Olympics lesson for city planners

Who, other than young athletes-to-be in the world, would feel the greatest urge when watching the Olympic Games in Beijing? They must be the Chinese mayors and their city planning lieutenants.

For the last couple of weeks, they were staring hungrily at, instead of the game floors and record bulletins, the Bird's Nest and Water Cube - two multi-billion-yuan main Olympic venues, and Beijing's all other new public facilities, roads and subways, and its shopping and restaurant streets, if not its blue sky. Many of them would be asking themselves questions about how to build their cities.

Small wonder that Han Zheng, mayor or Shanghai, restated once again on August 19 the city's ambition to be China's international financial center to host as many types of financial markets as possible. The mayor pledged better integrated services in Lujiazui, the financial district in Pudong area, meaning greater convenience for the business community in the already glittering business center of Shanghai.