Wendy Zhang/ Shanghai Daily news

Shanghai's land prices have increased steadily for the first quarter of this year, with nearly 70 percent of the local villages and towns seeing land prices up 10-55 percent from the previous quarter, today's Shanghai Evening Post reported.
Baoshan District has had the fastest growth in land prices, up to 2.3 million yuan (US$277,000) per mu (1/15 hectare). Last year, 13 plots of land with a total area of 1.202 million square meters were traded there.
Convenient rail transportation and increasing property prices in Baoshan have driven up local land prices, said an industry analyst.
Shortages of land in the city's riverside avenue area in the Pudong District have increased land prices there, with prices in the golden triangle of the north Bund, the small Lujiazui area, and the south Bund exceeding 20 million yuan per mu, the highest in the city.
However, Songjiang New City has seen land prices declining in the first quarter of this year, down from 1.35 million yuan to 1.3 million yuan per mu. A large land supply is given as the main reason for the land price drop, an analyst said.
In 2003, 3.52 million square meters of land in Songjiang hit the market, and seven plots of land, or a total of 135,000 square meters, were offered to the market last year. More than three million square meters of land are expected to be marketed in the near future.