An NYU Shanghai Professor Explores the Impact of Evolving Technologies

In her course Street Food and Urban Farming, students explored how the quickly modernizing architecture and economy of the city affect the livelihoods of the street vendor population. Equipped with video cameras and questions, they went out into the markets of Shanghai. There, they conducted interviews with consumers and vendors to hear firsthand about their experiences. 

In her course The Cultivated City, students researched how Chinese philosophy regards nature by tracing the evolution of the urban ecology of Shanghai. That course is part of Zaanheh: A Natural History of Shanghai. This larger project at the University that builds on Eric Sanderson’s Mannahatta Project, a decades-long initiative that explored the ecological history of the Island of Manhattan, from Henry Hudson’s initial landing there in 1609 to today. In the Zaanheh project, IMA students collaborate with faculty. Together, they use modern digital tools to look back at the development of the land through environmental studies and historical records and imagine the future’s urban nature.

For Professor Greenspan, NYU Shanghai is the perfect place to study the city and country as it evolves. “I think one of the things that’s really exciting about NYU Shanghai is that it’s a culturally diverse environment that is very China-centered, but we have the opportunity to think about these things from different intellectual heritages,” she says. “China has a real sense that it is engaged with the future. It has an optimism to embrace the future that is hard to see elsewhere.”