Charles Landry: Expo Shanghai 2010

The International Creative City Columne #3: Two major events at opposite ends of the world ended in 2010. ‘Better Cities Better Life’ was the theme of the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010. ‘Change through Culture and Culture through Change’ was the slogan of the Ruhr’s European Cultural Capital year. Both were about how we can live in the future as fulfilled creative individuals whilst taking responsibility for the world....and this demands cultural change of major proportions. Which event tells us more about good city making?
 

The Worlds Expo: Success and Crisis

World Expos have had a crisis of confidence. What are they for? When world fairs were invented in the 19th century they had a clear purpose. You could experience the world in one place, its goods, its inventions and its ideas. You made deals. It was a way to show the world your power and imagination. It even started the competitive craze for icons. At the first in London in 1851 they built the famous Crystal Palace and in Paris later the Eiffel Tower.



Things are different now. The media help us see the world constantly as if it were in one place. Yet global events remain part of the city making repertoire, even more so than ever. Each on their own way share a responsibility for the world. Even the football world cup fosters harmony between people.

In a world where cities and regions are fighting to blast through the information clutter they use events to gain recognition, to clarify and project identity, image and to establish a global role. Within this the activities of the creative economy sector, such as design or interactive media, play a key role to help spectacularize the show and the city itself.
At the top of the events hierarchy are the Olympics, followed by the football World Cup. Then much lower down are the festivals like that in Edinburgh or art fairs as in Basle. Crucially within this setting the European Cultural Capital scheme remains important.
 

Shanghai 2010: Hope for the Expos?

The Expos, by contrast, were fading into insignificance, who remembers Zaragoza in 2008 or Aichi, Japan in 2005, until China had to give Shanghai a consolation prize since the Olympics in 2008 had to go to Beijing. China never does things in half measure. Shanghai had to be the biggest. Indeed it was vast covering 5.28 square kilometres, which equates to 10650 football pitches and China Pavilion alone covering 35. In London in 1851 it covered 20 pitches. It had to have 70 million visitors from May to October and so 1000’s upon 1000’s were bussed in daily to reach the target. It was impossible to see everything even if you had a week. Without special passes you had to wait hours and hours to get into any pavilion. The loudspeakers regularly announced: ‘China pavilion waiting time 5 hours, Japan 4 hours, Canada 3, Korea 3, right down to Kazakhstan 1 hour and Bosnia or Albania none’

So apart from posturing what was its goal? What was its content? It had a clear theme ‘Better Cities, Better Life’, but only a few of the national pavilions followed this up. It was in the urban best practices area that those issues were explored and issues of creativity and culture were largely hidden from view. With notable exceptions for the rest pavilions were mostly more like exhibitions at a second rate tourism event telling you why it was good to visit the South Sea islands, Malaysia, the many African countries or Saudi Arabia which used the world’s biggest screen to impress. Others explained to the world or rather mainly to the Chinese ‘this is who we are’. One thinks especially of the European pavilions like the Netherlands, France or Italy, which mixed cliché with the occasional touch of humour. And some were unusual like Britain on top of whose pavilion you could walk and within a cave like structure 1000’s of glass tentacles each represented a seed so explaining our bio- diversity. And China of course was impressive going through the history of its civilization and into the future and the 100 or so new cities that will be built.



Inside you saw the new media pyrotechnics in operation often more to impress than to explain. Yet anyhow it was impossible to absorb much.....constantly bumping into people and being shuffled and pushed from place to place.

Overall it felt more an architectural exhibition and indeed some of the structures were unusual even compelling and one thinks of Spain, China or Vietnam and Australia.
 

Urbanity: From Ideals to Understanding

Everything, alas, seemed new. There was little sense that great, green cities of the future will be built on the fabric of the old. Past, present and future are merged. Indeed some of the greatest environmental gains will come from retrofitting the old fabric with new uses found as we attempt to create the fourth clean, lean, green industrial revolution. And it is not only about technical questions and the physical fabric important as they are.

Creating a new urbanity that combines creativity and concern for the world is about behavioural change and thus culture change. The Expo taken as a whole experience did not lead you to understand this new urbanity, but the European Capital of Culture 2010, Essen for the Ruhr did. The Ruhr, former industrial heart of Europe, is in transformation since 25 years, starting the process with the IBA of Prof. Ganser and leading up to the claim "change through culture - culture through change" of the year 2010. Projects as different as "EmscherKunst" and "Urbanatix" are signs of the successes of this new urban live.

Some interesting themes emerged standing back from the noise of the Expo especially if you took part in some of the conferences and seminars, but 99.99 of the people visiting would not have known they were happening and were not invited. The Pavilion of the Future reminded us of the ideals of urban planning and how most urban visions are also cultural visions and the UN pavilion surprised us all. It focused on one issue ‘creativity’ and how creativity can help us reinvent cities by merging an empowering ethos with an openness to good ideas which goes with the grain of local cultures. The message was do not let the next generation down. Ironically the UN, which seems to be a cumbersome organization, finds itself at the forefront and with a lot in common to Ruhr 2010.