This is a book in two halves. Design consultant Edward Denison and architect Guang Yu Ren spend the first five chapters of this handsomely illustrated book setting out the history of Shanghai's growth and development from the earliest days up to the 1940s. They lovingly describe the buildings that have become the trademark of the city - the varied mixtures of hotels, offices, banks and government buildings constructed largely between the mid-19th century and on into the mid-20th. These buildings, as the excellent photos in this study show, have survived remarkably intact. This survival is made all the more striking by the many threats, from foreign invaders to the Taiping Rebellion, the city weathered over the years.

Shanghai's short history has great poignancy simply because of its amazing ability to recreate and rebuild itself. The 1920s and 1930s were the period of its greatest allure, something Denison and Guang describe first through the many extraordinary buildings constructed during that time, and then through the solemn narrative of the city's envelopment by the clashes between the Nationalists and the Communists, and then through the invasion, and degradations, visited on Shanghai by the Japanese. Simply concentrating on the architecture, this book shows how receptive Shanghai was to foreign influences. It was a city in which, for almost a century, foreign architects, and, in the latter stages, Western trained Chinese architects, were able to create unique, hybrid designs. Shanghai, typically, was one of the very last cities to offer unimpeded aid to Jews fleeing the Nazi holocaust in Europe. It housed sizeable English, French, Japanese and finally Russian populations. The sense emanating from the chapter dealing with this period is of inexhaustible vibrancy and life, all of which, in the space of a few years, was to be closed down with the arrival of the new communist government in 1949.   

At this point, Building Shanghai: The Story of China's Gateway changes from a celebration into a lament. Their argument is quite simple; from 1949 to the 1980s, Shanghai saw no building of any note. Its great houses and public constructions were transformed, either into public facilities, or simply decaying shadows of their former selves. The nadir of this was the period of the Cultural Revolution, a decade during which, they argue, the city suffered its worst calamity. This seems overstating it, especially in view of the graphic descriptions of the devastation wrought by the Taiping followers, and, indeed, by the invading Japanese. But perhaps their argument can be interpreted simply as locating Shanghai's energy and uniqueness in its commercial functions.   

Their lament does not end here, and the final chapters of the book are powerful critiques of the "new" Shanghai that has come to amaze and impress the world. There is no dispute about the return of trade power to the city, but Denison and Guang are scathing in their criticism of the hell-for-leather redevelopment going on now. The Pudong area has become an exhibition area for increasingly huge high-rise buildings and is now not only alienating for simple human pedestrians, but pretty much un-navigable. Worst of all, in the long term, almost intolerable pressure has been placed on the natural environment of the city. Shanghainese are now taking sustainable development much more seriously, but the authors argue there is still a long way to go.  

Shanghai is undisputedly one of the world's great cities, and rightly recognized as such. But cities are much more than the buildings that line their streets. They have, as the authors eloquently argue, an "ecosystem," and dramatic interventions can be damaging and destructive. The city may well be on the verge of its greatest period ever, but it needs to equal its extraordinary commercial performance over the last two decades with cultural and social ones.   

As Denison and Guang state, the city has always been many things to many people, and this "emptiness" has been both its strength, and its vulnerability. This is something to mull over while standing with all the others marveling at the Bund and the bright shiny modernity of Pudong opposite - embodying a dream of progress the city has tried to capture for almost all of its existence.

Academy Press, 2006
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Kerry Brown is a Director of Strategic China, an Associate Fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and works for the Liverpool Shanghai Partnership