Where relocated residents enjoy the best of both worlds

When I first met Mr Sheng, a retired electrician in his 60s, on a scorching morning in mid-July, he was busy pulling apart a twin bed in his dilapidated cottage that crouched along a bucolic river in suburban Qingpu District, western Shanghai.

I ran into him as I rambled through a rundown street cramped with ramshackle bungalows and cottages, many of which were uninhabited when I arrived. I had learned from my previous research that Daximen Street, featuring rickety brick-and-wood houses built several decades or even a century ago, would soon be renovated, and its remaining residents properly relocated. Daximen means "great west gate." I went there to see how things were panning out.

"Why are you dismantling your bed?" I asked him while standing outside his small abode, cautiously keeping a distance from the disconnected bed slats studded with iron nails, which he laid randomly on the ground. I found I was almost as tall as the battered eaves of his little lodging, whose damp walls were sporadically covered with overgrown moss.

"Don't you sleep here?" I asked again, before he was ready to answer my first question.

"No, I don't sleep here," Sheng replied with a grin. "I have just rented a piece of farmland from my friend, where I can grow some organic vegetables like cabbage, cucumber and eggplant. I'm going to use the bed's planks and beams to build a small shelter in the field for my farming tools."

"Where's your farmland?" I was curious.

"Near Metro Line 17 Zhaoxiang Station," he answered.

"Wow, that's about 15 minutes' walk from my home," I said. "Maybe one day I will go and watch you grow vegetables."

He gave me a broader grin. Our new-found common interest in rural life helped us talk more candidly about the past and future of his dilapidated dwelling, literally an urban cottage in the sense that it was such a small-frame house tucked away on a decrepit street.

Although we both live in Qingpu, Sheng's house is in the heart of the district, while mine is about two subway stations away. His lodging on Daximen Street is part of a larger neighborhood called Yingpu, a prosperous ancient watertown thriving on its historical legacies and ever-renewing cultural and commercial landscapes.

Already a hub of business and life in the 16th century, Yingpu neighborhood now boasts an area of about 16 square kilometers, including 75 rivers, with a population of nearly 130,000. Its historical legacies include a Taoist temple built in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and a classical garden created in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

As it further restores traditional riverfront landscapes with a modern touch, Yingpu plans to gradually improve the living standards of those like Sheng who still dwell in undesirable places by relocating them to better residential spaces.

Meanwhile, the rundown street, which is in a disarray in terms of designing styles, will be adapted into a new, riverfront cultural and commercial space that meshes with Yingpu neighborhood's traditional Jiangnan architectural style. Jiangnan refers to the region to the south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, where low-rise architectures – with slanted beams and overhanging eaves to keep a house warm in winter and cool in summer – are typically built along a network of zigzag rivers.

Daximen Street is one of the dilapidated dwelling places to be renovated in the current round of urban regeneration moves launched by Yingpu neighborhood.

The United Nations defines urban regeneration as a move that "brings back underutilized assets and redistributes opportunities, increasing urban prosperity and quality of life." Explaining the necessity of urban regeneration, the World Bank says that every city has pockets of underused land or distressed urban areas. They are usually the result of changes in urban growth and productivity patterns. In conclusion, the World Bank points out that urban regeneration policies either target inner city declining neighborhoods or vacant land parcels.

But in many cases of urban regeneration, the World Bank notes, citizens around the world are forced to move to marginal areas on the urban periphery, resulting in a sprawling urban footprint.

A low-carbon practice

Yingpu neighborhood is a different story.

On July 6, Sheng signed a contract with Yingpu neighborhood that guaranteed him a new apartment in the Wupuhui residential complex along Xidayinggang, a tranquil brook about 3 kilometers to the west of Daximen Street. Most of Sheng's neighbors joined him in signing relocation contracts on the same day, local media reported.

I also spoke to several elderly men and women who had lived in Daximen for over 40 years, and they all said they also had got a satisfactory relocation plan like Sheng.

"It's just one subway station away from Daximen and I will be able to move into my new apartment in three years," Sheng told me. "And the new apartment has a higher market value than my small abode on Daximen Street."

I went to Wupuhui, the future settlement area along Xidayinggang, for a field study on July 20. The northeast corner of Wupuhui has been cleared for the construction of several 18-story residential buildings and low-rise commercial outlets. A supervisor on the site told me that construction would be completed in about three years.

As I strolled the idyllic path along Xidayinggang, I saw a man of my age nimbly doing push-ups under the shades of trees. In our casual conversation that ensued, I learned we were born in the same year and he liked Wupuhui – literally meaning a place where five rivers converge – very much.

"I moved here around 2021," he told me. "The government gave me three new apartments in exchange for my decrepit ones in the old downtown area. Now I live in one big apartment with my grandson and rent two other small ones out to young people who work in nearby shopping malls."

He used to be a driver for a factory in the 1990s, but was laid off as a result of business reshuffle. Then he became a taxi driver. "I worked hard, literally 'running' for a better life."

