What Can Bucharest Learn from Shanghai for Better Cityscape
By Hu Xiaolu
Bucharest is the biggest city in Romania with 2 million population [1]. It is also the city I spent most time to experience and feel in this 2011 Buitex excursion. As a landscape architecture student, i will stand from my personal views to interpret Bucharest cityscapes in this essay.
Now, I still remember what Martijn said to us in the first day in a Bucharest metro station. He especially reminded us to be careful in such a big city, in which the ‘big city’ was emphasized. However, in my views, big city should be safer than rural areas. According to my own living experience in Shanghai, people can enjoy the superior security maintenance system, better urban infrastructure, and rapid renovation in cityscapes. As the theme of 2010 EXPO focuses, ‘better city, better life’. Good city should give people with good life rather than feelings of insecurity. With this opinion, I started the journey in Buchrest in order to find out whether Bucharest can turn into a better city.
After 5 days experience, to be honest, Bucharest left me lots of negative impressions with massy cityscapes, worse urban management and weak urban planning. Due to the page restrictions on the paper, I will pick up cityscapes as the main respects to show what can Bucharest learn from Shanghai. Before that I will firstly compare the situations in both cities.
Bucharest and Shanghai are both the biggest metropolitan city in their own country. They each functions as the financial and cultural center and experiences the rapid development in these decades. In fact, these 20 years representatively reveals the modernization and urbanization in the transitions from communism to capitalism in Bucharest. While, with the implementation under the reform and opening up policy since 1978, Shanghai has been developing into a modern and edge-cutting city with 23 million inhabitants[2], which is still attracting global attentions nowadays. Therefore, Shanghai can be an good example for Bucharest to learn from.
Pic. 1 Location of Bucharest in Romania Pic. 2 Location of Shanghai in China
In the days I spent in Bucharest, a lot of problems in the cityscapes came up to me. There are 3 problems standing out. They are: lack of strict cityscape planning, massy city commercials and too much surface parking lot. I will compare similar examples in Bucharest and Shanghai respectively as below.
Cityscape planning
Pic. 3 Calea Victoriei in Bucharest Pic. 4 The Bund in Shanghai
The cityscape in Bucharest is full of contrast. Different styles, time of construction, period of renovation, even the financial conditions can be easily found from the facades. No matter where are you in this city, all the contrasting elements surrounding you will pump into your eyes and make you dizzy. Take Calea Victoriei (Pic. 3), the important road linking several hot spots for tourism in Bucharest, for example, brand newly renovated French apartment and poorly managed flat are so close to each other with sharp contrast. This chaotic landscape let me think that there is no urban planning in this place and everything exists randomly. However, strict cityscape planning can be found in most places in Shanghai. Pic. 4 shows the landscape in the Bund, which is famous for its collection of varied kinds of western buildings. The planning for this place eagers to create the harmonious relationships among the buildings and make them as a whole scenic line for better cityscape. Besides, for other street landscape in Shanghai, the renovations are applied to a whole street rather than a single building in most times. Therefore, the sharp contrast disturbing visitors can be avoided.
Commercial control
Pic. 5 Piata Unirii in Bucharest Pic. 6 Puxi in Shanghai
For finance development oriented cities, commercial boards are always regarded as annoying elements in urban environment. The famous historical Piata Unirii fountain in Bucharest is also annoyed by the surrounding billboards on the top of the apartments. In fact, some huge commercials with no regards with any context can be easily found in Bucharest. In the contrary, Shanghai has a set of regulations to control the outdoor commercials to maintain for good cityscapes. The regions around historical sites, scenic spots, and other important places are protected from commercials. While only in shopping centre and commercial streets, we can see a lot of advertisement boards.
