Thames Town is the English name for a new town in Songjiang, about 30 km from central Shanghai, China and situated on the Yangtze River. It is named after the River Thames in England, the United Kingdom. The architecture both imitates and is influenced by classic English market town styles. There are cobbled streets, Victorian terraces, corner shops—empty as in an abandoned film set. Some of the architecture has been directly copied from buildings found in England, including the church (copied from one in Clifton, Bristol) and a pub and fish and chip shop (copied from buildings in Lyme Regis, Dorset).(wikipedia.org)
Thames Town in Songjiang. Wikipedia.org
Thames Town in China. From metagini.com
Thames Town in Songjiang. Wikipedia.org
Another empty street in Thames Town. Picture from contactcollective.blogspot.com
Business Insider brings us a look at another ghost town built to capture the spirit of Britain: Thames Town. To really throw off your bearings, here is the Times of India reporting from Chicago on the Chinese city that conjures old England:
One such city is Thames Town, built as a replica of an Austrian village, Hallstatt, at the cost of $9 billion. It was built in 2006 as part of Shanghai’s “One City, Nine Town” initiative, an attempt to decentralize the city. Today, it’s a ghost town, with empty shops, almost no resident and unused roads.
It has an artificial lake and a few tourists – photographing every building there for the past few years – have been the only sign of human life there.
Blogger triplefivedrew, who visited Thames Town in 2010, likened the place to the set of The Truman Show.
This is a 3D render of what Thames Town was expected to be. Picture from metro.co.uk
First picture and excerpt from Eric Jaffe´s post:
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