By Chen Jiawen

"Green space is itself a vivid exhibit. The Expo Park will become another name card of Shanghai", appraised Zhang Lang, the principal of the Greening Project Group of the Expo 2010 Shanghai China, Assistant Chief Engineer of Shanghai Landscaping Administration Bureau.

Waterfront "green heart", highlight in the urban ecology

The construction of the Expo Park is also significant from the angles of urban greening planning and system of Shanghai. As a key point of the "Huangpu River" waterfront landscape, which is the "one vertical" node of the "one vertical & two horizontal" landscape system in the green space planning of Shanghai, the Expo Park will facilitate the completion of the green space planning system of Shanghai. The Huangpu River, as the mother river of Shanghai, endows Shanghai with an indivisible natural pattern as a waterfront city. Zhang Lang joked that once the Huangpu River made a turn in the history, a great story would happen and a gathering place of crowds, which was often a plaza or green space, would be formed gradually at the corner. The "green heart" Expo Park is just around the corner of the Huangpu River. Such an excellent geographic position was chosen at pains. The planning designers of the Expo Park just want to return this waterfront green space of Shanghai to nature.

Moreover, the band-like riverside park is not only the green space along the Huangpu River, but also an organic component of the urban public green space of Shanghai, with close relation with the latter. The Expo Park will become one indispensable green structure in harmony with the large green space in the downtown. We can see from the green space map of Shanghai that the entire Pudong especially the southern Shanghai has been always short of large greenbelts in the history. Because the service radius of the regional greenbelts was too large, the people around the region were very inconvenient to enjoy the outdoor green. Nowadays, the birth of the Expo Park has naturally eliminated the blind spot in the large public green space of this region.

Ternary positioning, a park as urban green space

In terms of the system, the Expo Park is different from traditional large urban green spaces. This "green heart" will, in addition to ecological function, serve large outdoor assembly, large leisure activities of visitors, and focus theme publicity for the Expo. This green space has a significant functional positioning:

She is the only true "exposition" green space in the downtown Shanghai.It is exposition meaning will be not only embodied at the Expo but also extended after the Expo.

She is an important waterfront green space: because Shanghai is a riverside beach city, the site of the Expo Park containing valuable wetland resources, which can conserve abundant primitive natural segments of wetland.

She bears the mark of Chinese industrial civilization and the memory of the city context: the sites of former industries and warehouses are kept appropriately in the Expo Park.

In addition, the Expo Park is an urban green space with a high capacity and high-tech characteristic. The high capacity refers to that the average bearing capacity of the Expo Park as a public open space is higher a little than that specified by the general planning for the Expo, which is planned for 70,000,000 visitors in total, the average of 400,000 visitors per day and a peak of 800,000 visitors per day, and its target population of safety management and utilization is as high as 40,000. This means that just the 29-hectare Expo Park will bear 1/10 visitors compared with the daily average traffic of 400,000 visitors of the Expo. Talking of the high-tech, Zhang Lang considers that since the Expo is a grand gathering displaying the modern civilization progress of human beings, its greening must seek for optimal effects through high-tech ecological means. For example, the ecological technologies such as recycling of rainwater and river water and vertical greening are introduced to the general planning, design and development of the Expo Park to achieve a centralized presentation of advanced landscaping and eco-cycle technologies at the Expo 2010 Shanghai China.

Attention to details, a human-oriented urban park

Moreover, how to build the open Expo Park into a large human-based urban lounge for convergence of the citizens is another topic that racked the brains of the planners of the Expo Park. Finally, through a lot of comparisons, they designed a multi-layer space to meet the demands of groups or individual visitors for rest, entertainment, communication and gathering. For instance, sign structures or indicative facilities will be arranged at open places in different directions of the park for the convenience of the visitors during the Expo.

In terms of urban emergency shelter, many precautions are taken during the planning of the Expo Park. Some spaces are reserved above and under the ground in the park for helicopter first-aid and emergency storage, which acts as the safety buttress of the Expo. It will provide emergency shelters in the case of both natural disaster prevention such as flood or earthquake and man-made violence, accidents or terrorist events, and rigid low limits for the proportion of emergency lands and relevant requirements are also specified in the planning. Take flood protection for example. The planning specifies the standards for once-in-twenty-year flood, once-in-a-century flood, and once-in-a-thousand-year flood protection, of which the proportion of the lands above the designed elevation for once-in-a-thousand-year flood protection are required to be not less than 25%. Such detailed specifications provide strong safety precautions for the Expo 2010 Shanghai China from the angle of technical indexes.