The other day, whilst out browsing the coinage at the China Gold Coin store, my wife and I realized we were right across the street from the Shanghai Urban Planning and Exhibition Center. As this was on our list of places to visit in Shanghai, we decided to trundle on over and have a look.

Our last attempt to visit this center was thwarted as they happened to be closed. We were in luck in this time as no thwarting took place.

Its a very interesting building on the outside, as you can see from the slideshow below. It’s like a building with hats. Inside are four floors of exhibitions on the past, present and future of Shanghai.

The slideshow may take a while to fully load as each photo is large – I didn’t want to sacrifice detail if you happen to be on a big monitor.

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On the second floor, in mind-numbing detail, they had Inner Shanghai laid out – building by building. It was a massive diorama that would make any model train enthusiast’s heart race.

I mention that it was just central Shanghai, as even given the vastness of the layout, it really only comprised a small percentage of the entire Shanghai city – as can been seen in the graphic below.

The area in gray in Shanghai City, shown in dark green is the Inner Ring Road,  and that was the extent of the diorama on display!

In addition there were exhibits on subway, road, railroad and airport expansion plans as well as water, waste and pollution control and improvement for the next 30 years. They also had many exhibits showing past and present development of various sections of the city – many of which were unrecognizable from the massive changes and reconstruction undergone in just the past few years.

The final exhibit we experienced was a 360° computer generated virtual reality fly through of Shanghai’s major points of interest. Again, the detail and scope of the virtual reconstruction of the city was very impressive.

 

It was fun and interesting and well worth the 30¥ price of admission.