Shanghai, Then and Now 1

Shanghai, Then and Now
The contrast between the city's new skyscrapers and its colonial-era enclaves couldn't be greater

By Frederik BalfourIn 1992, Deng Xiaoping declared that Shanghai would be “the head of the dragon” pulling China into the future and poised to unseat Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore as Asia's pre-eminent financial capital a role Shanghai played in the 1920s. Since then, the city has seen an unprecedented building boom, with its housing stock more than doubling in the past 15 years. But the wrecking ball has been wielded with a vengeance, and more than two-thirds of Shanghai's colonial-era neighborhoods have been flattened to make way for office towers and expressways. Only now are preservationists able to save some of Shanghai's remaining architectural heritage. The contrast between the city's futuristic skyscrapers and what is left of its old neighborhoods is stark