Xuhui Runway Park, an innovative urban revitalization project

Xuhui Runway Park is an innovative urban revitalization project that breathes new life into a unique piece of Shanghai’s history. Master planned as a public street and linear park side-by-side, the site is leading the city’s new lifestyle, following its environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable approaches.

Located in the Xuhui Waterfront Area, this 14.63-hectare site was formerly a runway for Longhua Airport, once the largest airport in Eastern Asia. During the regeneration of the former industrial waterfront into a mixed-use district, the park serves as a runway of modern life, offering a space of recreation for nearby office workers, students, and residents, as well as a respite from the high-density redevelopment around.

The park's design mimics the motion of a runway, creating diverse linear spaces for vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians by organizing the park and street into one interconnected sequence at a runway scale. While the spaces are linear in form, diverse spatial experiences are created by applying different materials, scales, topography, and programs. The articulated ascending and descending movement resembles the experience of being on an airplane, connecting visitors to the past while providing varied viewpoints of the site.

The layout of Yunjin Road contributes to a compact urban district by limiting the number of vehicular travel lanes and promoting public transportation, as well as designating bike lanes to facilitate the “last one kilometer” commute between transit and individual destinations. Additionally, six rows of deciduous trees are planted along the sidewalks, bicycle lanes, and road median, creating a comfortable microclimate, seasonal effects, and a human-scaled boulevard. A sunken garden is carved between the park's subway station and neighboring development, improving the walking experience to and from transit while enriching the spatial composition of the park. Additional commercial frontage is placed along the garden perimeters, bringing more revenue to support the park’s operation and maintenance costs.

Diverse programs are planned in various park spaces, open to all ages and groups and free of charge. Active lifestyles can be found in multiple forms of runways, such as the bike and pedestrian runways through the park, a runway playground, a runway fountain, and a multipurpose lawn with a capacity for holding 3,500-people events or 5 soccer games in five-a-side size fields. Cultural events and performances can be accommodated at the sunken garden with a maximum of 900 audiences, and restaurants, bookstores, exhibition spaces scattered throughout the park are designed to allow for small social gatherings, serving the developments around. Private conversations and reflection can take place at multiple gardens, riverfront overlooks, and the birdwatching grove, which offers a respite from busy urban life. The entire park is universally accessible, providing equal opportunities to people at a full range of ability levels. It has become a year-round outdoor lifestyle destination for nearby residents, office workers, and school students.

Abundant wildlife habitats in both land and marine typologies are integrated with the landscape programs, with 100% of plant species native to the Yangtze River Delta. A total of 82 plant species, including 2,227 trees, are planted on site, with Trident Maple as the character tree species along the preserved runway concrete to complement its unique history. Over 68% of the hardscape is shaded by deciduous trees, providing outdoor comfort while reducing the heat island effect at this post-industrial site.

The design integrates portions of the original runway concrete where feasible to prolong the site’s memory, including the reuse of concrete pieces from the demolished runway at resting areas. Preservation and reuse of the runway concrete on site has not only saved construction costs but also reduced greenhouse gas emissions from the manufacturing of new concrete. Concrete was also selected as a primary material for the project. The profiles of site furniture and light poles are designed to recall the elements of an aircraft, while in-ground lights outlining the former runway concrete panels serve as a visual connection to the park’s aviation history. All site lighting is LED sourced, reducing annual electricity use by 167,000 kilowatts compared with metal-halide lighting. Most construction materials were sourced locally and are environmentally friendly to reduce emission during transportation, protect rainforests, and support the local economy.

The stormwater from the park and Yunjin Road is managed along the street through the 5,760-square-meter rain garden and the 8,107-square-meter constructed wetland. The roadside rain garden system is the first of its kind built in Shanghai. The treated stormwater meets the quality requirements in China for recreational water. A portion of the treated runoff is collected at a 39.4-cubic-meter underground cistern for park operation and maintenance use when necessary, providing a full water supply for the Runway Fountain in the park.

The park has received much attention from the neighborhood as well as from the city. Following its construction, many major residential, commercial, and office developments were grounded in its adjacent blocks, including the CCTV Yangtze Delta Headquarters, the first 7-star hotel in Shanghai, and the West Bund AI Center, the World Artificial Intelligence Conference site; the property value of the neighborhood increased over 80% from 2015 to 2019.

This site traces the record of urban development in Shanghai. It transcends time and space, bringing a piece of the memorable past to the present and into the modern comfort of urban public spaces. Its strong sustainable initiatives have earned it the first SITES Gold certification in Mainland China and the SITE 2019 Green Building Market Leader Award by USGBC’s Massachusetts Chapter.