Shanghai 2009
Thursday, 24 September 2009 02:09
Written by Anna Greenspan

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At University Avenue in the Yangpu district, near the new hub at Wujiaochang, the scene is surreal. Rows of newly built multi-story SOHO-style loft apartments border the tree-lined street. The ground floor is reserved for retail and some of the city’s bohemian brands – Paul’s bakery and Yogo juice bar – display signs marked ‘Coming Soon’. But the street is deserted. It has the feel of a movie set – a grand example of Shanghai’s strategy of ‘build it and they will come’. But natural skepticism is mitigated by occupancy rates. Despite the fact no one lives here, all the flats have already been sold.

University Avenue forms part of ‘Knowledge, Innovation, Community’ (KIC), a new development by the Shui On group, the immensely successful Hong Kong company responsible for Xintiandi. KIC is not zoned as a creative cluster and does not make use of heritage architecture from the industrial past (although through its renovation of Jiangwan stadium it can be seen as part of a neo-modern trend that forges the future by pointing to the past). Yet in its attempt to build a ‘factory of innovation’, incubate entrepreneurship and construct a space where art and science meet, however, KIC is best seen within the overall context of Shanghai’s deliberate attempts to breed creativity amongst its population.

At more than 1 million sqm, KIC is a vast development zone that consists of four distinct parts.

University Avenue forms the heart of ‘KIC village’, a residential complex designed by renowned architectural firms SOM and Palmer and Turner. It is a mixed-use community, with open courtyards and spaces dedicated to home offices, retail, recreation and entertainment zones.

The sunken plaza is large, open and dotted with planted bamboo. It is designed for cultural activities and has so far hosted a creative bazaar and music festival .On its edges are a juice bar, a super-hightech Starbucks and a branch of Haagen Dazs. The plaza is enclosed by four ultramodern office complexes built of natural stone and walls of glass. These house local and internartonal IT giants including eBao Tech, Baidu, Oracle and EMC.

The hypermodernity of the plaza is offset by the dramatic architecture of the Jiangwan Sports Center (previously Jiangwan Stadium), which it swallows from behind. The stadium was built by architect Deng Dayou in 1935 as part of the KMT government’s Greater Shanghai Plan. This is a prime example of Dayou’s seamless eclecticism, which blends tradition with modernity in his signature ‘Chinese Renaissance’ style. 

Having gained operation rights to the stadium, Shui On embarked on an extensive renovation. The sports center now includes a large football stadium that can hold over 40,000 people; a multi-purpose hall offering indoor basketball, volleyball, ping-pong and badminton; and a 50-meter swimming pool. Since 2007, the center has hosted a number of high profile events such as the Asia X Games and the Closing Ceremony of the 2007 Special Olympics Summer Games.

The final zone is the still-incomplete KIC tech park, which is intended as a ‘hub for cultural-based high-tech enterprises’. So far, the Tech Zone has successfully attracted Oracle and eBao Tech, who will establish R&D centers, as well as the University of California (which is setting up a training center) and Fudan University (which will establish its incubator in Journalism and Media Studies there).

a strategic partnership with Oracle, all four areas are outfitted with technologically advanced ‘soft infrastructure’, including 10 GB optical fibres, and complete wireless coverage. The hope is that this ‘digital community’ will function as blueprint for future urban developments in China.
The vision is stupendously ambitious. The Yangpu District government, which is working in partnership with Shui On, sees KIC at the core of its strategy to ‘revitalize the city with science and technology’ and develop the ‘Yangpu Knowledge and Innovation Zone’.

KIC itself – states its brochure – is “inspired by the technological innovation and entrepreneurial spirit of Silicon Valley in the United States and the cultural ambience found in the Left Bank of Paris.”

The main attraction of the Yangpu District is its intense concentration of institutes of higher learning. There are 14 universities in the area, including Tongji, which is highly respected particularly in the fields of architecture and urban planning, and Fudan widely considered the top university in the city. Despite this hub of academic activity, little spin-off is evident so far. Student life in China is notoriously impoverished, with little cultural spill-over or bottom-up growth. By building the space and attempting to attract home offices, cafés, bookstores, theaters and clubs, KIC aims to connect the university with its surrounding urban environment and foster what has so far been unable to grow on its own.

This planned cultural vitality is meant to join with an ‘entrepreneurial environment that will foster innovation and growth’. To accomplish this, the development team behind KIC is carefully assembling the necessary elements.  It has forged business and university partnerships with Cisco, Shanghai Telecom, Fudan University, UCLA, the US-China Institute, Shanghai Venture Capital Co., the Shanghai Technology Entrepreneurship Foundation, and the multi-media research center of Fudan University.

Recognizing that an integral part of fostering innovation and growth is access to capital, Shui On Chairman Vincent Lo is increasingly focused on creating a good environment for Venture Capital and is intent on attracting local and international VC firms. KIC is also creating its own seed-stage investment firm, which aims to find and incubate start-ups as well as educating and guiding entrepreneurs. At No. 66 University Avenue it has built a large office complex solely dedicated to small start-ups. There have also been attempts to fashion direct links with the Silicon Valley region by hosting a summit and forging partnerships between the Yangzi and Bay area councils.

The KIC’s ultimate aim is to create an ‘ecosystem’ which weaves together, top universities and research institutes, high tech corporations including MNCs, SMEs and start-ups, domestic and international venture capital, law, business consulting, accounting and other firms and a Government Service Center which assists with anything government related, including registration, tax issues, and licensing.

KIC envisions the ‘ecosystem ‘ as “a huge, technology spider”, whose web of interconnection breeds collaborations between the R&D divisions of multinational corporations and research institutes, venture capitalists and universities, research institutes and technology companies.

KIC, then, is trying to build a community which in eliminating the traditional boundaries between business and residence, work and play will enable the culture and interaction that feeds innovation and creativity. Can a partnership between government and development company recreate the dynamism, culture and enterprise that has in the past, almost always been the result of bottom-up growth? On the one hand the grandiose vision seems to belong to the naïve utopianism of a previous age. But on the other, everyone seems to have thought Shui On was crazy when they started building Xintiandi. In any case, Shanghai‘s shrewd real state speculators are betting on KIC’s success. 

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