At Home in the Megacity – Shanghai

Angela Jun Wang works as Sales Director at DEKRA China in Shanghai. A modern city with good public transport infrastructure.

Angela Jun Wang: “When I was a child, Shanghai was just a town. Now it’s a megacity”, Photo: Yolanda Vom Hagen

Angela Jun Wang lives in Shanghai. A city in which the future seems to reclaiming land from China’s longest river, the Yangtze. Again, an approach that entails many new challenges that must be overcome.

Keeping an identity in times of change

Angela Jun Wang remembers the city from times when the skyline was unrecognizable from how it is now – from the days of the very first skyscrapers. “Shanghai used to be a simple town. Now it’s a megacity,” she says. The DEKRA Sales Director grew up here. She lives mere minutes from her workplace together with her husband and young daughter. The rest of her family also live nearby – her parents, siblings, uncles, aunts and cousins. “Shanghai is my home,” Angela Jun Wang states with pride. She identifies with the city. “Shanghai is so modern, and is developing so quickly. Nothing is impossible here. I want to grow with the city, and do my part to make the city even more livable.” The dynamic spirit of this city appears to be contagious, but simultaneously, it is people like Angela Jun Wang that give the city its energy. If you ask her whether she could imagine living somewhere else, she doesn’t miss a beat: “No. Nowhere else would even be a consideration for me.” Despite increasing rents and the constantly rising traffic volume, she is keen to assert: “I belong here.”

Two in every three people will live in cities by 2050, following the forecasts of today’s researchers. The future of the megacity has only just begun.

Author: Daniela Lukaßen

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More reportages on living in a megacity:

At Home in the Megacity – Life in São Paulo

At Home in the Megacity – Life in Mumbai

At Home in the Megacity – Life in Los Angeles