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CHINA INDUSTRY ATLAS城市 · City evolution
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City evolution · 1843 → today

Shanghai上海 · treaty port to global city

Shanghai is the opposite of an overnight city. A century ago it was already the largest, richest city in Asia; then it spent forty years frozen as the nation's socialist workshop, sending its wealth to Beijing; and in 1990 it was unleashed, leaping across the Huangpu into the farmland of Pudong. Step through its eras.

~5.4 M
Permanent population
GDP
~84 m
Tallest structure
01

Watch it reinvent itself

Pick an era. The historic core of Puxi sits west of the Huangpu; from 1990 the shaded footprint leaps east across the river into Pudong and out toward the airport, the offshore port and Lingang, and the industries of that era light up.

Shanghai, era by era · 上海hover a dot · drag to pan

This era

The whole arc

02

What Shanghai made, by era

Same city, five different economies — the longest record of reinvention of any place in the atlas.

03

Field notes