Songjiang District is located a short 45 minutes drive from central Shanghai. What we discovered here is surely a shocker. A full scale replicated town, Thames Town, styled off classic British architecture. The city is lined with beautiful cobblestone streets and Victorian-style storefronts.
What is the purpose for this town you may ask? Honestly we don't know! For a long time, China has had a fascination for the Western world and creating their own novelty experiences within their own boarders. So, in layman's terms, it was built just because they could build it!
The Building of 'Fake England'
All speculation aside, the original planned purpose for the city was to draw people to live outside the central area of Shanghai. Directly adjacent from Thames Town, is the area of University Town, which was built in 2005. It is the largest tertiary education hub on mainland China. This meant they would be attracting people from large dense areas, all coming near Shanghai, which really couldn't afford that size of influx. The hope was to have much of the staff of the institutions base themselves in Thames Town. The government went as far as to hire Atkins Architectural Firm, a well respected organization based out of London to design and implement this haven. The city was built on 1 square kilometre, for roughly 10,000 residents. The government spent 5 Billion Yuan to build the town (more than $5 Billion USD).
The Result
Unfortunately, it didn't quite pan out the way they had hoped. Reporters, primarily Business Insider, have dubbed it a virtual ghost-town.
https://www.businessinsider.com/special-report-china-the-city-as-pastiche-dreaming-spires-2014-4
Housing initially sold like hotcakes, mostly by the wealthy. This then drove up the housing costs making it virtually impossible for the desired owner to move in. The wealthy buyers were purchasing for novelty purposes and vacation homes (which were hardly used).
Thus...it has become a place destined for photographers, wedding pictures, the incurably curious, and the list goes on. Interestingly this "lack of success" didn't deter Shanghai from building more novelty worlds. You can now find villages themed after Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, Canada, Netherlands, Germany, and likely more to come just outside the city centre.
If you're curious like us, you may well find yourself here one day!
Plenty more interesting cities to come each week!
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Cheers!
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