Yangpu (or Big Yangpu as we like to call it) is where I studied and worked in late 1970s. Since the technical school I attended was near Wujiaochang, I had increasing interests in Wujiaochang which had been a place as planned for a large modern Shanghai center in 1929 when the "Great Shanghai Plan", the city's first overall development scheme, was issued by the then Kuomintang government. With amazing speed, in less than 10 years, a new town featuring the City Hall, Shanghai Stadium, Shanghai Library and Shanghai Museum was built. It was an ideal complement to the other hub in the concession area. However, the war to resist Japan's aggression in 1930s and 1940s wiped out large parts of the area. The scheme was aborted.

Yangpu, the largest urban district of Shanghai with 1.24 million permanent residents, is located in the northeastern part, covering an area of 60.61 square kilometers with 15.5-kilometers waterfront following the Huangpu River. The district possesses rich historical and cultural resources like old industries, universities and public facilities, and is at present home to 17 universities and colleges (including the prestigious ones of Fudan and Tongji), 22 national key laboratories and more than 100 scientific institutes. The district dreams of becoming another Silicon Valley with a growing number of highly educated graduates starting their own businesses.

Striving for a vision of Shanghai's "central intelligence district", the district's rich talent pool will help it become the "brain" of the city. The old industrial area with gloomy factories is now shifting from a manufacturing base to an intelligence center and will take on a brand-new appearance by the time Shanghai hosts the World Expo in 2010. A small factory I once worked at is now the headquarters of a supermarket chain operator. The district also took its imaginative initiatives to renovate its old factories and storehouses along the waterfront for designers and handicraft masters.

In the near future, the district will highlight three hotspots for development - Wujiaochang Sub-center, New Jiangwan Town and the East Bund area - all of which will play a crucial role in boosting the district's economy and supporting sustainable development. Meanwhile, the district will start a three-year-long project to renovate old homes for further improving people's living conditions. The district, which witnessed industrial prosperity in the first half of the last century, is waiting for its next economic boom, built on the creativity of its people.