Sociologist Sun Zhe has studied Shanghai community organizations for over a decade. He believes the ramifications of the current lockdown will be felt far into the future.
By Cai Yineng
Apr 20, 2022
Late last month, Shanghai entered a “phased lockdown” as it confronted the country’s worst-ever coronavirus outbreak. The lockdown, now in its third week, has brought the lives of the city’s 25 million residents to a grinding halt. Although some neighborhoods have begun allowing residents to go outside for up to an hour a day, for the most part, only essential workers such as doctors, delivery drivers, and social workers are allowed to leave their homes.
With e-commerce and food delivery platforms unable to function normally, to say nothing of supermarkets, the task of distributing food supplies to locked-in residents seemed at first like it would fall to the municipal government. When it became clear that local officials had too much on their plates — and residents not enough on theirs — communities citywide had little choice but to fend for themselves.
Also see the term “meta-placemaking” by Sun Zhe:
It’s published in Shanghai Manuel 2023(pp-57-58), which is also a legacy of Shanghai Expo2010: open access in the UN HABITAT website:Shanghai Manual: A Guide for Sustainable Urban Development in the 21st Century – 2023 Annual Report | UN-Habitat