ABSTRACT
Shanghai’s most popular postcard image shows a skyline of glitzy high-rises that has seemingly grown overnight on the marshy right bank of the Huángpu? River. To an extent that is only matched by New York City, public imagination equates China’s second city with tall housing blocks. They comprise a vast range of variations: in the classy upscale compounds near the financial district on the riverfront one is greeted by a security guard at the gate, parks one’s car in an underground garage, and saunters through immacutely cut lawns into a marble lobby from where an elevator takes one to a spacious apartment overlooking the river. In less prestigious developments, one pushes one’s bicycle through a rusty iron gate and walks up several flights of badly painted concrete stairs into a narrow studio where kitchens and bathrooms have to be shared with the neighbors.
