Daning Road: The Bet Zhabei Got Right
In one line
The largest sub-district in Zhabei (6.24 km²), and the only one that completed the full transformation "from industrial district to modern community". If Zhabei has a success story, this is it.
Where it is
Daning Road sub-district lies in the centre-north of the district (today the centre-north of Jing'an District) and covers 6.24–6.26 km² — the largest sub-district in Zhabei before abolition (larger even than Pengpu Xincun):
To the east it neighbours Hongkou District along North Baoxing Road and Yuexiu Road; to the south it links with Gonghexin Road sub-district along Yanzhang Road and Old Hutai Road; to the west it adjoins Pengpu town along Wanrong Road; to the north it faces Pengpu Xincun and Linfen Road sub-districts across Zoumating and Sitang River.
Its office stands at 188 Pengjiang Road.
The name: a road named after a place in Shanxi
Daning Road is the name of a principal east–west road within the sub-district; the road is named after a place name in Shanxi province.
Yes — Daning is a county in Shanxi (Daning County). Many Shanghai streets are named after places in other provinces, and within Zhabei two sub-districts take their names from Shanxi — Daning Road sub-district and Linfen Road sub-district. (For the rules behind this kind of naming see Appendix 1.)
Lineage: a piece of ground that "grew slowly"
Daning Road sub-district is institutionally very young:
| Time | Event |
|---|---|
| Jiading year 10 of the Southern Song (1217) | The area belongs to Jiading County, formed from the eastern part of Kunshan County |
| First year of Yongzheng, Qing (1723) | The eastern part is split off to form Baoshan County |
| First year of the Republic (1912) | The Pengpu township system is established |
| Jun 1949 | Under the Fifth Office of Dachang District |
| 1958 | Transferred to Zhabei District |
| Nov 1978 | With Zoumating as the line, Gonghexin Road sub-district is established to the south |
| Feb 1985 | The area north of Yanzhang Road and Old Hutai Road is split off from Gonghexin Road sub-district to establish Daning Road sub-district |
| Mar 2016 | The Jing'an–Zhabei merger is completed, giving the district its present boundaries |
Established in 1985, it is one of the youngest sub-districts in Zhabei. It is young because this ground only began to be genuinely developed then.
Why it "got the bet right"
The development of Daning has been told in detail in Part One, chapter 8; here are the essentials:
The timing of the move
In the 1990s Zhabei developed "Bunye Cheng", the City That Never Sleeps, and very quickly used up the land there. So it turned its eyes northward — to Daning.
What was Daning then? A great stretch of ground between factories and farmland. Zhabei's judgement was to develop it "as a whole": rather than picking away inch by inch in the central city, it would plan the whole area at once.
The order of three things
| Time | Event | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 1999 | Shanghai Circus World opens | First, plant a cultural landmark |
| 2000 | Daning Lingshi Park begins construction | Then an ecological landmark |
| 2000 | The Daning commercial and cultural centre takes shape step by step | Only then commerce |
| Around 2000 | Metro Line 1 opens + Daning International Commercial Plaza opens | Transport and retail support |
| 2006 | Daning's new centre takes form | Ten years to sharpen one sword |
| 2008 | The Daning Group is founded, to develop the north side of Lingshi Park as a whole | Beginning to build industry |
| After that | Offices and industry clustered around Daning Music Plaza | Bringing in workplaces and jobs |
The order matters: culture first, then ecology, then commerce, then industry. Ordinary urban development runs the other way (sell the land and build housing first); Daning raised the "reason" first, and built the houses after.
A decision that was "not popular"
Setting up the Daning Group in 2008 to do offices and industry was not well regarded at the time — the office vacancy rate in Bunye Cheng was still high, and making industry work in Daning "no one knew how many years off that was".
But the result was quite different. Today the Daning area is an industrial concentration to rival Shibei Hi-Tech.
Alongside it there are also: the Lingshi Road esports industry belt, the Huanshangda film and television industrial park, and the "AI plus audiovisual" industry, hosting international esports events (see the Jing'an District government's reply to a suggestion from a municipal people's congress deputy).
Daning today: three retail complexes and one green lung
The current assessment is this (NetEase, "The rise and the ceiling of Daning"):
Inside the Middle Ring, with half a Century Park, Daning on the same latitude is the one and only large urban green lung in all of Shanghai. Daning International Commercial Plaza + Daning Music Plaza + Shanghai Jiuguang Centre, three retail complexes covering low, middle and high consumer tiers.
Three labels for Daning:
| Label | Carrier |
|---|---|
| Ecology | Daning Lingshi Park (including Daning Lake, with 68,000 m² of water) |
| Culture and performance | Shanghai Circus World, the "circus-world performing arts cluster" |
| Industry | Daning Music Plaza, the Lingshi Road esports belt, Shibei Hi-Tech (adjoining) |
Daning Lingshi Park: an empty lot twenty years ago
Incidentally, Daning Lingshi Park only began construction in 2000. Before 2000 this was not a park.
Today it is the most presentable green space in Daning and in all of Zhabei. For a 6.24 km² sub-district to contain a park of nearly 700,000 m² is a fairly luxurious arrangement inside the Middle Ring.
(For the detail see Part Three.)
A set of figures (as before abolition)
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Area | 6.24–6.26 km² (the largest sub-district in Zhabei) |
| Total population (2010) | 77,700 |
| Communities | 24 |
| Office | 188 Pengjiang Road |
What to see here today
- Daning Lingshi Park: stroll, look at the lake, look at the hill (Lingshi Park has an artificial hill);
- Shanghai Circus World: catch an acrobatics or circus show;
- Daning International Commercial Plaza / Daning Music Plaza / Jiuguang Centre: three retail complexes, each a notch above the last;
- Lingshi Road: the esports belt, where young people gather;
- Pengjiang Road and Wanrong Road: feel the residential grain of Daning.
Sources: the derivation of the name follows the Boya place-name directory's "Origins of the place names of the sub-districts and towns of Jing'an District"; the institutional lineage follows the Baidu Baike entry for Daning Road sub-district (class C, cross-checked against the Boya place-name directory and public material from the Jing'an District government); the development history follows NetEase's "The rise and the ceiling of Daning" and the Jing'an District government's reply to a suggestion from a municipal people's congress deputy. The full bibliography is in Appendix 4.