With its Georgian houses, village greens and sandstone churches, Thames Town, overseen by an Irish architect, looks like authentic, leafy stockbrokershire. In fact it's one of nine themed towns being built outside Shanghai. Clifford Coonan finds it oddly comforting
China is a country where rampant development, high-octane economic growth and fundamental social change have become a way of life. So there is something supremely comforting for a Westerner about strolling beneath the dreaming spire of an elegant sandstone church, ambling along leafy avenues of redbrick homes or sipping soothing ales on a green in front of solid Georgian town houses.
This bastion of reassurance in a world without certainties is called Thames Town, a €300 million development in Songjiang New City, just 30km (20 miles) from the throbbing centre of Shanghai, China's biggest city. All that tips you off that this isn't Foxrock or leafy stockbrokershire is the sight of blue-overalled migrant workers from Fujian province wearing broad straw sunhats against the baking sun as they spruce up the signage outside the village local. "Real ales served here," it says. And the Chinese characters on the advertising hoardings. And the teams of baggy-uniformed guards patrolling the area.
It's China, alright. Yet the loud, dirty boom town of Shanghai seems far from the yew- and plane-lined avenues and cobbled, pedestrian-friendly streets of Thames Town. To all intents and purposes it is like an affluent English commuter town; all that's missing is the calming scent of roast beef and gravy.
The architect overseeing the project is Paul Rice, who works for the Atkins engineering consultancy. Brought up in Belfast, where his family still lives, and educated at St Malachy's College, on the Antrim Road, Rice studied at the Mackintosh School of Architecture in Glasgow, then spent some years in Singapore and London before coming to Shanghai in 2002.
"What I like about Shanghai is the fact that it is so foreign, the layers of history in the city, the curiosity of the people, those streets of French plane trees, the intensity of life, the fact that there are people waltzing in the square when I get off the bus in the morning, on the way to work," says the clearly smitten architect when asked what attracted him to China's commercial centre.
When it officially opens, in October, Thames Town will be just part of Songjiang New City, itself a piece in an enormous urbanisation jigsaw, called "One City Nine Towns". It will rehouse millions of people on the outskirts of Shanghai, which will become the world's largest city.
Of the nine suburban towns being built, only one, Zhujiajiao, in Qingpu, will retain its traditional Chinese features; the remaining eight are all being built in various other styles.
"For designers it's a whole new world. The scale and speed of development, plus the fact that in many cities in China we are still at a new beginning - transport systems, infrastructure, the social fabric of the whole city is under enormous change. Everything we take for granted in the West is only just happening here. Some of the developers we work with are young; some of them are on their first development. They are willing to listen to ideas," Rice says.
Songjiang will be home to seven universities, arguably the world's biggest shopping mall and a list of high-tech firms that reads like a directory of Fortune 500 companies. A train line is under construction that will cut the journey from the city to 15 minutes.
With some 400 million people from the countryside expected to move to urban areas by 2020, China needs 3,000 new towns or cities in the next 15 years. Developments such as Songjiang are answering a need and have strong political backing: the satellite-town plan was a pet project of Huang Ju, Shanghai's former Communist Party secretary, who is now a member of the state council, China's cabinet.
Thames Town is no metropolis, however; it is more a spot for affluent residents of Songjiang to relax, watch Premiership football and shop at Next. The focus of the town is a market square surrounded by medieval-style buildings. "The idea is organic growth. Around the medieval centre there is Georgian or Victorian architecture, with different heights and materials. There's almost no repetition in the design," says Rice.
Residents can sip pints in a traditional pub, named the Thames Town, as children scamper across the square to a bilingual school. Red-brick warehouses form a commercial area on the waterfront. Developers are targeting Tesco and Sainsbury's to add to the high-street feel, so the town's expected 10,000 residents can shop in true European style. There are sporting facilities and everything a town of its size should have.
