A city without citizens: The 2010 Shanghai World Expo as a temporary city

The paper draws on field-work on the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, held from May to October 2010. The focus of the study is not Shanghai per se, but Shanghai as the site of a world event; Shanghai as a city that becomes temporarily the meeting point of various heterogeneous forces. How to approach such an object? And what does it tell us on traces in cities? While considering the different positions to approach the relationships between a mega-event and the city that hosts it, I will argue that something reminiscent to a simulated city is being tested that shows particular models for populating and circulating urban spaces.

► I describe how Shanghai Expo 2010 is enacted as a temporary city without ordinary citizens. ► I explain how it functions, in a deleuzian way, as a becoming-city. ► I describe the diversity of material and rhetorical operations employed by the Expo organizers to embrace together diverse scales of meanings and actions. ► I trace the efforts of the Expo organizers to anticipate, mobilize and maintain crowds of a certain kind according to international standards.