CHEN Cheng moved to semi-rural Jiading District last year from downtown Shanghai after her marriage, but as far as she is concerned, downtown Shanghai is still the centre of social life.

"Jiading is Jiading, a town outside the city," said the 25-year-old newly-wed. "At first, I was thought to be someone from the 'City of Shanghai' although Jiading is also under the jurisdiction of the Shanghai Municipality."

Nowadays, such a feeling still prevails in the minds of many people who live in outer-suburban areas. In their eyes, Nanjing Donglu, Huaihai Zhonglu and Xujiahui are Shanghai's main shopping centres where they can choose from a great range of diversified commodities, delicious dishes and the latest fashions.

Foreign spur

This "fantastic Shanghai" emerged from the Yangtze Delta 160 years ago.

Before the forced opening of Shanghai in 1843, Shanghai was a county centred on Nanshi, the southern part of the modern Huangpu District. This area is still called "lao cheng xiang" by locals, meaning "old town".

With the arrival of foreigners, Nanshi became the home of the Chinese community, while the area encompassing the Bund, Nanjing Lu and Huaihai Lu developed rapidly due to the influx of Western commerce and culture. A great number of Western-style buildings mushroomed outside the old town.

According to historical records, the number of stores in the city tripled between 1909 and 1914 and schools, cinemas, banks, hospitals, hotels were being continuously erected.

In the early 1930s, before the start of the War of Resistance against Japan in 1937, Shanghai boasted China's largest port and more than half of the nation's factories.

"The busiest streets were Nanjing Lu, Jinling Donglu and Huaihai Zhonglu when I was a child," said Tan, a 74-year-old man who used to live in a shikumen house near Huaihai Zhonglu.

"The first was famous for its big department stores, and the prosperity of Jinling Donglu was due to its proximity to Shiliupu Port. It had different stores and several small taverns," he said. "Stores along Huaihai Zhonglu were scattered between today's Chongqing Nanlu and Shaanxi Nanlu."

As he recalled, Xujiahui at that time had few residents. "Most high buildings in Xujiahui were put up in the past decade and it has now become a popular location favoured by many young people."

In 1927, the former Kuomintang regime mapped out a blueprint for Jiangwan, in the city's northeast, which would have transformed it into Shanghai's new centre. However, the plan was aborted because of the war.

Unbalanced expansion

"Till Liberation in 1949, Shanghai's urban area was 82 square kilometres," said Zheng Shiling, an expert on architecture and urban planning from Tongji University.

"Now, it has been expanded to 667 square kilometres within the Outer Ring Road."

Shanghai's progress in the past decade since the development of Pudong begun, has attracted worldwide attention.

However, with the city's dynamic spurt of new growth, people can easily see the imbalance in development between the former foreign concessions and the Chinese communities, including those in suburban areas.

According to Zheng, Chen's attitude is one example of this.

"Even in some areas of Yangpu District, someone planning to go to Nanjing Donglu may still say 'I'm going to Shanghai'," he said.

Yangpu is a suburban district located in the city's northeast and presents itself as an old industrial area with old gloomy factories.

"This to some extent shows that people from different districts within Shanghai cannot acquire the same cultural identification," Zheng said.

In fact, such a psychology was vividly revealed before the 1990s. Many locals are still familiar with the phrases "shang zhi jiao" (upper corner) and "xia zhi jiao"(lower corner), referring respectively to the bustling business areas of the former foreign concessions and the slums of the old Chinese communities.

Today, the phrases are gradually fading from people's memories. However, some scholars have pointed to a new geographical term "di qing xi nan", referring to Shanghai's southwestern area, covering the "shang zhi jiao" area, which still attracts more development opportunities and absorbs more investment than the former "xia zhi jiao".

It was Yu Wujin, a professor from Fudan University, who first pointed out the problem. Ji Baohong, a municipal congress deputy submitted a proposed solution to the problem to this year's People's Congress. He said that Shanghai's development should stress balance and a city cannot be only partly upgraded and still be recognized as a modern international metropolis.

According to the Statistical Year Books of the past two years, the number of Shanghai skyscrapers has reached 4,916, with most located in the southwestern and Lujiazui areas. The Xuhui District boasts 759 high-rises, compared with 265 in the Zhabei District, in the north of the city. Space devoted to amenities such as office buildings, stores, hospitals, hotels and cinemas came to 4.46 million square metres in the Xuhui District in 2001, while the figure was only 2.37 million in the Zhabei District.

Some scholars say that the disparity arises partly from the influence still remaining from the former foreign concessions, so local government should strengthen its guiding role in locating investment.

Future blueprint

"The city is planning three new towns in the suburbs and four sub-centres in urban areas," Zheng said.

He said the three new towns would be in Songjiang, Jiading and Nanhui districts and each was designed to accommodate a population of around one million.

"Of the three, the new town in Nanhui - designed for the development of the proposed Yangshan Deep-water Port - will be a milestone in Shanghai's history," Zheng said.

The town occupying an area of 293 square kilometres will be built on land reclaimed from the sea and from marshes.

"This should be the largest town-building project since China's opening up began 25 years ago," he said.

"Shanghai needs more such new towns as satellite cities. These three can only solve the problems of three million people, but Shanghai now has more than 16 million."

He said that in other metropolises such as Tokyo, people living in suburban areas were still considered to be Tokyo residents.

"Now in Shanghai, we should make an effort to create a concept of 'a metropolitan area' to eliminate the borderline dividing the city and countryside," he added.

The four sub-centres to be built are Xujiahui, Caojiadu, Jiangwan, and Pudong's Huamu, each hosting businesses, good logistics, residential quarters and administrative offices.

"The World Expo in 2010 may be another milestone in Shanghai's development," Zheng said.

He explained that "city" in the chosen theme "Better City, Better Life" not only meant splendid infrastructure, but also people's life styles and many other human and cultural elements, posing a major challenge to Shanghai.