The "City That Never Sleeps" is located in the north of downtown Shanghai and in the southwest corner of Zhabei District. The planned construction scope starts from Suzhou River in the south, Zhongxing Road in the north, Datong Road-Tianmu Middle Road-North-South Elevated Road in the east, Suzhou River-Hengfeng Road in the west, including the Shanghai Railway Station area. The total planned area is 1.42 square kilometers. The total approved construction area is 2.8 million square meters, with a total investment of 25 billion yuan. It was basically completed in 2000.
1. Tracing the origin of the city
At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, this area was part of Meiyuantou District. Surrounded by villages and farmhouses such as Yaojiazhai and Xiajiaxiang. It is the birthplace of the Chinese world in Zhabei. In the third year of Xuantong in the Qing Dynasty (1911), the Zhabei Hydropower Company, known as the Pearl of Zhabei, was completed at Chabaojiao (on the side of today's Shanghai Railway Station). In the first year of the Republic of China (1912), Zhabei City was established. The city hall was located on Zongju Road (today's ***he Road). In the second year of the Republic of China, the Megen Road Railway Cargo Station (called East Station after liberation) was built on today's Moling Road. Municipal administration and transportation are booming, and the city scene is flourishing. By the 16th year of the Republic of China, there were 14 roads including Guangzhao Road (today's Muxi Road), Huasheng Road, and Meiyuan Road, and more than 100 factories and businesses. Among them are Yutong Flour Mill (today's Shanghai Third Rice Mill), which was very influential in China's early national industry, Tianyiwei Mother Factory, etc. There are 154 Shikumen lanes, tens of thousands of residents, and several garden villas, making it the prosperous center of western Zhabei.
The Japanese invaded Shanghai twice on 128 and 813, bombing the Huajie area of ??Zhabei indiscriminately, and basically destroying the buildings. In the area, except for the four lanes of Quan'anfang and Daixiangli and the side of Hengfeng Road and Yutong Road, which still have more than 10 three-story private houses, all the lanes and houses were destroyed. There is only one remaining factory, Yutong Flour Mill. The Megen Road cargo station was bombed many times and was devastated. After the fall of Shanghai, a large area in Nanyu (around today's *** and middle school) was occupied by the Japanese army as a military warehouse. On the east side, Yaojiazhai (today's Fangua Lane) became a gathering place for disaster victims, refugees and poor citizens after the bombing. There are between 3,000 and 4,000 shantytowns, simple houses, and "land dragons" covering an area of ??6 hectares and more than 16,000 residents. It is one of Shanghai's high-density shantytowns. The lanes in the lane are narrow, garbage piles up, smelly water flows across the lanes, mosquitoes and flies swarm, and the working people live in dire straits. On the west side, facing the Suzhou River, there are the Guangzhao Villa and other free grave sites and the land that was bumpy and overgrown after the bombing. The northern corner is filled with horrific remnants of war and a huge slum village. Looking at the whole picture, there are ruins and ruins, and the cityscape has been reduced beyond recognition.
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, the Shanghai Municipal Government formulated the "Zhabei West District Reconstruction Plan" in order to recover from the war wounds. It planned to build the entire Zhabei West District into a district with smooth municipal roads, numerous commercial outlets, various types of residences, and municipal services. Developed areas. However, due to the Kuomintang launching a civil war and lack of financial resources, the plan became a dead letter.
After liberation, Guangzhao Road was widened in the 1950s, renamed Tianmu West Road, Changshou Road Bridge was built, the District People's Government, the Public Security Bureau Building and the District Workers' Club, ***he Middle School, Chang'an Middle School, etc. were built. The scenery has changed. In the 1960s and 1970s, some roads were widened and renovated. There are more public transportation vehicles and the living conditions have improved. In particular, Fangua Lane has been completely renovated and given a new look after the third phase of construction, and is famous in Shanghai. However, as far as the entire region is concerned, due to insufficient financial resources and various factors limited by municipal planning red lines, there has been little change. In Qingyunfang, between Huasheng Road and Huakang Road, Tianmu West Road and ***he Road, hundreds of thousands of residents still live in very simple, low houses with sloping roofs and mud floors. The 711-meter-long ***he Road only has a three-story simple workshop built in the early days of liberation on one side of Minli Road. Both sides of the road are filled with low-rise houses, simple shops, primary schools, and kindergartens. Except for a few large factories, transportation companies, and parking lots, the cityscape on Hengfeng Road is average. The northern edge of Moling Road is surrounded by a low and simple wall of the Shanghai East Railway Station, and the southern edge is a large area from Tianmu West Road. Except for a few slightly better warehouse buildings, simple houses and shabby houses are connected together.
