European’s Cities In Shanghai’s Suburbia

By Edge of Humanity Magazine, January 22, 2021

Photographer Pablo Conejo is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this documentary photography. From the project ‘City Replicas – China’. To see Pablo’s body of work, click on any image.

Paris

England

Germany

England

“One City, Nine Towns” is an urban plan and architectural development launched in 2001 to create nine European-style towns in the outskirts of Shanghai. The idea was to relieve Shanghai’s overpopulation problem by building these western-themed new towns with an estimated capacity of one million people by 2020.

Netherlands

Most of the towns were still under construction back in 2012, when pictures were taken, but brand new historical were already built and inhabited. Postmodern architectural pastiche as its best enabling local Chinese population to experience living in Europe without even leaving Shanghai.

The trend spread to other Chinese cities: two hundred kilometers away from Shanghai, on the outskirts of Hangzhou there is Tiangdouchen, which is a huge replica of Paris.