Shanghai has been in the news in the recent past for staging the world event: World Expo 2010 or otherwise officially known as Expo 2010 Shanghai. This World Expo 2010 was held on the banks of Huangpu River in Shanghai from 1st May 2010 to 31st October 2010. With the theme was “Better City – Better Life,” the Expo served as a means of exposing Shanghai to the worldwide audience and helping it attain the status of being the next great world city in the 21st century.
The logo for the expo is made up of a Chinese character, shi, which had been adapted to represent the image of 3 people standing together holding the year, 2010. This expo is noted for having the largest number of countries around the world participating as well as being the most costly expo to be organized in the history of such fairs on a global scale.
The Shanghai World Expo site was also the largest ever site to be used for fairs of a global scale. The site used to stage the event was the Nanpu Bridge-Lupu Bridge region in central Shanghai along the two banks of the Huangpu River, ranging over 5.28 km. On the last day of the expo, it was recorded that more than 73 million people had visited, breaking all records ever made for other world fairs. It also had the record of having 250 countries and global organizations participating in the world expo 2010.
In preparing for this world fair, Shanghai first began by reshaping its entire city from the moment it won the bid to host the expo in 2002. Almost 2.6 square kilometers were cleared along Huangpu River and this included relocating almost 18,000 families along with 270 factories. To enhance the public transportation system in the city, new subway lines were opened. New taxis were also introduced on the roads prior to the opening of the Expo. In order to conserve electricity, the city’s night lights were changed to LED technology which helped save energy.
Shanghai also got its people ready by training over 1.7 million volunteers and also implemented security measures used at the Olympics. This included placing metal detectors at subway entrances and checking cars that entered the city. The main building constructed was called Expo Axis and built using steel-glass funnels. There were also 5 key theme pavilions which dealt with various aspects of urban development. These were Urban Footprints, Urban Planet, Urbanian, City Being, and Urban Future. Besides this, there were national pavilions which involved representations from all the participating countries. Corporate pavilions were also present with international organizations setting up booths.
Following the end of the World Expo 2010, Shanghai has plans of opening a world expo museum which will store the expo exhibits as well as detailing the history of the world expo. More than 200 participants had confirmed their interests to donate around 4000 exhibits to the museum. The Bureau of Shanghai World Expo Coordination had chosen a site to house the new museum and is currently in talks with the expo participants to obtain the donations for the exhibits. Expected to open in 2012, Shanghai has plans to host a temporary 2010 world expo commemoration exhibition in 2011.
