Shanghai Street View: Popularizing Parks

This week’s Street View takes us for a stroll through the city’s parks, many of which will extend their opening hours under a trial program to improve access to Shanghai’s open spaces. As a westerner, I find the idea of limited access and operating hours for city parks a bit strange, since most US parks are “open” all the time and have no barriers or fences to limit public access.

Accordingly, I hope this trial program will ultimately lead to the removal of fences and other barriers that now surround are city’s parks in the next few years, providing much-need open spaces to offset the rapid encroachment of skyscrapers and other tall buildings.

This move towards truly open parks looks like part of a broader drive to make Shanghai’s many government-administered museums, buildings and other public spaces more accessible to the city residents. It’s somewhat ironic that many of these places have a history of restricting access through high ticket prices, restricted operating hours and various other means, since their main purpose should be to welcome city residents.

This year’s edition the ongoing pilot program will see 66 of Shanghai’s parks extend their hours for 3 months starting July 1. The program includes most of the city’s major parks, including the big park at People’s Square and Zhongshan Park in the Changning district.

I’m not a frequent user of the city’s parks, and was surprised to read that most now close at 5 p.m. The program will see those hours extended until 8-10 p.m. for most, and 19 selected parks will be open all the time. The city first began experimenting with extended summertime hours for the city parks 2 years ago, and has been gradually expanding the experiment over each of the last two years.

This extending of hours aims at providing people with a place to cool off and relax in the evenings during the long, hot days of summer. One of my earliest memories of Shanghai comes from the early 1990s before air conditioning was common and many people would often stay outside until late in the evening to avoid returning to cramped and uncomfortably hot homes.

This expanding of operating hours is obviously too late for residents from that era who almost certainly would have enjoyed a late evening stroll in the park. But it still looks like a good step in the right direction, and one that was long overdue, toward creating comfortable outdoor spaces that everyone can enjoy at any time.

I can remember a time not long ago when most parks charged a fee just to go in, which again seems strange to a westerner who grew up in a country where most such places are free. Such fees may have been acceptable for one-time visitors to such parks, but certainly must have discouraged nearby residents who might have simply gone there for a walk each day after dinner.

On a broader basis, this opening of parks seems like part of a broader trend to make Shanghai’s many other publicly owned attractions more accessible to both tourists and local residents. I recall how the city eliminated fees to visit its main art museum just 3 years ago in a bid to make art more accessible to the public. But many of its other public attractions still charge fees, some quite high, and it would be nice to see those ticket prices either lowered or even removed completely.

The history of such fees and other restrictive policies at many public places is a bit of a mystery to me. I suspect that part of the reason was simple laziness, since keeping parks open longer would create extra staffing and other issues that no one wanted to deal with. Controlling access to places also seems to be in the Chinese DNA, as evidenced by the highly symbolic Great Wall that was designed to lock out invading tribes from the north.

The return and expansion of the extended hours for parks is certainly an encouraging sign, as it means that local officials are trying to make Shanghai’s many public spaces more open to city residents to create a friendlier living environment. I’m hopeful the program will eventually be expanded to run throughout the year, and that someday enlightened city officials may even tear down the walls and fences completely to create truly public spaces like their peers in the west.