He said that, as he approached retirement, he never expected to get three new apartments from the urban regeneration move. "I signed a contract with the local government in 2016 and began to move here in 2021."

Compared with Sheng, he called himself "an early bird" in Qingpu's urban regeneration move.

"Wupuhui is not on the margins of downtown Qingpu, it's still in the district center, and public transportation is more convenient than in the Daximen area," he pointed out. Under his guidance, I boarded Metro Line 17 from two separate stations and found that each station was less than half an hour's walk from the Wupuhui residential complex. At Daximen Street, in contrast, one can have access to only one Metro station, and the walking distance is longer.

Combining my field research with government development blueprints, I discovered that Xidayinggang belongs to a 43-kilometer-long, round-city water park at the center of Qingpu.

The water park took shape in 2019 and expansion is under way, mainly along an ancient moat near Qushuiyuan, a classical garden built in the Qing Dynasty. It's about 3.5km to walk from the moat area to Wupuhui.

No wonder Sheng didn't hesitate to move, although he has lived around Daximen for the better part of his life. He now lives in an apartment across Daximen Street, while setting up his small abode on the street as a rental property.

"But I haven't found a tenant in the past two years, so I have decided to dismantle the bed and be ready to move," Sheng said, without a trace of regret of having to leave his old dwelling place. "There is a bigger rental market at Wupuhui."

Indeed, Wupuhui stands to become another urban center in Qingpu, aided by the ongoing construction of a massive medical complex affiliated with the renowned Zhongshan Hospital. This complex is situated to the immediate west of Wupuhui, within walking distance of Dianshanhudadao Station of Metro Line 17. Walk about 6km further to the west, and you will end up in the scenic watertown of Zhujiajiao.

At Hangyunxincun, another dilapidated residential area not far from Daximen Street, an 82-year-old woman was no less eager than Sheng to move to Wupuhui. I chanced upon her on the early morning of July 16, when she came down from the top floor of a four-story building to have breakfast in a nearby canteen.

It was about 7:40am when I met her, and the sun was already scorching hot. I said hello to her and asked: "Hi apo, where are you going? It's so hot outside." Apo is a local word for an elderly woman.

"My rooms are much hotter than outside," she said with a wry smile. "And by noon, my bed mat is hot, the rooms' floors are hot, everything inside my home is hot. You can't stay at home even if you turn on the air-conditioners."

As we chatted, I learned that she would relocate to Wupuhui as well. Before she moves into a new apartment, she said, she would temporarily live with her son, who has just refurbished his rural house in another suburban district Songjiang.

Hangyunxincun was first built in the 1970s to accommodate local sailors. Hangyun means water transportation, while xincun means a new residential community.

Another octogenarian woman who has lived in Hangyunxincun for more than 40 years told local media earlier this year that she had suffered from a chronic lack of tap water due to the community's poor water supply systems. Hangyunxincun is about 900 meters to the east of Daximen Street, and a little over 3.5km from Wupuhui.

On my way to Daximen Street in mid-July, I met an elderly couple who walked at ease along a part of the 43-kilometer water park. Partly because of a lumbar muscle strain, I shuffled my feet and felt I couldn't even catch up with the old couple. Then I tried to walk a bit faster by putting my left arm behind my back as a sort of support. Finally I caught up and struck a conversation with them.

"You walk so steadily," I said to them both. "How old are you?"

The man raised his fingers to form a Chinese character for "eight" – meaning he was 80 years old. His wife said she was 78.

Sharing their "secret" to a healthy life, they told me they walk in a circle every morning except on rainy days. They leave their home located to the immediate north of Daximen Street, go west all the way to Xidayinggang, the rustic river along Wupuhui, turn south to the southernmost tip of the water park, and then turn east and north before they return home.

The circle, which stretches about 8 kilometers, neatly delineates the core part of the water park that surrounds the center of Qingpu, where relocated residents enjoy the best of both worlds – better apartments in a better urban center.

The elderly couple told me they might be able to relocate in the next round of urban regeneration move, because their current residential community is "slightly better" than those at Daximent Street or Hangyunxincun.

"We hope to relocate as soon as possible, though we are a bit better than the ramshackle houses at Daximen Street or Hangyunxincun," they said. "For one thing, the walls of our building are neither noise-proof nor water-proof. What's more, our residential communities, built in several phases since the 1970s, were not designed to accommodate so many private cars. Look how many cars are there now, which often block the emergency exits for ambulances or fire trucks."

Renovation of old residential areas has been high on the city's agenda over the past few years, as Shanghai moves to regenerate herself into an eco-friendly haven for living and working.

In the case of Yingpu neighborhood, relocation from either Daximen Street or Hangyunxincun to Wupuhui is also an example of low-carbon urban regeneration. Such relocation within downtown areas goes a long way toward reducing carbon footprints associated with longer transportation distances in the case of moving urban dwellers to a faraway and peripheral place.