I’ve recently gotten down to business concerning my dissertation research, as summers have a particular way of flying by too fast, and this is definitely not a situation in which I can let the deadline in August creep up on me while I’m sitting out in the sun. Two months is plenty of time to research and write a 10,000 word paper, but the more I focus my topic the more I’m made aware of how much I have to read. Thankfully, most of the reading is fascinating.
So why am I calling all Shanghai buffs? Well, because my dissertation concerns Shanghai, obviously. More specifically, it concerns visualizations of the ‘global’ and the Lu Jia Zui financial district. That skyline over in Pudong has graced thousands of magazines, articles, propaganda billboards, internet sites and at least a few hundred million digital cameras (including, I will admit, my own). ‘Global’ Shanghai is constantly invoked through images of that skyline, whether for consumption by a local or national audience, or to complement one of the countless ‘China Rising’ special reports so favoured in the Western media these days. It becomes a rather simplistic equation:
Tall, Shiny Buildings=Rise of Shanghai as Global City/Asian Financial Hub=Liberalization of China and integration into globalized economy
In my dissertation, I’m going to explore how much the lived reality/built form of Lu Jia Zui actually conforms to its commonly imagined ‘global’ skyline. Much discussion of globalization in the relevant literature talks as if there are some intangible forces floating around the world, homogenizing cities and transforming cultures. However, what is not so often discussed is that the whole idea of ‘globalization’ is nothing but a theoretical abstraction; it can hardly come knock at your door anymore than it can build a skyscraper. ‘Globalization’ , on the ground, is nothing more than the built form produced by belief in it. The production of ‘global’ spaces thus has little to do with abstract forces, and a lot to do with real possibilites/constraints.
The image/idea of Lu Jia Zui belongs to the abstract theoretical world of globalization, a realm of ‘global’ skylines and the triumph of global capitalism they represent. The real, experienced Lu Jia Zui, I will argue, represents the messy, incomplete, localized nature of ‘global’ developments once they are removed from the theoretical realm and experienced in the reality where they are forcibly constructed.
As more of a personal opinion, I feel that Lu Jia Zui, as an urban area, is much more powerful as an image than a lived space. This really hit me when I was in Shanghai last April; the difference between looking at the skyline from the Bund and actually standing among the lonely skyscrapers across the river is significant. What is a monumental skyline from afar becomes something much different when experienced up close: the glittering skyscrapers seen from across the river become lonely, windswept islands of design surrounded by even lonelier boulevards.
In this dissertation, I want to use Lu Jia Zui to critique the notion that ‘globalization’ somehow produces homogenous landscapes in ‘global’ cities, especially when dealing with financial districts. As an image, perhaps, Lu Jia Zui is similar to New York or Canary Wharf here in London, but in reality it is a place that defies simplistic description as abstract ‘global landscape’ and ends up being strangely Chinese.
So why am I writing all this? Well, I thought I would put the word out amongst China bloggers (and any other interested parties, obviously) that I am looking for material on Lu Jia Zui. On the one hand, I’m looking for promotional material/media that visualizes the Lu Jia Zui skyline as global landscape, symbol of Shanghai’s rise/China’s rise and so on. On the other hand, I’m looking for more empirical info on the actual composition of Lu Jia Zui, as well as information surrouding its conception, construction and subsequent development. For example, it is really a landscape of international finance? Who is actually there? While some towers are definitely stereotypical of the ‘global finance’ paradigm (I’m thinking of the new Citigroup glass box I saw last time around) , a decent number seem to involved national, rather than international, offices.
Of course, anecdotal stories on Lu Jia Zui or any specific development there are most welcome. Feel free to drop me a line in the comments section.