近几个月来，为举办世博会，上海展开了铺天盖地、如火如荼的宣传，但偶尔也能听到关于这个城市的未来的不同声音。
两个月前，一家画廊举办了一次意在恶搞（有时也不完全是搞笑）世博会的展览。
其中有件雕塑采用的材料，是从被禁止在世博会期间进入市中心的摊贩那里买来的家用品。核心展品则是陈航峰的"泡沫城市、泡沫生活"：一个大笼子里放着一台机器，每隔一段时间，这台机器会喷出肥皂泡，肥皂泡在笼子里四处飘散，碰到铁丝网就破裂。陈航峰说道："泡沫轻盈而多彩，十分有趣，但就像围绕世博会的各种乌托邦思想一样，它们也很脆弱，容易破裂。"
这一切可能被斥为艺术家的自负。然而，在官方大肆宣传的进展背后，世博会也让人们对上海仓促而忙乱的现代化产生了许多想法。政府的口号喊得好听："城市，让生活更美好"。果真是这样吗？
事实上，世博会本身并没有给上海带来什么变化，它只是成了一举落实大批投资的借口，十年计划压缩成了三、四年的计划。
没有多少人愿意开倒车。许多投资也非常受欢迎，特别是地铁扩建工程。但上海有很多人感到烦恼的是，在发展的过程中，有些东西丢失了。
上海社科院教授屠启宇表示："在上海人看来，变化太惊人了，整个城市感觉都不一样了。我们既喜欢变化，也不喜欢变化。"
对于记得上世纪六、七十年代为了买一点菜而必须排上一小时队的那几代人来说，生活质量的改善是惊人的。
但人们最常抱怨的是，上海越是变得现代化，就越没有人情味。
上海老居民区的建筑自成一格，一条一条的弄堂里密布着两层的公寓楼，形成了许多"城中村"。
与中国其它城市的老城区一样，弄堂里的居民把自己的精力挥洒在这些巷子里，使弄堂成为社会生活和商业的一个中心。
对于许多饱受居住拥挤之苦的家庭来说，老居民区局促的生活环境没什么可怀念的。然而，随着老居民区被夷为平地，腾出地方建造一排排的公寓高楼，一种社区感随之丧失了。
与世博会相关的最引人瞩目的改造工程之一――外滩改造工程――也让人们产生了城市规划并没有把人放在核心位置的感觉。外滩的滨江大道是上海标志性场所之一。
该工程历时3年，耗资40亿人民币（合5.86亿美元），包括在步行区下面挖一条3公里长的地下通道，用以分流部分车辆。
不过，尽管该工程声势浩大，可现在行人要到江边，还是得穿过一条从11车道改为6车道的繁忙马路。
此外，一些上海人抱怨说，当局急于美化外滩，把以前住在这里的一些人赶走了。屠启宇表示： "在外滩项目上，我们本可以做得漂亮得多。"
不过，有些问题已经有了解决之道。
新地铁系统明显让人们更方便乘坐公共交通工具，减轻了常常水泄不通的交通拥堵问题，而且正为新居民区创造城市副中心。
在计划开通新地铁站的地方，房地产开发商往往会提前几年进入，这样建成的小区刚开始感觉偏僻，也缺少各种服务设施。
不过，在较早开发的地铁沿线上，已经明显形成了一种模式。比如在一号线南端的莘庄站，已经有一座大型的购物中心，既可以买到基本的生活必需品，也有高档的品牌商品，还有影院。
开发商也吸取了教训――一些新落成的小区刻意宣传起大花园和其它公用区域。
幼儿园和健身房等其它服务设施也流行了起来。
地铁正迅速为新居民区带来城市副中心，部分重现这个城市往昔拥有的社会活力。
译者/杨远
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001032488
Amid the drumbeats of enthusiastic propaganda for the Expo that have dominated Shanghai in recent months, it has also been possible occasionally to hear a different tune about the city's future.
A couple of months ago, a gallery launched an exhibition that sought to have some playful (and sometimes not so playful) fun at the expense of the event.
One sculpture was made from the household goods sold by street vendors who have been cleared from the city centre for the duration of the Expo, while the centerpiece was called "Bubble city, Bubble Life" by Chen Hangfeng, a large cage with a machine inside. At regular intervals, the machine spewed out soapy bubbles that floated around inside the cage until they hit the wire and burst. "Bubbles are light and colourful and full of fun," says Mr Chen. "But, like the utopian ideas that surround the Expo, they are also fragile and easy to pop."
All of this might be dismissed as artistic conceit except that, behind all the official bluster about progress, the Expo has also prompted a lot of thinking about the helter-skelter modernisation that the city has undergone. Is it really, as the breezy government slogan suggests, a "Better City, Better Life"?
In truth, the Expo by itself has changed little in Shanghai, rather it has been an excuse to concertina a series of investments that were already on the books, squeezing a decade of plans into three or four years.
Few want to turn back the clock and many of those investments are very much welcomed � most notably the expansion in the metro system. But there is a nagging sense among many in Shanghai that something has been lost along the way.
"To Shanghaiese, the extent of the change is astonishing," says Tu Qiyu, a professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. "The city has a very different feel. We like the change and we do not like the change."
To those generations who remember the 1960s and 1970s, when people had to queue for an hour to buy simple foodstuffs, the improvements in quality of life are staggering.
The most common complaint, however, is that the more modern Shanghai has become, the more impersonal the city is.
Its older neighbourhoods had their own style of architecture, two-storey lilong apartments connected by networks of lanes that created a series of urban villages.
Like the older parts of other Chinese cities, the energy of the inhabitants spilled out on to these lanes, which were the focus for much social life and commerce.
There is little nostalgia for the cramped living conditions that many families suffered in their crowded dwellings, but as these neighbourhoods have been razed to make way for endless lines of high-rise apartment buildings, there is also a loss of a sense of community.
The feeling that people have not been put at the centre of planning has also extended to one of the most high-profile redevelopment projects linked to the Expo � the facelift given to the Bund, the riverside promenade that is one of Shanghai's signature features.
It has been a three-year and RMB4bn ($586m) project that involved digging a 3km tunnel under the promenade to accommodate some of the traffic.
Even after all the fanfare, though, pedestrians wanting to reach the river still need to negotiate a highway full of speeding cars � now reduced from 11 to six lanes.
Moreover, some Shanghaiese complain that, in the haste to smarten up the Bund area, some of the people who used to live there have been edged out. "We could have done something much better on the Bund," says Prof Tu.
Yet the solutions to some of these problems are also at hand.
The new metro system has not only sharply improved access to public transport and reduced a traffic congestion problem that could easily have become overwhelming, it is also creating the backbone for new communities.
Developers tend to move in a few years before the metro stations open, sprouting residential complexes that at first feel isolated and bereft of services and facilities.
Yet a pattern is already evident on the older metro lines, such as at Xinzhuang towards the southern end of line 1. Beside the station, there is a large shopping centre that mixes up-market brands with basic staples and cinemas.
Developers, too, have heard the message � newer residential compounds go out of their way to advertise spacious gardens and other common areas.
Other services, from kindergartens to gyms, have flourished.
The metro is quickly creating hubs for new neighbourhoods that are recreating some of the social vibrancy the city once enjoyed.
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