One day, the district government, their relatives in real-estate development and their multinational enablers will try to re-animate the street life that made downtown Shanghai distinctive. They’ll try to bring back the real Jianyeli, Wujiang Lu, Qipu Lu and all of South City. Maybe they’ll institute a mixed-use scheme for the unoccupied obsolescent malls and condos they’re building now.

But so much preservation discourse centers on old buildings; vital neighborhoods are disappearing along with the architecture; a war on the poor in central Shanghai.

Or maybe the refugees will magically reconstitute a way of living in the harmonious ghettos out in Nanhui.

I wonder, do you sense any activism for preservation in Shanghai–other than a few expats and the evicted?