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A short visual post-script to our last week coverage of the Shanghai 2010 World Expo construction site focuses on the people that make progress happen: the migrant/construction workers. One sees them everywhere, doing everything; painting, building, cleaning up, connecting, strolling, resting, moving, sweating, smoking, hanging, hammering, pushing, pulling, pressing, measuring, listening, sleeping, digging, carrying, waiting, hurrying, cutting... On the ground, up in the air, in basements, on scaffolding, ...

Norway, Australia, China and Spain complete the third and final chapter of the MovingCities series on the Shanghai 2010 World Expo pavilions under construction. While in the first and the second post we covered parts of the European expo-district, today we are strolling over the elevated streets connecting different parts of the area.

A second series of snapshots from our recent visit to the Shanghai Expo2010 construction site (check part I) in which we cover the Danish, Dutch, Russian, British and Austrian pavilion. Besides their obvious identification as national pavilions, some of these structures have an additional thematic names: in today's case Welfairytales (DK) and Happy Street (NL), in yesterday's Greenopolis (RO), The Sensual City (FR) and balancity (GE).

With less than 100 days before the opening of the World Expo, pavilions are getting in shape. Although structures are far from finished, the rough outlines of the future architectural experiences become visible - even so that these, to us, are more exciting than their expected state of completion. No cladding, no finished interiors, no green-designers' draping, no visitors; only construction workers toiling everywhere. A MovingCities impression of ...

After looking in close-up to the construction and the demolition of parts of Shanghai's Jing'an District, in our third and final installment we scan the skyline. And we ask ourselves, as a reader pointed out, what is the city concept of Shanghai? Is it something one can understand?

Right around our corner, the city is disappearing and being torn down. Since the beginning of this week, a section of Changde Lu (between Wuding Lu and Kangding Lu) is the territory where jackhammers, moving companies, land surveyors, local inhabitants and trucks take up with equal urban zeal their role in Shanghai's theater of progress. What for? Road widening? A new subway line? Expo-related renovation?

Since mid-October 2009, MovingCities is based on the 26st floor of a tower located in Shanghai's Jing'an District, one the city's most densely populated districts - bordering the Huangpu District in the East, and Suzhou Creek to the North. Somewhere in front of us two towers are under construction. It is not that they are adding one floor each day - don't believe the hype - but, in ...