Shanghai has pretty huge construction these days. Yesterday, Wendy and I drove to Minhang, and saw the construction of a brand-new long expressway was under construction: the A15 Expressway.

This new expressway is not well-known yet. It starts from the Pudong International airport, and go from there west-bound, and get cross the Huangpu River via a huge Minpu Bridge, and continue to go straightly west, cross current A4 road, and go to Zhejiang province. It was reported that the expressway will be completed this year (2009).

I just talked about the Shanghai Zizhu Science Park yesterday. I thought the park is just too far away from anywhere in Shanghai. With the construction of A15, and Minpu Bridge, I just realized the significance of the Zizhu Park – it is exactly at the conjunction of A15, and A4 (the other side of the conjunction is the Shanghai Jiaotong University Minhang Campus. This way, the Zizhu Campus is much more closer to the Pudong Airport, making it a good place to build factory and R&D facility.

I ever described the Zizhu Campus to be in the middle of no where (many people still thinks so), but it is just at the starting point to become a pretty good place to be. Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park is another example. From the Puxi Centric view point, it is too far away from the People’s Square, but on the other side, it is much closer to the Pudong Airport – an even more important criteria to determine the future of an area.

With the spreading of the road facility and all the plans became real, I started to think about the city planning. There are some key road that can significant change the dynamics of the landscape of an area. We are just not experienced enough to understand all these just from plans. Maybe only more experience can help us to predict the future of an area better.