SHANGHAI, CHINA
Taopu Central Park is the unifying element and urban green lung for Taopu Smart City, a science and technology hub in northwest Shanghai. Inspired by traditional Chinese culture’s tenets of graceful movement and beauty, the park’s dynamic and fluid network of pathways, waterways, and topography improve water quality, manage stormwater, provide an elegant soil remediation strategy, and create connections that transform industrial lands into a living ecosystem and a new kind of urban ecological park for China.
Taopu Central Park breaks the mold for many parks in China. Land bridges and tunnels allow for needed road infrastructure while still creating a large continuous park, which prioritizes pedestrian safety, strengthens neighborhood connections, and creates habitat and wildlife corridors. The result is a dramatic and sizeable 237-acre park that redefines the city’s relationship to water, provides a sense of big nature within a dense urban context, and supports 21st-century metropolitan life with spaces for habitat, water, events, and display.
Photography by INSAW Image and Holi Photography.