shenzhen’s recent decision to neonize the city prompts today’s entry.

from 2006 through 2008, the city plans mto upgrade the investment environment, which includes upgrading the living environment: cleaning up rivers, planting more trees, building recreational bike trails (in overseas chinese town), giving old buildings a fresh paint job, and generally making shenzhen look better. the city’s decision to redefine the investment environment in terms of quality of life points to a shift in values that relative wealth has brought. it may also reflect shenzhen residents’ concern for their children, who will not be moving back to their parents’ hometowns. over the past few years, there people in government and society who want to do more than just make money in shenzhen seem to have been increasingly influential. they want to make shenzhen into a nice place to live and many of their projects reflect this goal, rather than bottom line economic thinking for which the city has been famous. as part of larger historical trends, the new ascendance of socially conscious may indicate a larger shift from viewing shenzhen as a place of transit to making shenzhen into a “hometown”.

nevertheless, being shenzhen, there is always an over-the-top moment. one of the more iconic decisions of upgrading the environments has been to encase old (read: too expensive to raze) buildings in neon tubes, so that at night, five story neon walls project computer generated images. some of these neon walls extend 12 stories into the nighttime sky. during the day, the buildings just look caged. unfortunately, my camera isn’t high-tech enough to take pictures of the new designs. however, the government assures us that all the lighting is environmentally friendly, again, in keeping with shenzhen’s drive to upgrade the investment environment.