In 1984, preparations were made to build a new railway Shanghai station, and large-scale municipal relocation began. It was completed and opened to traffic at the end of 1987. With the station as the center, municipal roads, transportation facilities, commercial outlets, postal and telecommunications institutions, etc. are comprehensively constructed and developed to create preliminary conditions for the construction of a city that never sleeps.
2. Planning and Construction
At the end of 1987, the Shanghai Railway Station was completed and opened to traffic. There are 59 pairs of trains running daily, accounting for 60% of the city's passenger volume. Including pedestrians passing through the city, the daily passenger flow is estimated to be nearly 2 million. The huge crowd resources bring development and prosperity of municipal administration, transportation, commerce, services, finance, and tourism, as well as considerable economic and social benefits. In order to further prosper the Shanghai Railway Station area, the Zhabei District Committee and District Government of the Communist Party of China invited relevant leaders and experts to study, discuss, and draft the plan to build a city that never sleeps.
The planned functions of the city that never sleeps are positioned as: Shanghai land passenger transportation hub, business sub-center, municipal commercial center, and urban life amusement park. Its main points: (1) Aim to create a new modern large-scale public activity center in the city. (2) On the premise of ensuring the traffic at the north gate of Shanghai on land, the shopping, office, catering, entertainment and residential functions in the city will be integrated to show the characteristics of the city that never sleeps. (3) Reasonably organize the flow of vehicles and people such as interport, intra-city, and intra-urban railways, long-distance buses, subways, ground buses, taxis, etc. to form an air, ground, and underground three-dimensional transportation network. (4) Focusing on the main roads of Tianmu West Road and Hengfeng Road, build more than 100 novel, large-scale office, commercial and residential buildings with high density, high starting point and high grade, each with its own characteristics.
(5) Build a group of multi-story and high-rise residential buildings along the edge of the Suzhou River to form a new residential area. Together with the transformation of the "model section" of the Suzhou River (added in 1996), it will become a new tourist landscape.
In May 1992, the preparatory work for the construction of the city that never sleeps started. First, the district government issued land leasing and investment information to domestic and foreign countries. Second, it is planned to relocate 18,300 units and residents to cede land. In 1993, the Shanghai Municipal Planning Bureau approved the detailed plan for the city that never sleeps. The construction of the entire city entered a substantial stage. First of all, welcome and receive businessmen from the United States, Canada, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and other countries as well as Hong Kong, Taiwan and other regions, including "Malaysian Sugar King" Kuok Henian, Hong Kong real estate giants Li Ka-shing and Lee Shau Kee, and directors of Hong Kong Lai Sun Group Chang Lin Baixin and Wu Song, chairman of Hong Kong Li Cheng International (Group) Co., Ltd., expressed great enthusiasm for investing in the city that never sleeps. After negotiation, 21 sites were signed and leased, covering 110,100 square meters, with a buildable area of ??815,000 square meters. The district raised 1.669 billion yuan in funds for contracted relocation and major municipal supporting projects. The district government has established the Evernight City Development Office, which is responsible for investment reception, coordination, management and services, and strives to create good conditions for the construction of the Evernight City.
