21st Century (2000–present)

Shanghai Hongqiao Business District

2009– · China · East Asia – China · Transit-oriented urbanism and corridor planning · Planned by Shanghai Municipal Govt

MVRDV design diagram for the Hongqiao Business District CBD blocks: optimisation of floorplate and facade efficiency generating one “building family” of varied tower heights around the sunken plazas · © MVRDV — used with credit · MVRDV (with Aedas), Hongqiao Business District CBD, via Dezeen

Core idea

Airport–HSR hub with mixed-use CBD

Why it matters

Integrates aviation and rail hub urbanism

Description

Shanghai Hongqiao Business District, planned from 2009 by the Shanghai municipal government, is a mixed-use central business district built around the Hongqiao transport hub in the city's west, where the airport, high-speed rail station and metro lines converge in a single interchange complex. The plan arranges dense office, exhibition and commercial quarters directly over and around the hub, positioning the district as a gateway serving the Yangtze River Delta region rather than Shanghai alone.

Significance

Hongqiao is one of the most ambitious realised examples of hub-based urbanism, integrating aviation and high-speed rail with district development at a scale few cities have attempted. It has become a reference point in discussions of the aerotropolis and of China's strategy of using inter-city rail accessibility to organise polycentric megaregional growth.

What shaped it

Transit-oriented development (TOD) (1993)
The jet airliner and the airport (Comet 1952; Boeing 707 1958)
World becomes majority urban (2007)
Global financial crisis (2007–2009)

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →

hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.