8. Thirty Years of Catching Up (1978–2015)

A district that was always catching up

If one word had to sum up Zhabei after 1978, it would be "catching up".

What it was chasing was not anyone else but its own 1920s self. As an old industrial district bombed into ruins by two wars, Zhabei after reform and opening faced an awkward hand:

• The worst foundations: whole tracts of shantytown, old factory buildings, old workers' villages;
• The best location: the core of the inner ring, on the north bank of Suzhou Creek, directly across from Nanjing Road;
• The heaviest baggage: high population density and a crushing task of old-town renewal.

So for more than thirty years every move Zhabei made carried a certain anxiety that an opportunity must not be missed. This chapter tells it through three pieces of land: Bunye Cheng, Daning and Shibei.

1. 1987: the new station, Zhabei's second "gateway dividend"

On 28 December 1987 the new Shanghai railway passenger station was completed and opened, and was formally named "Shanghai Station". On the same day the old North Station's tracks were converted into a technical servicing yard for passenger carriages, and "the old North Station passed into history".

The new station was built on the site of the former Shanghai East Station (originally the McGregor Road goods yard) — in other words, the station stayed in Zhabei. This mattered enormously: the identity of "northern gateway" was carried on in 1987.

Commerce and services gathered rapidly around Shanghai Station, forming Zhabei's liveliest quarter — what came to be known as "Bunye Cheng", the City That Never Sleeps.

Where the old North Station went: in 2000 the Shanghai Railway Bureau built the Shanghai Railway Museum on the basis of the old station building; it formally opened to the public in August 2004. In August 2000 the site of the old Shanghai North railway station was declared a protected heritage site by the Zhabei District People's Government. (See Part Three.)

2. Bunye Cheng: Zhabei's first breakout

"Bunye Cheng" was Zhabei's most important concept of the 1990s. Its core lay in Tianmu West Road sub-district — the land around the railway station on the north bank of Suzhou Creek. Its development was Zhabei's attempt to upgrade a "railway station" into a "business district".

The results were plain. Judging by the Gazetteer of Zhabei District, Zhabei in the 1990s was no weakling in industry:

Bunye Cheng brought tall buildings, hotels and offices. But Zhabei soon ran into a problem: there was no land left to develop in Bunye Cheng.

So it looked north — to Daning.

3. Daning: the bet Zhabei got right

Why Daning

Daning lies in the north-central part of Zhabei. At the time it was a large stretch of land between factories and farmland. Put bluntly:

Demolishing a factory is cheaper than demolishing housing.

Zhabei chose Daning on the logic of "development in whole tracts" — rather than picking away inch by inch as the central districts did, it would open up a great expanse of empty land between the industrial zone and the fields and plan and build the whole thing at once.

Timeline

The outcome

What did Daning become? One assessment sums it up (NetEase, "The Rise and Ceiling of Daning"):

Inside the middle ring, with half a century park at its back, Daning on the same latitude is the only large urban green lung of its kind in all Shanghai. Daning International Commercial Plaza + Daning Music Plaza + Shanghai Jiu Guang Centre — three great commercial complexes covering low, middle and high levels of consumption.

Daning's label today is: a high-quality residential community plus a zone where commerce, tourism, culture and sport converge. Estates such as Huizhi Lake Garden, Xinmei Gonghe Cheng and Gelin Chuntian drew in a large population from other districts — residents of Bunye Cheng, Baoshan, Hongkou and Yangpu all came to buy homes in Daning.

And Daning Lingshi Park (about 680,000 m², including Daning Lake) and Shanghai Circus World together became Zhabei's — today's northern Jing'an's — proudest new landmarks. (See Part Three.)

A judgement worth recording

Daning's development was the most successful single judgement in the history of Zhabei's urban renewal. There were three reasons:

1. It got the timing right: it secured large tracts of empty land before land prices in the central districts took off;
2. It got the model right: development in whole tracts, avoiding the fragmentation of "tucking in wherever there is a crack";
3. It got the industry right: after 2008 it deliberately pursued offices plus industry (Daning Music Plaza) rather than housing alone — which "was not popular" at the time, since Bunye Cheng's office vacancy rate was still high. But the bet paid off.

4. Shibei Hi-Tech: from "industrial zone" to "capital of data"

If Daning was Zhabei's "residential upgrade", Shibei Hi-Tech was its "industrial upgrade".

The Shibei Hi-Tech Service Industry Park lies within the former Pengpu industrial zone (around Zoumadang). Its path of transformation was: a traditional electromechanical industrial zone → a high-tech service industry park.

Today's Shibei is already a well-known Shanghai cluster for big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence, tied to vehicles such as the "Digital Connectivity Chain Valley" and the "Jing'an International Sci-Tech Innovation Community", and is one of Jing'an's calling cards in science and innovation (see the Jing'an District People's Government's reply to a Shanghai People's Congress deputy's proposal).

5. How the boundaries changed: how Zhabei "grew up"

Zhabei's territory today (before its abolition) was not there from the start. It went through a long process of "growing up":

The transfer of Pengpu town in 1992 was the last great expansion of Zhabei's territory, and it turned Zhabei from a "pure urban district" into a "urban district plus one town" structure.

Major surgery on the sub-districts: 1996

In 1996 Zhabei carried out a large-scale merger of sub-districts: eight sub-districts south of Zhongshan North Road were abolished and four were rebuilt — Tianmu West Road, Beizhan, Baoshan Road and Zhijiang West Road.

From then until the end of 2013 Zhabei District administered:

Eight sub-districts — Tianmu West Road, Beizhan, Baoshan Road, Zhijiang West Road, Gonghexin Road, Daning Road, Pengpu Xincun and Linfen Road — and the town of Pengpu; with 211 residents' committees and 1 villagers' committee.

This "eight sub-districts and one town" structure held until the merger of 2015.

Zhabei before abolition: a set of figures

6. What these thirty years actually changed

But Zhabei never quite caught up. By the time of the 2015 merger it still ranked towards the rear among Shanghai's central districts, its old-town renewal task was still daunting, and its industrial structure was still being adjusted.

And precisely for that reason the "abolish two, create one" of 2015 was not a full stop for Zhabei but rather a different way of carrying on the chase.

In short

• The new station was completed in 1987, and Zhabei carried on the identity of the "northern gateway";
• Bunye Cheng in the 1990s was the first breakout, but it soon hit the limit of land;
• Daning, 1999–2008, was Zhabei's most successful single judgement in urban development;
• Shibei Hi-Tech completed the shift from a traditional industrial zone to a sci-tech innovation park;
• The transfer in of Pengpu town in 1992 plus the great sub-district merger of 1996 fixed the final pattern of "eight sub-districts and one town".

For thirty years Zhabei ran upward like a person straining to climb. It was not slow. But its starting point was too low.

The next chapter tells the ending: in 2015 the district was abolished.