Qiantan

Qiantan (前滩, Qiántān) is a new business district on the Pudong bank of the Huangpu River, and its shopping centre is Taikoo Li Qiantan (前滩太古里). It is worth a visit to see the most recent stage of Shanghai’s development rather than historic streets. Nothing here is old: the district’s first buildings date from the 2010s, and the shops opened in 2021.

Shanghai’s 2022–2035 commercial plan names it one of the city’s 29 city-level commercial centres, about 0.5 km² with some 900,000 m² of planned shop and mall floor space.

The district covers 2.83 square km, with about 2.3 km of river frontage on the Huangpu and about 0.8 km along the Chuanyang River. Chinese Wikipedia gives its limits as the Huangpu River, the Chuanyang River, Jiyang Road and Huaxia West Road. The site was first planned for a Universal Studios project, which was halted, and the name Qiantan was chosen by the general manager of Lujiazui Group. Construction began in November 2012. The first large building was the Oriental Sports Center, and the plan calls for more than 3.5 million square metres of floor area in total. NYU Shanghai opened its Qiantan campus in January 2023.

Taikoo Li Qiantan was announced in January 2019 as a joint project of Swire Properties and Lujiazui Group. It has about 120,000 square metres of gross floor area, on levels from the basement to level 4 (with a partial sixth level at the north end). Its open, lane-based layout follows the Taikoo Li formula first used in Beijing’s Sanlitun and in Chengdu. It opened in 2021 and is the first Taikoo Li in Shanghai. Features include an 8,000 square metre central park and an 80 m Scenic Bridge over the Huangpu River.

Getting around: Oriental Sports Center station is where Metro Lines 6, 8 and 11 meet, and the shopping quarter connects to it. The district sits across the river from the historic centre, so a visit fits better with the Pudong riverfront than with an old-town walk.