The Greenhouse Garden at the Shanghai Expo Culture Park. [Photo by Xia Miao/english.shanghai.gov.cn]
Shanghai opened 141 new urban and rural parks in 2024, increasing the city’s overall park count to 973. The city is getting closer to its goal of becoming a “City with a Thousand Parks”, which calls for more than 1,000 parks by the end of 2025.
Pocket parks have become the mainstay of Shanghai’s park development in recent years. These little green areas, which range in size from 400 to 10,000 square meters, are nestled amidst commercial areas, residential neighborhoods, and urban roadways.
Pocket parks are the green spaces most visited by residents. They are designed to incorporate commercial and community activities, small-scale sports and cultural and artistic functions, in addition to the basic amenities of ordinary parks, to serve as many people as possible.
For example, the pocket park on Yanji Road was once a separate area between roads and was transformed into a micro garden with chairs and pathways this year. Also, the Kangjian Green Park between Pubei Road and West Guilin Street has been transformed into a pocket park tailored to seniors and children, featuring a garden filled with Chinese herbs.
Shanghai has established a total of 40 “city circumference parks” — an ecological network connecting green spaces within and around the city’s outer ring — to fulfill its important ecological isolation and protection mission.
The foundation of these parks is Shanghai’s outer ring green belt, which has an average width of over 100 meters. Covering more than 4,000 hectares, this green route overlaps with the outer ring and serves as a flexible buffer zone between the inner city and suburbs.
A plan has been gradually promoting public access to green areas connected to businesses, government organizations, and other establishments since 2021. The city has opened more than 125 of these public green areas so far.
Source: Jiefang Daily
,https://english.shanghai.gov.cn/en-Latest-WhatsNew/20241231/e3a0c34051574ab6b935e01ce78ce56b.html