces in other cities so Shanghai could undergo to the banner of 'something new', no matter tear it down and build it again, as it happened with the 'opium's concessions', European colonization and the so-called exotic East Paris. China is today the first luxury consumer in the world (Fortune Character Institute). Since then, the global business elite stands resplendent in Pudong, the new district of Shanghai built in just 20 years.
Little remains of Ming Dynasty designs (1368-1644), described by some historians as <<one of the greatest eras of disciplined government and social stability in human history>>, or the Shikumen architecture, traditional of Shanghai that (after concessions of the First Opium War) combines western and traditional architecture of the low Yangze, based on their social customs. These buildings represented over half of the homes in the city at its peak (XIX) with buildings of two or three floors with a small front yard, houses support each other, being flanked by narrow alleys or longtang. A lifestyle extinct and relatively unchanged where the routine passes in the street, from the daily grooming, food, leisure or sport, in the streets hangs laundry, resting and playing. The austere little house spaces for night shelter and a kitchenette, life is given outside; at parks, at the streets and lontangs, exotic pets and striped pijamas make navigating between cultures, that will be engulfed soon in the heart of the megapolis of the future. Since the liberation of socialist economic Shanghai takeoff has been meteoric, and now is one of the capitals reference in architecture and business around the world, which does not harmonize too much with the ruins of the past. The old Shanghai disappears.
