The Power of Spectacle
Journal: Culture Unbound Journal of Current Cultural Research
Year: 2011

When people say Shanghai looks like the future the setting is almost always the same. Evening descends and the skyscrapers clustered on the eastern shore of the Huangpu light up. Super towers are transformed into giant screens. The spectacular skyline, all neon and lasers and LED, looms as a science fiction backdrop. Staring out from the Bund, across to Pudong, one senses the reemergence of what JG Ballard once described as an “electric and lurid city, more exciting than any other in the world.”