Parking lot control
Pic. 7 Huge Parking lot along roads in Bucharest Pic. 8 Underground parking in Shanghai
Parking lots exist along most of the streets and roads in Bucharest. Some huge parking lots also can be seen in densely developing urban centers. As a tourist, I regard them as non places and disturbing landscape for urban areas, especially for historical places in this city. I get confused and wander why people here don’t take the advantage of underground space to park the cars rather than let their cars burned under the sun and ruining the road landscape. While in Shanghai, surface parking is not allowed in centers and commercial districts. Rather, the underground space and some parking towers meet the needs of car owners. These facilities ease the traffic problems as well as give more surface space for urban developments.
To sum up, cityscape is a window of city for visitors. Although Shanghai is not the best city in the world, it has already done a lot to become a focus nowadays and it is still keeping up with times with an open mind. Therefore, if Bucharest wants to develop itself as an attractive city, there will be a long road to learn and follow.
Text reference
[1] “Populația stabilă la 1.01.2009″ (in Romanian). INSSE. May 19, 2009. <http://www.insse.ro/cms/rw/resource >
[2] Permanent resident population in 2010, 2011. Shanghai Government, viewed [23-07-2011], <http://www.shanghai.gov.cn/shanghai/node2314/node2315/node17239/node22560/u21ai494815.html>
Image reference
Pic. 4: Panoramio, 2011. Google, China, viewed [22-07-2011],
<http://www.panoramio.com/photo/6389537?source=wapi&referrer=kh.google.com>
Pic. 6:X in China, 2011. Mdou, China, viewed [22-07-2011], <http://mdou.me/city/china-shanghai-introduction/2011/03/05/32/attachment/shanghai-puxi>
Pic. 8:Shanghai traffic guide, 2011. Traffic radio, viewed [23-07-2011], <http://radio.jxgdw.com/xxjtpl/pldt/1311316_1.html>
Other pictures are shot or made by the author.
He Xiao,
After reading I could say that you really like Shanghai, maybe I should even put it on my still-to-see list! Because I’m really curious why you like Shanghai so much better than Bucharest I think some things have to be made a bit more clear and specific.
The word cityscape is used a lot but sometimes not totally clear, maybe you can give a definition directly in the beginning in the 3rd paragraph where you introduce it. Maybe you can also explain the way it’s important to you.
Than I asked myself what you exactly mean with the fact that Shanghai attracts a lot of attention and that Bucharest should learn from it? Does a city needs a lot of attention in order be a good city?
Something like chaos and contrast doesn’t necessarily have to be negative in my opinion, maybe on the surface Shanghai looks better, but is as well behind the service?
Everything can look really shiny and proper but I don’t think it necessarily is better, or that people will be more happier.
Is the role of landscapers to make everything look nicer (than it actually is)?
I think your blog is really interesting, it gives a lot of discussion what the role of landscapers is and what a good way of planning/designing could be. I think there is not one answer to that question, but if you specify your blog a bit more, it can give all the other Buitex people something to think about it for themselves.
Thank you for your blog.
Mart
Hi Mart,
Thank you for your careful reading and your nice comments.
In order to make my essay more clearer and easier to understand I would like to answer some of your questions in this reply.
The comparison I made between Shanghai and Bucharest is dependent on my feeling in the streets. It is said that for a ordinary human, 80 percent of sense is coming from the eyes. So what can be seen in the landscape takes the domains. The cityscape is what people can see on the streets in the cities. I think it is important for a city since the cityscape is representing the city itself. It leaves the first impressions on visitors or potential ones. Just like the New York always would like to show the picture of Wall street to indicate its power on the global finance world and show the image of Central park to present its cozy and balanced city life. Cityscape is used as a nice advertisement for the outsiders. While if people come into the city and feel well with the cityscape, it is also possible that the people will gradually turn to love this city and would like to stay in the city. And then the city can be really called attractive.
For landscapers, it is not necessary to make everything nicer because they don’t necessary what is design. For landscape architects it is necessary. Since their tool to meet with the problem is design. A design is supposed to make conditions better including more beautiful, more convenient and more sustainable etc.
I hope it will answer your questions~
Ava (Xiaolu)