By 1966, 133,000 square meters of foreign-invested housing had been built in the Evernight City area, with an investment of 1.39 billion yuan. There are 273,500 square meters of domestically-funded housing, with an investment of 1.64 billion yuan. The total construction area is 1.15 million square meters. Among the total planned and approved construction area of ??2.8 million square meters, there are more than 800,000 square meters for commercial services and entertainment industries, more than 850,000 square meters for office and trade facilities, and more than 1.15 million square meters for residential and supporting buildings. At the same time, many interport, long-distance and urban bus stations will be set up and improved. Complete large-capacity electricity, telecommunications, water supply, drainage and gas facilities. Build a telephone exchange that never sleeps with a communication capacity of 60,000 lines. Make hardware preparations for the city that never sleeps to become a branch of Shanghai's modern information port. By the end of 1996, 37 high-rise and super-high-rise buildings above 100 meters had been built in the city, 18 were under construction, and 26 were under construction. The construction areas are respectively more than 1.15 million square meters, more than 610,000 square meters, and more than 800,000 square meters.
3. Initial appearance of the city
1. Building construction
Almost all of the city is newly built buildings, commercial buildings, hotels, and hotels. With novel shapes and various shapes, it constitutes another landscape of Shanghai's urban architecture in the 1990s, showing the new look of Shanghai's reform and opening up. Due to limited land and high land prices, most of them are high-rise and super-high-rise buildings with a height of 100 meters or more. They have a simple appearance and enlarged podiums to maximize space development, reduce construction costs, and increase efficiency. Most of the foreign-invested buildings are from Hong Kong Wang Ouyang Design Company. The advanced construction technology, materials and equipment make it unique in Zhabei. Among the many buildings, the Kerry Evernight City, Evernight Plaza and Evernight Commercial Building, which have been built with investment from foreign and Hong Kong businessmen, are particularly spectacular. The first phase of Kerry Evernight City covers an area of ??1.37 hectares. The construction area is 110,500 square meters. The office building is 35 floors high, 143 meters high, the business building is 38 floors high, 132 meters high, the podium is 4 floors high, 33,000 square meters, and there are 3 floors underground. It is currently the tallest building in Zhabei, with blue walls. Colored curtain wall glass and light red paint create a harmonious atmosphere of warmth and coldness. Evernight City Plaza covers an area of ??1.53 hectares and has a construction area of ??100,000 square meters. It has 27 floors of office buildings and 30 floors of residential buildings, both 100 meters high. The glass curtain wall has a novel shape and all imported building materials, which are gorgeous and trendy. The Evernight Commercial Building is a 9-story commercial building covering an area of ??0.48 hectares and a construction area of ??26,500 square meters. The decoration is exquisite, and the exterior wall is made of gold-plated curtain wall glass. It is so resplendent that it is called the "Golden Baby Frog" in the city that never sleeps. Among the large number of domestic-funded buildings, Huanlong Department Store, Zhongya Hotel, United Ticketing Building, Post and Telecommunications Building, and Longmen Hotel were built after the completion of the Shanghai Railway Station on both sides of the South Square. After the railway apartments and other buildings, a number of novel buildings with advanced facilities such as Huadong Hotel, Kangji Building, Chang'an Building, Mechanical and Electrical Building, Famous Brand Building, Xinzu Department Store, Xinya Great Wall Hotel, Xinya Plaza Hotel, etc. were built around the station. Large-scale commercial buildings have become the main body of the building complex in the city that never sleeps. Magnolia Plaza is decorated with a huge stainless steel Magnolia city flower, which embellishes the landscape of the north gate of Shanghai. The square pedestrian street is 36 meters wide and long, with green space and red flowers. On both sides of the sculpture, the 14- and 20-story New Asia Plaza Hotel and the New Asia Great Wall Hotel stand east to west, with white exterior walls, trapezoidal floors, and spacious spaces, which is quite spectacular.
2. Commercial Finance
The five major shopping malls in the city, including Shanghai Jiashike Mall, Evernight Mall, Famous Brand Mall, Xinzu Department Store, and Huanlong Department Store, have become the commercial entities in the Evernight City area, making Evernight City has become one of the four major shopping malls in Shanghai and one of the top ten commercial centers in Shanghai. New Asia Plaza Hotel, New Asia Great Wall Hotel, Longmen Hotel, East China Hotel, Far East Evernight Hotel, Zhongya Hotel and other star-rated hotels, Lufeng Building, Railway Apartment, Building 3 of Chang'an Building, Gongxiao Hotel, Shanghai Railway Station Hotel, etc., many catering and service industries and numerous small and medium-sized shopping malls (stores), restaurants, and hotels have opened and operated, making the commercial and service industries in the Evernight City area form an all-round, multi-grade, and diversified pattern to meet different levels of consumption and increasingly thriving.
