4. Shanghai’s Yangpu— Transferring the old industrial space
4.3 The district government and real estate market
The Yangpu district government itself also controls several real estate related development companies. For instance, companies like Weibaixin and Xinyangpu mainly undertake the business of developing residential housing areas. Even the Yangpu Knowledge Innovation Investment Company is engaged in various fields of real estate development, including hotels, restaurants, and other recreational facilities (Chen and Yu, 2005, p. 57).
As the former party secretary of Yangpu Du Jiahao argued, knowledge-based
12 In June 2007, a piece of land in the New Jiangwan Township reached the price of 12,509 Yuan per square meter. The price was 6,677 Yuan 7 months earlier.
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2007-07-04/093113372324.shtml, accessed on April 10, 2011.
clusters are closely related to the improvement of the investment environment in Yangpu. The new attempt to establish a fresh image of Yangpu has provided opportunities for developers to promote real estate markets. College parks around Fudan, Tongji and other famous universities, along with green lands of Huangxing Park, provide amenities for better living in the region. The Wujiaochang business district and New Jiangwan Township project will also enhance the urban function and livability in Yangpu. Together with the relocation projects to move 4 million old housing units and reconstruct 4.35 million square meters of land, the Yangpu project is a social engineering project that requests the participation of all the parties involved.13
Expansion of the land used by the universities has become a major strategy for the Yangpu district government to promote new brands of a university and knowledge-based Science Park. The Yangpu district government released lands around major universities for the purpose of university high-tech parks and new branch campuses. As indicated in Table 2, each university has its own research specialties and concentrations. The land coverage of university campuses in Yangpu have been expanded from 4.2 km2 to 6.54 km2. For instance, Fudan has been expanded from 1,600 acres to 4,000 acres, and Tongji has been expanded from 1,500 to 2500 acres, respectively. The Yangpu district government has certain shares of the stock in most of the university-affiliated scientific parks. Our interviews show that in the case of Fudan Scientific Park, the district government relocated the existing residents and sold the land to Fudan at very low price. Due to the recent booming of the Wujiaochang area, the market price of the real estate of Fudan Scientific Park has been soaring.14
Table 2. Specialties of University Science and Technology Parks in Yangpu District
Item 1 /% Item 2 /% Item 3 /% Item 4 /% Item 5 /%
13 Data adapted from http://news.eastday.com/epublish/gb/paper224/1/class022400001 /hwz778163.htm, accessed on April 10, 2011.
14 Yangpu interview, February 12, 2009.
Fudan Scientific Park IT/ Electronics
Tongji Scientific Park Architectural design 46%
The district government has also actively renovated the area surrounding Wujiaochang, and has promoted and named it as the Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC). Wujiaochang, located in the heart of Yangpu district, was an outdated urban commercial center surrounded by major universities and public facilities. Since the very beginning, the reconstruction of the Wujiaochang project has not merely been a Research Park project. The main investment and development body of CID is Yangpu Knowledge Innovation Investment Company (YKIIC). The YKIIC is in charge of the tasks of relocation, land procurement, and pubic administration.
The Hong Kong partner Sui-On Group undertakes the tasks of financial management, business operation and planning (Wang and Tian, 2008:53-55). This partnership is similar to the Xintiandi project in the urban center of Shanghai. The major difference with Wujiaochang is the “branding” of a knowledge-intensive center within a university town. The current price of housing in the CID is about 4,000 Yuan per
square meter, or 50% higher than the average prices of surrounding areas.15
The KIC project is a typical case of the collaboration between the district government and private companies. During the field trip, the authors found out that the main concern of the local government in the KIC project was to attract private investments to reconstruct the old district. Located in the Wujiaochang district of northern Shanghai, the KIC is surrounded by around fourteen universities, including the prestigious Fudan and Tongji universities. The goal of KIC is to utilize the attractiveness of major universities, and transfer the old Wujiaochang circular area into a service hub. The KIC thus serves as a mediator between the universities, district development, and the private enterprises. During our interviews in the Wujiaochang area, one senior manager of KIC indicated that the idea of reconstructing the Wujiaochang area is promoted and implemented mainly by the Yangpu district administration. It is totally different from the Zhangjiang model in Pudong in the 1990s.16
In brief, the northern Yangpu area, with KIC as the core, has gradually been transferred into a multi-functional business district. The “scientific park” is embedded within a reconstructed auxiliary urban center. In addition to the Wujiaochang—Fudan area, the Yangpu district administration has also signed agreements with Tongji University to promote the “Tongji Knowledge Economic Circle.” Located in the south of Wujiaochang district, the focus of such a new initiative is to promote new service clusters such as architecture, environmental protection, machinery, and other related business pertinent to Tongji’s specialties (Leng and Wang, forthcoming).
Both Yangpu and district governments in Beijing, as demonstrated in the previous sections, are attempting to use symbols and labels of high-tech development to boost urban development. In terms of high-tech clustering, Yangpu has achieved a certain degree of success as demonstrated by the Wujiaochang project. Since 2006, Wujiaochang and the surrounding areas have formed clusters of IT and service-oriented domestic as well as multi-national corporations. However, such
15 Data adapted from http://sd.zhaoshang-sh.com/zsdt/133550822.html, accessed on April 5, 2011
16 Yangpu interviews, January 15, 2011.
achievements have been accompanied by space re-production and branding of HTIP.
Transferring space and combining it with new brands of high-tech zones have become rational decisions of Yangpu leaders to pack major urban areas with an integrated package of scientific parks.
The intervention of the real estate developers, however, creates a dilemma in promoting talent flows and a knowledge-based economy. Under the branding of major universities and knowledge innovation centers, the prices of housing and office spaces have escalated. Start-ups and even research faculties can no longer afford to live in the neighboring areas. In other words, the original idea of knowledge-intensive clusters was distorted due to the commercial and real estate development of the region.
Scholars and experts have also raised sharp criticisms, arguing that many scientific parks have already become real estate parks. From this aspect, both ZGC and Yangpu are facing a similar dilemma of urban development and technological innovation.