Counselor's suggestion: Can Shanghai become the city with the most public rest seats?

"Preparing a seat for passersby adds a touch of warmth to the city. I am pleased to see more and more public seats appearing on the streets of Shanghai." At today's 2023 Shanghai Taiwan seminar, the city seat case shared by the government counselor Jiang Haiyang resonated with everyone.

What kind of city is a city with temperature? What qualities should a livable city possess? Focusing on the topic of "Cultural and Tourism Business Inheritance and Development Driven by Digital Technology", guest scholars from Shanghai and Taiwan conducted discussions.

19000 public seats

"My judgment of a city starts with the toilets at airports and stations: clean, odorless, with paper and hot water. These details instantly make you feel the temperature of the city," said Jiang Haiyang. In addition to the toilet, he also mentioned public seats.

On December 31, 2020, at a symposium between the mayor and counselors, Jiang Haiyang proposed a suggestion, "Whether to place seats for rest in public spaces such as streets, green spaces, commercial streets, and subway stations as much as possible, so that Shanghai can become a city where you can sit down and rest anywhere."

In the eyes of Jiang Haiyang, Shanghai is one of the most populous cities in the world. To practice "people's cities and people's construction", it is possible to invite individual citizens to donate seats, with the words of blessings from donors engraved on the seats. It can also mobilize government agencies, enterprises, social organizations, and other organizations to jointly donate funds to help, making Shanghai the city with the most rest seats for pedestrians in the world.

Although a small rest seat involves six departments behind it, optimizing its settings is not that easy. However, Jiang Haiyang did not expect this suggestion to receive an immediate response from the mayor. A week later, the Shanghai Municipal Greening Bureau established a special team to complete a survey of leisure seats in public spaces throughout the city. They sorted out the specifications of seat standards from six different departments, including municipal, greening, and urban appearance, and formulated a work plan for optimizing and improving public empty seat rest seats in the city. As of now, Shanghai has optimized and improved 19000 public space rest seats, which will also be promoted to five new suburban cities this year.

"Preparing a seat for passersby and adding warmth to the city is the starting point of a city's humanistic care." Jiang Haiyang said that if persisted throughout the year and accumulated over time, Shanghai will become the city with the most roadside seats, the most intimate, and the warmest among the world's international metropolises.

"A city has warmth, whether it stays for a long time or a short time, the experience here will become a vivid memory in life." The mountains, forests, and valleys of Yinlu Academy also have a deep impression. Every flower, grass, window, and stool of a city, a little bit of human touch, will leave a mark in people's hearts, making them willing to go again and even live for a long time.

Dragging a suitcase to watch the exhibition

What is the attraction of a city? In the view of Fang Shizhong, the director of the Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, art is a "master key".

Shanghai is the capital of art, with 162 museums, 100 art galleries, and 134 theaters. It holds over 2000 cultural and artistic exhibitions and over 40000 domestic and international performances every year. The previously held "From Botticelli to Van Gogh: The National Gallery of Fine Arts Exhibition" in Shanghai gathered 52 authentic works of world masters, presenting for the first time a condensed history of Western development. Many domestic and foreign audiences came to Shanghai to watch the exhibition, flying and dragging suitcases.

The Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism also conducted a sampling survey on this exhibition. In just 98 days, the exhibition received over 420000 visitors, driving urban comprehensive consumption by more than 1:15, far exceeding the international practice of 1:6 cultural impact on urban consumption. Among them, the proportion of female audience, young audience, and out of town audience reached 70%, 60%, and 50%, respectively. This fully demonstrates that high-quality cultural, museum, and art exhibitions have a significant impact on consumer attraction, and "Generation Z" and "Her Economy" have shown vigorous artistic vitality.

How to enable more citizens to enjoy high-quality artistic education? According to Fang Shizhong's disclosure, this year, the city has also innovatively implemented the "Social Art Education Classroom" practical project, organizing professional art institutions such as museums, art galleries, cultural centers, and cinemas to "open the walls" and hold a series of high-quality public art education activities, allowing citizens to have face-to-face exchanges with masters and masters, and have close conversations with high-quality works, promoting the entire city to be born with the heart and walk with beauty.

Transformation of substation box

According to the Annals of the Spring and Autumn Valley, the city is dedicated to protecting the people. Chinese art historian Zhu Huiliang believes that since ancient times, people have been the core of cities and the most important individuals in them. Therefore, urban development must be centered around people.

She shared the example of Taipei substation renovation.

Substation is one of the carriers of street aesthetics, playing the role of a city gallery. The Taipei City Government collaborates with the "Urban Yeast" community through the "Taipei Urban Landscape Renovation Plan" to help Taipei citizens better understand the composition of environmental aesthetics through color and symbol information organization, harmoniously match surrounding environmental buildings, and propose the possibility of Taipei City color experience.

Transformer box before renovation

There are over 9000 transformer boxes distributed in the urban area of Taipei, ranging from dark green to intricate painting. Through subtraction thinking, the transformer boxes are integrated into the street view and the information on them is organized as symbols. During the renovation process, everyone can act like yeast, influencing the people around them and changing the environment, making communication a way for the city to preserve temperature and beauty. Starting from the renovation in 2016, 1.32 million substations have gradually spread throughout Taiwan, opening up public thinking about urban landscapes and enhancing the cultural taste of the city.

"Only through human centered interactive communication can we effectively enhance the city's temperature and cultural taste, allowing each city to have a unique style," said Zhu Huiliang.