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The Demolition of Shanghai’s Frenchtown Continues Apace – More to go

Posted: May 9th, 2016 | No Comments »

A couple of days ago the super-tame Shanghai Daily ran an article entitled ‘Campaign Targets Illegal Building in Heritage Areas’ – the latest in a long line of dubious pieces suggesting the city’s Xuhui District was working hard to preserve the former French Concession. The evidence however is to the contrary.

Frenchtown has taken a serious pounding recently and 2016 looks like being a bad, bad year for architecture in the area. The wholesale destruction of Dongtai Road (Rue Hennequin) and surrounding streets, the ongoing destruction of the Jinling Road (Rue du Consulat) area, the travesty of ‘preservation’ in the Jian Ye Li shikumen cluster, as well as a few other demolitions, indicate that Frenchtown is still getting a battering on a regular basis. Some pictures sent from Shanghai by Andrea Lingenfelter indicate more to come…

New demolition notices have appeared along Yanqing Road’s (Route de Grouchy) west side, specifically around No.12, as far as Donghu Road (Route Doumer) and Huating Road. Within this triangle are many excellent pre-1949 structures that are integral to Frenchtown’s overall architectural heritage. Tenants have already been evicted and some buildings bricked up. How far and how complete the demolition will be remains to be seen.  Clearly, in Frenchtown, as in the former Settlement Central District, the former Western and Northern External Roads, Hongkew, Tilanqiao and Yangtszepoo the notion of “heritage areas” is now more clearly than ever an Orwellian “doublethink” construction as the city’s past is obliterated.

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