Word: songjiang
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Dates: during 2005-2005
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...entire German-style town has sprouted, its brightly hued gingerbread homes modeled on those of Weimar in Germany. The new town, which will soon house some 30,000 distinctly un-German people, was designed by Albert Speer, son of Adolf Hitler's favorite architect. Forty kilometers away in Songjiang, barefoot migrant workers are building another massive satellite city, this time a vision of ye olde England with tidy Tudor cottages, cobbled paths, a giant castle and a garden maze. In Pujiang, another Shanghai suburb, 100,000 citizens will soon occupy an Italian dreamscape complete with languid canals...
...instance, Italian architectural firm Gregotti Associati International has adopted everything from feng shui philosophy for window placement to extra bedrooms for the parents who often live with newlywed couples. But a Disneyland syndrome affects other suburbs. At Thames Town, one of the English-style developments that make up Songjiang New Town, an ad campaign advises that anyone fond of steeplechasing, Premier League soccer and the Beatles should consider joining the 8,000 fortunate folks who will ultimately live in this housing complex. Naturally, Thames Town will have a British exhibition hall where planners envision screening a James Bond film festival...
...With a minimum price of $490,000 for a villa in Thames Town?more spacious digs go for $669,000?Songjiang New Town will be out of reach for many of the lower- and middle-class Shanghai residents whose housing woes these satellite towns were originally intended to address. More than 3 million migrant workers have flooded into Shanghai, and as the city center is torn up for office high-rises, 226,000 people were forced to relocate to suburbia in 2003. But a property bubble has prevented many citizens from finding affordable housing near Shanghai. "Of course, the developers...