Home to some of the city's elite foreign population, Green City promises a leisure and cozy lifestyle and a convenient access to the Jinqiao Export Processing Zone. Photo: Courtesy of Green City
The Jinqiao lifestyle is epitomized in the Biyun International Community (also known as Green City for its fine environment), a
Shanghai Classic Architecture Award-winning development acclaimed for its diverse American, French, British, and Spanish building styles. Elegant apartment buildings mix with European-style villas on abundant green zones.
In these quiet settlements, foreign professionals and their families can select their own preferred degrees of assimilation with the
Shanghai environment, while maintaining the aesthetic styles and customs of their home countries.
The thriving expatriate community in Jinqiao resides in classy residences with easy access to the city's top international schools and health-care facilities. The convenient commuting and pleasant, spacious, family-oriented living conditions, which draw affluent residents to comfortable residences like those in the Green Villas, are reinforced by their proximity to widely-respected international educational institutions including the Concordia International School and Dulwich College. The appeal is further consolidated by the presence of hospitals with special facilities for the cultural expectations of foreign residents, like Sino United Health and Parkway.
As Jinqiao has matured, some of Shanghai's best sports, leisure, dining and retail facilities have grown up to support its population, including the Green Sports & Leisure Center, the Decathlon Sports Store, Green Maple, the Tony G's Restaurant, the Blue Frog, the Long Restaurant, Starbucks, and other major international chains.
The area also hosts a variety of popular events including a Christmas party, a children's painting competition, the Mini World Cup, Family Day, and special charity events, often gathering crowds of 4,500 people from 70 different countries and acting as a center for cultural exchange.
Green City contains the city's most highly-concentrated foreign population. Many of its residents are senior executives with major international companies, including the CEOs, CFOs, and senior executive directors from 26 of the world's top 500 and they all live in the community with their families. The general managers of General Motors, Deutsche Bank, and the
Shangri-la Hotel in Pudong are all Green City residents. Average occupancy rates typically exceed 90 percent.
In the near future, the Jinqiao Expo Processing Zone seems set to become the city's most attractive spot for overseas investment, as well as a fashionable city landmark and a lifestyle center for expats.
If Puxi represents historic
Shanghai and Lujiazui represents the city's second wave modernity, Biyun manifests the city's traditions of international hospitality at their most uncompromised. Pudong's fresh expanses provided development space for a reconfigured international Shanghai, adapted to the needs of transient expatriate populations seeking a smooth and comfortable sojourn in the city, without an uncomfortable emplacement in its downtown fabric.
The Jinqiao Export Processing Zone exemplifies this prosperous international belt. Appropriately, the name Jinqiao means Golden Bridge. The entire zone occupies roughly 27 square kilometers of Pudong, on land that belonged to the city's rural outskirts just two decades ago. Ultimately, the zone will cover 90 square kilometers.
Today it is a magnet for overseas and domestic investment, attracted by the growing cluster of varied high-technology, creative, research and service industry parks. A substantial expatriate population has accompanied this influx of business activity, with many foreign families choosing to live in neighborly communities in the area.
As the Jinqiao Export Processing Zone matures, the area's light-manufacturing facilities have been incrementally transformed into research and office space, set in a landscaped environment that includes a small lake. The development targets the needs of world top 500 enterprises and their research centers. Currently on the 15-square-kilometer zone, there are already more than 20 top multinational corporations, including General Motors Corporation and a video communication base operated collaboratively by China Telecom, Datang Telecom, and other telecommunications corporations.
As manufacturing activities will be phased out over the next five years, they will be replaced by service and outsourcing businesses. The entire zone will be expanded to cover 60 square kilometers, hosting more than 50 multinational enterprises from the world top 500.