As an important wing of commercial and commercial buildings, commercial (residential) office buildings have been built. At the beginning of 1996, more than 10 commercial (residential) office buildings with an area of ??539,700 square meters had been completed.
Among them, there are Building 1 of Chang'an Building of 41,000 square meters, Joint Ticketing Building of 24,300 square meters, Mechanical and Electrical Building of 35,200 square meters, Kangji Building of 31,000 square meters, etc., which have a number of domestic and foreign and domestic and foreign business, enterprise, administrative, and economic buildings. Merchants from management departments, tertiary industries such as consulting and information, and commercial trading markets can stay here.
The financial and securities industries in the city that never sleeps have begun to take shape. Branches of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, China Construction Bank, China Everbright Bank, Urban Cooperative Bank, and People's Insurance Company have been established one after another. There are also 2 branches of the stock exchange in Evernight City.
3. Transportation, Posts and Telecommunications
Shanghai Metro Line 1 Hanzhong Road Station and Shanghai Railway Station, which are supporting the transportation of Shanghai Railway Station, more than 50 city bus lines, 2 Large taxi dispatch stations, etc. are located in the center of the city. The city that never sleeps is a passenger transportation network inside and outside the city, especially the fast and safe subway transportation. It only takes 5 minutes to reach the People's Square in the city center from the Shanghai Railway Station, and only half an hour to the New Longhua Terminal Station. The north-south elevated road Tianmu Road Overpass and Changshou Road Bridge have been built on the east and west sides of the city. The north and south corners have been expanded, and the new Hengfeng Road Bridge, Hengfeng Road Overpass, and Hengfeng Road Bridge can be reached across the Suzhou River to Huangpu, Jing'an and other downtown areas. After crossing the Hengfeng Road overpass, you can get on to the elevated inner ring road, which reaches Pudong New Area in the east, National Highway 312 and Shanghai-Nanjing Expressway in the west, the starting point of National Highways 318 and 320 in the south, and National Highway 204 in the north on Hujia Expressway. Direct access to Baoshan and Wusong areas via the North-South Elevated Road, *** and Xin Road. The pedestrian streets, sky corridors and underground passages under construction in the city will form a three-dimensional and spatial pedestrian network. Among them, the Meiyuan Road pedestrian bridge was completed in 1996. Located on the east side of the South Square of Shanghai Railway Station, between the United Ticketing Building and Huanlong Shopping Mall, it has a total length of 39.3 meters, a width of about 10.6 meters, and a lower clearance of 5.6 meters. The top cover is made of hot-bent glass and is air-conditioned in summer. There are walking stairs on both sides, escalators on one side of the United Ticketing Building, and direct access to the shopping mall on one side of Huanlong Shopping Mall. This bridge is one of the modern closed pedestrian overpasses in Shanghai.
There are as many as 10 postal and telecommunications institutions in the city, including the Shanghai Post and Telecommunications Building, the Shanghai Post Heavy and Light Mail Processing Center, the Municipal Posts and Telecommunications Transfer Center, the Evernight Telephone Office, and the Shanghai Guomai Wireless Telephone Paging Station. Handle domestic and foreign letter posting, telegram receiving and receiving, telephone communication and other services. There are numerous coin-operated, magnetic card and other public telephones to provide services to users.
