Tareas

On the ROad Of SOlutiOnS with dhl

dhl at the expo Shanghai 2010

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Better City, Better Life

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BetteR City, BetteR life – the expO Shanghai 2010
Over the past 150 years, industrialization has significantly contributed to the progress of society. But it has come at a price.

its twin brother, urbanization, has drawn ever more people to urban areas in pursuit of work, betterhealth care, better education, a better life. while only 13 percent of the world’s population lived in cities in 1900, their percentage has risen over the years to 29 percent in 1950 and 46 percent in 2000. Since 2008, for the first time in human history, more people have been living in cities than in the country. in 2050, urban dwellers will make up almost 70 percent of the world’s population. 1 theprice of industrialization is the negative impact on our natural environment. the effects of the exploitation of natural resources, the ever-increasing hunger for energy, and the shortsighted disposal of industrial waste are particularly noticeable in urban areas. under the motto “Better City, Better life”, the expo Shanghai 2010 has made urbanization its central theme. from 1 May to 31 October2010, the biggest ever expo, with 240 countries and organizations exhibiting on 5.4 km2, tries to give answers to the most pressing questions with regard to environmentally friendly urbanization in the five central pavilions:

– URBAN DWELLERS tells the story of people living in cities. five sections feature videos of six real families from cities on five continents. the pavilion gives visitors avivid idea of why people are drawn to urban areas. – URBAN BEINGS compares the city to a human being. as metabolism and circulation are important for a human body to function properly, the well-being of a city depends on the constant adjustment between the needs of man and city. – URBAN FOOTPRINTS are the result of people’s interaction with cities and the environment. in three exhibition halls, thepavilion traces the birth and growth of cities, their philosophies and the knowledge created within them. – URBAN DREAMS invites visitors to imagine what cities will be like in the future. it shows how cities were planned and realized in the past, proposes the various possibilities of a city of the future, and points to the spiritual elements that have always driven human progress. – URBANPLANET, the centerpiece of the central Chinese pavilions, juxtaposes the risks and opportunities of life in cities (see next page).
The Eureka Moment: in five spectacular metamorphoses, Planet Earth tells its own story.

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figures from the 2009 Revision of the united nations world urbanization prospects report

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Urban Planet

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uRBan planet – RiSkS and OppORtunitieS Of life in CitieSCombining western narrative tradition with Chinese feng Shui, the uRBan planet pavilion deals with complex urbanization processes and the global challenges they pose.

URBAN PLANET is the central Chinese theme pavilion and geographically as well as thematically at the heart of the exhibition. a 14 meters high double helix, it consists of two parts: the ascending Road of Crisis and thedescending Road of Solutions highlight the ambivalence of cities as gigantic resource-consuming organisms versus hubs of innovation and knowledge. the Road of Crisis strikingly visualizes the destructive potential of cities that endangers our planet with environmental pollution, climate change, mining of resources, waste production and destruction of nature. it culminates in a spectacular view onto theBlue planet and presents the earth’s development through the ages. do we really want to go on living like we are now? Shouldn’t we work together to stop the destruction of this beautiful planet? these are the questions that the Blue planet seems to ask.

in the second part of the URBAN PLANET double helix, the Road of Solutions presents innovative approaches to the global challenges in four...