World Expo Representative: How Expo 2010 has transformed Shanghai

From May 1 to October 31, 2010, Dimitri attended the Expo 2010 in person, witnessing the strenuous work by thousands of Expo workers. “What I really admired in Shanghai was that nothing was ever perfect in the world, but every day in Shanghai, the organizer tried to do something to fix the little issue that they hadn’t found before. And this went on for the whole six months of the Expo. Every day the Expo tried to be better than it was yesterday. And this is something very impressive to notice, to notice that we don’t just accept these for how they are, but we keep on trying to improve them. In a sense, it is one of the key values of expos.”

From opening up to seeking cooperation

What the Expo 2010 has left for China and the world is not just wonderful memories. The spirit of the World Expo has also continued. Dimitri believes that no one can deny the success of the Expo 2010, not only because it has broken many records, but also what was left behind after the Expo. He summed up two very big legacies: one is the World Cities Day, a day approved by the UN for the sustainable development of cities, and the other is the World Expo Museum.

World Cities Day is an exact interpretation of the theme of the Expo 2010: Better City, Better Life. “This is what Shanghai Expo was about. It was about urban sustainable development. The Expo gave us six months to learn experiences from all over the world, not just from China, on how to evaluate this type of sustainable situations. And then, the government of China decided to take this on and had it approved in an international forum at the UN to make a day which is dedicated to this issue of how we can make cities more sustainable for all the citizens. So that was a crucial point and it showed the global impact of Expo 2010.”

While the reform and opening up has opened the door to the world for Shanghai, the World Expo has driven Shanghai from opening up to seeking cooperation. Shanghai made a successful transformation thanks to the Expo and it is sharing more development wisdom with the world. As a long-term cooperation between the Shanghai municipal government and BIE, the World Expo Museum (also known as WE Museum), serves as a repository of World Expo culture and innovation and a cultural exchange platform related to the World Expo while inheriting the core values of BIE: education, innovation and cooperation.