Shanghai Urban Layout

To get an idea of the concept of downtown vs. suburbs in Shanghai, it helps to think of the city as a series of concentric ring roads that radiate out from the core. Most Chinese cities operate in this kind of a model, where the ring roads act as a kind of informal boundary marker.

Locals define downtown Shanghai as anything within the inner ring road. I'm barely inside the ring where I live, similarly to work, so this qualifies.

This covers an area of about 400 square kilometers and roughly 10 million people live there. Do the math, that's about 25,000 people per square kilometer which of course is packed, and economic realities are making people leave.

The midburbs are between the inner and outer ring roads, extending outwards in some cases. By this definition, most of Pudong is considered midburbs. That area, along with the southern and western midburbs, is the most prosperous. The Hongqiao area in the west, along with Qingpu district, is undergoing some massive changes and the government wants to develop a 'hyper economic zone' there to rival Pudong. The northern midburbs are the least developed, and the government also wants to attract people over there to live and ramp up the construction of new housing there. Roughly 7 million people live in the midburbs and growing fast.

I'm eyeing the southwestern midburbs for a new place to live, near a well-known area called XinZhuang

Keep going further past the outer ring and you'll be in the suburbs. These are best defined as satellite towns the encircle Shanghai but are like cities unto themselves. Songjiang is a perfect example out there southwest of downtown. Most of the new town was developed in the last several years. Other satellite towns would include Qingpu in the West, Lingang in the East, and Jiading in the north. About 5 million people live in the suburbs and growing.

Further out still you have the exurbs which is basically rural countryside, villages, and zillions of small towns. It's within Shanghai province, so that's how it explains somewhat confusing statements made like, "Come visit Shanghai's villages" This is where I did most of the motorcycle riding two years ago with my remote job. About 3 million people live in these areas, and that number is expected to remain steady.

Where things start getting really messed up is when you cross the provincial border, and I've gone over that in detail many posts back. My former job was merely 1km past the border into the next jurisdiction over. Using the reference point of downtown Shanghai I was in the exurbs, but the school was technically part of Suzhou, and also in the exurbs of that city! In short, it was like a kind of no-mans land which just added to the whole remoteness and adventure feeling.

I made multiple trips to Wujiang, the sub-city or district of Suzhou that was the primary jurisdiction over where I worked. Nearly every single one of those trips was a failure, and I only set foot into downtown Suzhou once the entire time there. Not that there's anything wrong with Suzhou, it's actually quite good. It's just that when the distance is 60km from the school to either downtown core, you take your pick and go with it.

Last post I mentioned the possibility of a motorcycle ban in Shanghai. Actually this is nothing new, back in 2003 the government wanted to ban all two-wheeled traffic from the inner ring road, including bicycles, and they wanted it done before the EXPO 2010. Obviously that hasn't happened and the throngs of two-wheeled vehicles still own the city, making life difficult for those driving cars, and making the government respond harder to please the rich people in cagers.

Even so, a complete motorcycle ban, if it happened, would only affect the inner ring road. This is consistent with other cities like Guangzhou who were able to pull it off. They could do it because Guangzhou's downtown core is relatively small, and the whole thing is an island. So the bikes were simply forced outside of downtown and police patrols were set up on bridges leading into downtown to confiscate any bikes coming back.

It would be harder to enforce such a ban in Shanghai if they did that, but the inner ring would be the perfect place to contain the ban, such that the police could concentrate their efforts.

Meanwhile, in Guangzhou, you can still find bikes everywhere if you go to the suburbs. It would stay for years to come in Shanghai also. For that matter, I can't see any point in going for a downtown license plate, and it seems likely that suburban plates are still being issued.

It's all looking like midburbs, here I come.