4. Municipal facilities
On the edge of the Evernight City, there are the Shanghai North-South Elevated Road and Tianmu Road in the east, a three-story circular large-scale vehicle overpass, spanning the Suzhou River in the south and the North Vietnam railway line. There is Hengfeng Road overpass in the west. Tianmu West Road is the main road that crosses the city that never sleeps from east to west and is also the skeleton road in Shanghai. The red line is 50 meters wide and there are 6 fast and 2 slow lanes on the ground. The western end is connected to the Changshou Road Bridge leading to Changshou Road in Putuo District. Hengfeng Road is one of the main roads in the city. It reaches the city center in the south and Hutai Road in the north and connects with the Inner Ring Road and the Hujia Expressway. The red line is 40 meters wide and some sections are 60 meters wide. Tianmu and Hengfeng roads are busy with traffic, with the peak motor vehicle traffic volume at the section reaching more than 1,200 vehicles per hour.
In 1996, the only independently constructed Evernight Telephone Bureau among Shanghai’s “Four Streets and Four Cities” was completed and opened, with a telephone capacity of 60,000 lines. Its optical fiber communication, high-speed data transmission, satellite communication, Internet network, etc. The facilities are compatible with commercial and business functions in the Evernight City area. Achieve the goal of meeting users' various communication needs at any time and create good conditions for the construction of the Evernight City Information Port. The foundation of the 20,000-ton semi-underground reservoir was completed, and the 35,000-volt substation and gas pressure regulating station were put into use. A new combined sewage pumping station was added, and the northern sections of Meiyuan Road and Minli Road were widened and opened. The 220,000-volt substation and the Suzhou River comprehensive management model section (the Hengfeng Road-Hengtong section of Guangfu Road) projects have been launched successively.
5. Culture and entertainment
Hanzhong Square, the Shanghai Youth Cultural Activity Center located at the intersection of Hengfeng Road and Hanzhong Road, was completed and officially opened at the end of 1996. It is an important landmark in Shanghai’s opening up to the outside world. Youth activity venues, in addition to places for youth culture, technology, social interaction, and learning, also include music cafes, wedding halls, electronic entertainment halls, film and television screening halls, art salons, small indoor Disney, electronic simulated golf, squash, and bowling centers, Fitness center etc. There are science fiction attractions, such as space world, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. There are also Evernight City Book Plaza, Xinzu Bowling Alley, and some modern film and television entertainment projects in shopping malls. Large-scale theatrical performances have been held in Magnolia Square to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, and the opening ceremonies of the ’95 and ’96 International Tea Culture Festival. Kerry Everlasting City held cultural and entertainment activities to celebrate the ’96 Christmas with citizens at the Jia Shi Hotel Plaza. The South Square of Shanghai Railway Station has repeatedly become a venue for popular science education, national fitness campaigns, firefighting, environmental sanitation, and legal propaganda. In 1996, the implementation of the comprehensive management model section along the Suzhou River in the city that never sleeps was launched, and the yacht dock in the city that never sleeps was built, and the tourism function of the Suzhou River will gradually be realized.
6. Lighting project
The south square of Shanghai Railway Station is equipped with a number of floodlights, advertising lights, square lighting, green space and architectural lighting, road traffic lighting, giant TV screens and Electronic flop advertising. With Magnolia Square as the center, Tianmu West Road and Hengfeng Road as the main axis, all kinds of colorful lights have become one of the four major night attractions in Shanghai.
By the end of 1997, the city that never sleeps will have completed a construction area of ??1.5 million square meters, accounting for more than 53% of the total. The ground project of the inner section of the Zhabei District of the Urban Light Rail Pearl Line will pass through the north side of the Shanghai Railway Station in the Evernight City area and operate in the northeast and southwest directions. The large-scale double-layer underground parking garage in the South Square of Shanghai Railway Station and the pedestrian underground tunnel between the Pearl Line City Light Rail Station in the North Square of Shanghai Railway Station and Metro Line 1 in the South Square of Shanghai Railway Station have entered the design stage and are expected to start construction within one or two years. By 2000, the total construction volume will be approximately 2 million square meters, accounting for nearly 71.4% of the scale, and the city will basically be built into a city that never sleeps. By 2006, all expected goals of building a city that never sleeps will be achieved, making it a more complete Shanghai land passenger transportation hub, one of Shanghai's urban business centers and a modern entertainment park in downtown Shanghai.