Street Life Analysis

1982 Words8 Pages
Streets and street life in Shanghai Shanghai, as an international metropolis, the financial capital of China and a historical city with significant effects on Chinese modern history, has multiple city images which reflect upon its diverse street life and urban designing. In this almost all-inclusive city, we could find highly-planned boulevards and viaducts extending in all directions that link up all parts of the international city, which is a practical application of the political scientist and anthropologist James C. Scott’s state-driven urban planning. Spontaneously, numerous shopping centers and urban central parks provide residents and visitors with reasons to be imposed to urban streets life, where we can find clues concerning the well-known…show more content…
To better comprehend how state-driven regulation and Jacobs’s ideal street life ideology function in Shanghai, I am going two analyze the two modes from multi perspectives and explain how Jane Jacobs’s ideal street life predominates in Shanghai with the assistance of James Scott’s state-driven regulation. Examples of James Scott’s state-driven regulation of urban space can be found in the construction of the Century Avenue in the newly-developed Pudong New Area. At the year of 1990, Communist party leader unveiled the plan to accelerate the development of Pudong New Area. In less than 30 years, the urban landscape of Pudong New Area has been undergoing a revolutionary change. Compared with the shabby bungalows 30 years ago, nowadays, skyscrapers tower over Lujiazui residential district. Century Avenue, a straight and broad boulevard with tall buildings orderly distributed along it, which has a total length of 5.5 kilometers and connects Century Park to the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, leaves a strong impression of…show more content…
To analyze how they function in maintaining the public safety, take the Xujiahui central business district as an example. This representative CBD composes of several department stores, inside which are a great many supermarkets, restaurants and stores.“The basic requisite for such surveillance is a substantial quantity of stores and other public places sprinkled along the sidewalks of a district” as Jane Jacobs put forward. She believed that stores, bars and restaurants are chief examples to abet sidewalk safety (Jacobs, 108). The existence and prosperity of the commercial centers provide residents and visitors with concrete reasons for using the sidewalks. Continuous usage of the sidewalk increases the number of the “effective eyes”. Jacobs concurred that the surveillance among people can improve the safety level of the public space. Besides, as the photo (Fig.2) shows, the CBD is a large-scale of building complex, where structures and buildings work together to form a prosperous and harmonious scene. In consequence, the view can attract people in the buildings along the street to look out at the sidewalks and increase the number of the effective eyes as well. The CBDs are capable of drawing people’s attention to the public space, hence the safety of public streets has been improved accordingly. Economically speaking, CBD like Xujiahui

More about Street Life Analysis

Open Document