Wang Haijun, a promotions executive who has bought an apartment in Thames Town, says: "I like the town because of its beautiful British-style buildings. I've never seen such a town in China; it's the first. And, as far as I know, the developer of the town will create a fashion, art, commercial area in the core of the town, so I think it will be a good place to stay in . . . I think lots of people will want to live there. Take me, for example. When I bought my apartment, two years ago, I thought it wasn't convenient - not only the town but also the whole Songjiang New City area. But now the surrounding facilities are working." Wang has lived in Shanghai for more than seven years, since she moved from Jiangsu.
"The town itself is a good place for living. The beautiful houses, the greens, plus more and more people have their own vehicles, so they accept the Western lifestyle of living in the satellite town and working in the city."
Like developers the world over, Shanghai Henghe Real Estate is not shy when it comes to laying on the hyperbole. "Culture creates value. Thames Town, a representation of British architectural civilisation, has since integrated itself into Songjiang, rejuvenating this ancient land with its modernity and vitality," says its website.
Walking through Thames Town to look for evidence of culture creating value, it quickly becomes apparent that there are a few crucial differences between the town's houses and those of suburban or small-town Britain. They are closer together than they might be in Britain, as land is expensive, but the villas' windows are often bigger, to accommodate local taste. And allowances for feng shui have been made here and there.
There are, however, no antisocial-behaviour orders, no stolen cars, no drunk teenagers on the green or hanging around the entrance to Leeds Garden. Tight security has put paid to that.
With its garden maze and a mock castle, some critics have compared Thames Town to a theme park, recreating ye olde England for homesick expatriates and aspirational, moneyed Chinese. Shanghai already has a fake Buckingham Palace. But Rice dismisses any comparisons with Disneyland. "Disneyland is a dangerous term to use. This is intended as a real town. Thames Town is organic and natural, and this project was a chance to build something unique," he says.
The architecture for most new developments in China is a mixed bag of neo-classical languages, cutting and pasting Greek, Roman, Gothic and Rococo into Eurostyle, although Luxurious Local Style, which is a kind of updated neoclassical Chinese style, is also gaining currency.
The developers of Thames Town are the local township government, which also owns the real estate agents. Prices in Thames Town range from €1,600 per square metre for a house, €600-700 for an apartment and €1,500-€2,000 for commercial property. That means the cheapest villa, at 307 square metres, comes in at €490,000, while the biggest house on offer, 377 square metres, is priced at €600,000. "We began the sales in 2004 and have been selling our houses step by step. To date 75 per cent of the houses are sold out and most of the customers are local people," says Shanghai Henghe's Ni Jungzeng.
German New Town, somewhat stereotypically, is one for the car enthusiast. Containing homes modelled on the country's cultural capital Weimar and housing 30,000 people in a development designed by Albert Speer, son of Adolf Hitler's favourite architect, German New Town is situated in the former paddy fields of Anting. Anting is now home to the Formula One race track and the giant Volkswagen factory.
Nordic Town at Luodian represents Scandinavian living, while in Barcelona Town at Fengcheng you can do your shopping down a Chinese Ramblas. Italian Town in the suburb of Pujiang will have 100,000 citizens living by Venetian-style canals. There is a Canadian lifestyle at Fengjing, Dutch-style at Waigaoqiao and European/American/Australian styled developments at Zhoupu and Baozhen.
There are problems with the planned communities. The Spanish and Canadian sites are somewhat out of the way, with little nearby to allow for organic growth. Shades of Brasilia and Milton Keynes. However, every developed country in the world has its commuters and if the rail line works, there is no reason for this to apply to Thames Town.
Other developments around Shanghai are even more ambitious. On Chongming island, north of the city, developers are building an experimental wind farm and the beginnings of a 20-mile-long bridge that will connect it to the city. By 2010 it will be Dongtan new town, billed as China's first "eco-city", built with sustainable materials such as replenishable local wood and powered by renewable energy such as wind and solar power. Dublin-based property investment group Treasury Holdings is a pioneer in developing Dongtan, having signed up for a €1.2 billion investment there.