Shanghai: demolitions going on.
Good report from canadian team “bricoleururbanism”.
But the outrage is harder to find among the thousands of poor families who live in the ramshackle collection of gray brick houses topped with wavy roof tiles. “Tear the whole place down,” said Zhou Meihua, 72, who shares a 20-square-foot pair of rooms with three generations of family members. “If we get enough compensation, we’ll happily move out.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/world/asia/21beijing.html?_r=1&src=twt&twt=nytimes
Government officials tend to stoke such sentiments by failing to update old neighborhoods in a way that preserves their existing fabric.
Instead, they seize property in parts of the city they deem “unhygienic and unsafe,” rezone much of it as commercial property and sell it for huge profits. The concession to history often consists of a few new buildings with upturned eaves and garishly painted timber slapped on concrete facades.
Local officials often claim that the need to renew old areas requires their destruction, critics say.
Beijing Journal: Bulldozers Meet Historic Quarters in Beijing, to Mixed Reaction http://nyti.ms/cEgy8w
nytimes
Migrant Workers in Shanghai
As China’s economy turns to globalisation, at home the issue of a floating workforce is becoming more intense and complex. In Shanghai, low-skilled migrants are subject to economic and social segregation. This comes with a social stigma and restricts the migrants to particular economic sectors within a fragmented labour market. Nonetheless, the itineraries the migrants follow allow them to acquire certain skills and resources. Their survival strategies produce what have been called “situations of affiliation and disaffiliation” within an overall situation of general insecurity.
The “move away” policy or how to battling pollution in china
Big cities face heavy environmental protection pressure. For instance, Beijing has a daily environmental index and the government also implements an annual “blue sky” plan. And environmental protection departments are especially under heavy pressure to fulfill their quota of emission cuts every year.
From this we can see that the government is very strict about emission reduction.
But how are we solving our environmental problems in large and medium-sized cities? The common practice is to move polluting enterprises such as coal-fired power and steel plants away from the cities to the remote areas.
Air Quality Monitoring and Forecasting in China
AMFIC addresses atmospheric environmental monitoring over China. It consists of an integrated information system for monitoring and forecasting tropospheric pollutants over China. The system uses satellite and in situ air quality measurements and modelling to generate consistent air quality information over China.
New tactics against evictions?
On june 12, I visited the SEMC, the Shanghai Environment Monitoring Centre, which is located at the number 1 of West Nandang Road.This centre is a medium size building of the late seventies and it comprises 15 floors of several offices and labs. I was received by the engineer in chief who kindly described me how the centre works.The SEMC has several main divisions, such as air quality division, water pollution division, biologic hazardous materials division and noise division. There are 50 monitoring stations in Shanghai, but only 8 of them, which are selected by the NEP (National Environment Protection), could transfer the API (Air Pollution Index) to the public.The responsibility of SEMC is to collect information from each specific monitoring station to their information division, and then that information would be processed by their database and information system to transfer to internet or intranet. In other words, their work is much like quality management controlled and monitored by the SEPB. The Shanghai Environment Protection Bureau. The “political” office to which the SEMC should report.
Shanghai, China’s commercial and industrial hub, staged a massive cleanup for the World Expo, which began May 1 and is expected to draw up to 70 million people. It razed old steel mills and shipyards to make way for the Expo along the banks of the Huangpu River and closed down heavily polluting factories, or moved them to distant suburbs.The city also has sought to reduce car emissions by raising standards required of vehicles that travel into the city’s center. But cleaning up the city is only half the battle, since Shanghai lies downwind of heavily industrialized regions further inland. At times, farm fields in neighboring provinces are burned to clear stubble, leaving the city enveloped in a mucky haze.
The makeover of Shanghai before the expo.
The city says that to clear a huge site along the Huangpu River, which snakes through the heart of Shanghai, it relocated 18,000 families and about 270 factories, including the colossal Jiang Nan Shipyard, which employs 10,000 workers.
Shanghai "expo-based" real time air quality monitor.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau (EPB) have launched AirNow International, with real-time air quality data reporting from the 2010 World Expo, which runs from May 1 to October 31. The Shanghai EPB will use technology developed by EPA to send air quality data to Shanghai citizens through the Internet.
Monitoring air quality at Shanghai:Input data flowcharts and API index.
Shanghai Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau
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Descriptions of the major duties of this city “agency”.
Monitoring air quality at Shanghai
THE city’s environmental protection department will issue timely reports on the environment and air quality near and inside the Expo site, officials said at a news briefing today. Zhang Quan, director of the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau, said the bureau had set up 46 automatic monitoring stations to cover the whole city, including the Expo site. It had also cooperated with more than 30 cities in the Yangtze Delta to ensure timely reports about the environment and air quality, Zhang said. The bureau will issue forecasts the environment and air quality 24 hours ahead and warn of potential high pollution 48 hours in advance so that action to prevent it can be taken. (source Shanghai Daily).
Review of Shanghai's Environmental Community
The emergence of environmental activism in Shanghai appears to be relatively late for a cosmopolitan city of its size and development. Shanghai’s NGOs have only begun to launch environmental projects since 2000, when it became fashionable to contribute to activities to improve the environment
