City site
Shanghai municipality is bordered by
Jiangsu
province to the north and west and
Zhejiang
province to the southwest. It includes the 18 districts
constituting
the city of Shanghai and several islands in the mouth of the Yangtze and offshore to the southeast in the
East China Sea
. The largest island,
Chongming
, has an area of 489 square miles (1,267 square km) and extends more than 50 miles (80 km) upstream from the mouth of the Yangtze; it and the islands of Changxing and Hengsha administratively
comprise
a county under Shanghai municipality.
Britannica Quiz
All About Asia
The mainland portion of the city lies on an almost level deltaic plain with an average elevation of 10 to 16 feet (3 to 5 metres) above
sea level
. It is crisscrossed by an intricate network of canals and waterways that connect the municipality with the
Lake Tai
region just to the west.
City layout
As China’s main industrial centre, Shanghai has serious air, water, and noise
pollution
. Industrial relocation and construction in the suburbs since the 1950s initially helped
alleviate
central city
air pollution
, although high
population
density and mixed industrial-residential land use continued to cause problems. The
Suzhou River (the lower reach of Wusong River) and the
Huangpu River
(a tributary of the Yangtze), which flow through the city, are severely polluted from industrial discharges, domestic sewage, and ships’ wastes; nonetheless, the Huangpu is Shanghai’s main water source. Environmental protection and urban cleanliness are
enhanced
by industrial and solid waste resource-recovery operations run by a municipal corporation. More than 1,000 different materials are recycled, including
plastic
, chemical fibre and residues, machine components, oil and
grease
, rags, human
hair
, and animal bones.
The municipality radiates toward the north, west, and south from the
confluence
of the
Suzhou
and Huangpu rivers. Surrounding the central core is a transitional zone on both banks of the Huangpu, which
encompasses
a partially rural area of about 160 square miles. The banks of the Suzhou River, an important
inland waterway
connection to the interior hinterland, are occupied by a westward arterial extension of the transitional zone. To the south, however, the transitional zone terminates abruptly a few miles south of the central Shanghai urban core, at the Huangpu.
The
Pudong
district, directly east across the Huangpu from the central business district of Puxi, was founded in 1870 as one of the earliest industrial areas; it was once
notorious
as the city’s most extensive and appalling
slum
. The Lujiazui finance and trade zone as well as modern business complexes?including the 88-story
Jin Mao Tower
(completed 1999), the 101-story
Shanghai World Financial Center
(completed 2008), and the 128-story Shanghai Tower (completed 2015)?are now located there, and the Pudong New District was established in the area in 1993. A large site along the Huangpu in Pudong housed the major portion of the
Expo Shanghai 2010
world exposition in 2010, with a smaller site across the river in Puxi.