I'm lookin' for some info on Lingang New City or the "Shanghai Harbour City". How's it like for livin'?
Wikipedia has only this much to offer-"Lingang New City (Chinese: 临港新城; Lingang New City, Shanghai Harbour City) is a planned city located in the Pudong district of Shanghai, China. Construction began in 2003 and is scheduled to be completed in 2020."
Does anyone have any experience of visiting it or knowing what's it like? All I know is that its about 60 kms from downtown Shanghai.
I'm in Shanghai but know almost nothing about that area, which may be a bad sign.
There's some decent overall Shanghai info at:
http://wikitravel.org/en/ShanghaiOn the map there, under
http://wikitravel.org/en/Shanghai#Pudong_and_outer_districtswhat you are looking at is the lower right corner.
Pudong translates as East of the river. It is a huge district and the whole thing has been made a Special Economic Zone with various things done to encourage investment. It has worked. The whole area was mostly farmland a few decades back but now downtown Pudong (mainly the point sticking out into the river opposite the old center of town on the West bank) has more skyscrapers than New York.
The rest of Pudong (the Southern 80%) is usually referred to as Nan Hui. It is fairly developed and heavily populated but feels more like a provincial city than like central Shanghai. Probably a lot cheaper to live in, maybe more of a "purely Chinese" experience than central Shanghai which has at least 100,000 foreigners and a whole ecology of Western restaurants, bars, etc.
I do not think there is a metro line out to Lingang yet, but I could be wrong and anyway they are continually building new lines. Map here:
http://www.urbanrail.net/as/shan/shanghai.htm then click at the bottom for a larger map showing "possible future extensions". I think it is out of date; most of those extensions are already in service.
There are metro lines out in that general direction, though I do not think any reach Lingang. Line 2 now goes all the way to Pudong airport, which is on the coast somewhat North of L. Line 6 goes N-S through much of Pudong and Line 8 wanders into S Pudong, but I don't think either goes nearly far enough for you.
My guess is getting to central Shanghai from L would involve either a couple of hours on bus then metro or a hour and something like 200 rmb in a taxi. If you look on the subway map, I'm down at Dong Chuan Road out near the end of Line 5. It is an hour by metro or 110 by taxi for me to get downtown.