Shanghai is a city built on trade and a city of great contrasts and paradoxes. Notorious in the 1990s for having the world’s largest agglomeration of construction cranes, it is still one the few cities where a majority of the buildings of the 1920s and '30s have not been pulled down to make way for progress.
Today, Shanghai is the largest city in the most populated country on Earth. The sheer size and speed at which the city has expanded is breathtaking. It’s location in the delta of the Yangtze River helped the city flourish into a major center of commerce between the east and the west, and in 2005, Shanghai became the world’s largest cargo port.
The tallest skyscraper in Shanghai, the Shanghai World Financial Center, is now the third tallest in the world. The second tallest building in the world, which is now under construction, will be the Shanghai Tower. It will come in at a height of 2,073 feet when it’s completed. These statuesque towers rise far above the already hulking skyline of the Pudong section of the city. In Shanghai, not just size but height matters, a theme that was set in the city when its leaders built the oriental Pearl Tower, designed by architect Jiang Huan Cheng. It was the tallest structure in China between 1994 and 2007.