A SHANGHAINESE DAY 1 Anything can happen anywhere in Shanghai. Within its flat landscape, ideal for cycling, are superposed numerous layers of matter, human realities and emotions – a landscape that can be easily broken down or built up in this metropolis, where motion is the only constant, and where the juxtaposition of time, space and its actors are agents of both the city and its motion . [ + ]
A SHANGHAINESE DAY 1
Anything can happen anywhere in Shanghai. Within its flat landscape, ideal for cycling, are superposed numerous layers of matter, human realities and emotions – a landscape that can be easily broken down or built up in this metropolis, where motion is the only constant, and where the juxtaposition of time, space and its actors are agents of both the city and its motion .
Everything moves. Lynch said that there are static parts of the city and there are mobile ones: citizens. However, here in Shanghai, the static parts disappear, are relocated, recreated, created, all at once. In a very short period of time, you can find yourself living in a different city, without having crossed any threshold.
The mobile parts, actually, are the parts that are most adaptable and which embrace change, as something that was meant to be. The citizens circulating around the city sometimes view the place they live as a small town: a town where everyone knows their neighbours, the stallholders on the market, and their evening dancing partner; a village within the city, where some of their family members moved to join them in an effort to make their dreams come true; a village where I can be myself – a Shanghainese.