World Expo Shanghai organizers are considering expanding the numbers for cities to display in the Urban Best Practices Area as the candidate list has tripled the length of final winners, the organizers said yesterday.
There have been 111 cases on the candidate list for the UBPA, a highlight of Shanghai Expo to display real and successful cases during urban development, in which the organizers are supposed to choose about 30 to display in the 15 hectares area in the Expo Site.
Among the 111 cases, 40 are proposed by cities themselves, and 46 recommended by UNESCO, 25 by World Bank, said Zhou Hanmin, deputy director general of the Bureau of Shanghai World Expo Coordination, after the second meeting of the International Selecting Committee for the UBPA.
Zhou said the organizers are considering giving more opportunities for some excellent cases which don't have to occupy big area for displaying, by establishing a comprehensive joint pavilion in the area.
"For example, we received a case in a small city in Europe," introduced Zhou without revealing the name of the city.
"The post-industrialization-background city has published a series of text books emphasizing on environmental protection since kindergarten, which proves to be very important on improving citizen's garbage disposal and street sanity habits," said Zhou.
"We don't think several text books will need big exhibiting spaces, but they are good cases, so we can put them in the joint pavilion."
Also, the organizers further clarified the criteria for the case selection, emphasizing more on excellence of the project as well as the variety, to make sure these cases could really be the examples for all the cities in the world.
Besides real realty exhibition, the area will have cultural performances aiming at non-material heritage, said Zhou.
All the cases to be displayed will be decided by the end of February, 2008.
The area is set to showcase, mostly, real realties and landscapes. Models and multi-media presentation have to step back as supplementations.
The organizers started a worldwide hunt for cities to participate in the UBPA since May 14, and postponed the deadline for submission to January 31, 2008 to cope with the overwhelming number of requests.
The two presidents of the selecting committee, Vicente Loscertales, secretary general of the Bureau of International Expositions, and Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, executive director of UN-HABITAT, also attended the meeting and called the meeting "constructive and fruitful."
