The last thing you'd expect to find nestled on the outskirts of China’s largest city is a tranquil English market town. Thames Town, as it is known, channels iconic British civic locations, right down to the red phone boxes and Victorian lamp posts. Click or scroll through to discover the story behind this faux Anglo locale and take a tour of its cobbled streets...
The project was conceived back in 2001 as part of Shanghai's 'One City, Nine Towns' plan, which would result in the construction of new Western-style mega-developments around the city to house its exploding population. Construction took place between 2003 and 2006, including the German-style Anting, Holland-inspired Gaoqiao, the Spanish-flavoured Fengcheng and the most (in)famous of the lot of course, Thames Town, which is part of the larger Songjiang, the 'one city'.
In cosmopolitan Shanghai, there are more Art Deco buildings than in any other city in the world. The mix of Eastern and Western style of architecture has long been part of the urban landscape, incorporating everything from minimalist skyscrapers to British-designed banks. These towns were designed in the same spirit and would also give China's middle classes, few of whom could travel long-haul at the time, a taste of the West at home.
British engineering firm Atkins won an international competition to plan and design the development on farmland 25 miles southwest of central Shanghai, while a local firm was responsible for construction. All in all, Thames Town reportedly cost a hefty $635 million (£500m) to build. It covers an area of just over a third of a square mile traversed by canals, one of which doubles up as the River Thames.
The layout also draws inspiration from the garden city movement, with modern Milton Keynes in England's Buckinghamshire a key point of reference. Other structures nod to or directly replicate historic buildings in Bristol, Lyme Regis, Chester, Birmingham and London.
No expense was spared making the development look as authentic as possible, with everything from lampposts and traffic lights to red letterboxes and phone boxes imported from England. In fact, about the only materials that weren't shipped over from Britain were the roof tiles and copious amounts of concrete needed to construct the buildings – just the façades feature traditional materials like brick and half-timbering.
The developers certainly didn't do anything by halves. They even kitted out the town's team of security guards with splendid scarlet uniforms based on those worn by the Grenadier Guards stationed at London's palaces and Windsor Castle, though they passed on the bearskin hats.
Bronze statues of well-known British figures, both real-life and fictional, pepper the development. Again, these were cast in the UK and imported at great cost. They include likenesses of William Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, Princess Diana (pictured), Charles Dickens and Florence Nightingale, as well as Harry Potter and James Bond.
Road names are suitably English to boot, with monikers like Oxford Street, Soho Street and Chelsea Street. Atkins based many of the designs on buildings located not far from its offices in Bristol, in the south-west of England. Thames Town's key landmark, the church (pictured left) is an almost like-for-like replica of the neo-Gothic Christ Church in the leafy Clifton neighbourhood. It actually functions as a Catholic place of worship (whereas the original is Church of England) and holds a mass every Sunday at 2pm.
Thames Town's pub (pictured left) and the next-door fish and chip restaurant are copies of the Georgian Rock Point Inn and Cobb Gate Fish Bar in the idyllic Dorset coastal town of Lyme Regis. Despite being initially sceptical, the British owner of the originals even ended up paying Thames Town a visit in 2012.
Other buildings were modelled on medieval edifices lining the High Cross in Chester, UK, while the elegant terraces of London's Belgravia and Birmingham's Victorian red brick mills and factories were also used as inspiration.
Almost from the start Thames Town has been the go-to destination for Shanghai's newlyweds to have their wedding photos taken. Even today, couples pose around the town for their official photoshoots. During the summer, groups arrive from 9am till late in the afternoon and are well catered to thanks to the many photography and make-up studios, hair salons and wedding dress hire stores.
Many of the villas and apartments were bought by wealthy buyers as investments or holiday homes, with the number of permanent residents falling to a fraction of the projected figure. Without a proper community, the development resembled a modern ghost town, with some dubbing it The Truman Show brought to life and likening it to a sterile movie set.
By 2008, a good two years after the development's completion, only a small number of properties were occupied and the permanent population stood at a minuscule 900. A metro line had opened, connecting Songjiang to downtown Shanghai, but residents would have to drive or take a taxi to the nearest station, which wasn't conveniently located for Thames Town. This is said to have put off tourists from visiting too.
Apart from the stores serving the wedding photo industry, retail and hospitality businesses struggled to make ends meet and many opened and closed in quick succession. Adding to the ghost town vibe, a large number of the units went unfilled and others sported mere shopfronts, including a ghost 'branch' of Costa Coffee. And while a kindergarten opened, the nearby school was empty.
In 2010, the situation hadn't improved much, with only half the villas lived-in and apartments in the central core vacant and crying out for buyers and tenants. One of the turning points came in 2013 with the opening of the spectacular Zhongshuge. Considered the most beautiful bookstore in China, it fast became a social media sensation, attracting a growing number of visitors to the town.
Spanning 6,458 square feet, the enormous shop includes bookshelves embedded in glass floors and soaring mirrored ceilings. Zhongshuge has proved such a success that the company now has more than 20 stores across China, all featuring jaw-dropping architecture.
That same year, the hit Chinese movie Tiny Times was released. Thames Town, specifically the canal basin area inspired by Birmingham's industrial buildings, was used as a location for the opening scenes, and this has helped entice even more visitors to the development, curious to see for themselves where the motion picture was shot. Today, there's even a restaurant in the town named after the film.
By 2014, the resident population had grown to 2,300, which though more than double the total in 2008, was still falling way short of the 10,000 Thames Town was planned for. Still, Shanghai's population continued to increase in a huge way and while residential and commercial property prices carried on rising, demand was increasing as well.
More shops, cafés, bars and restaurants were opening, including branches of Starbucks and Baskin-Robbins, a Lego store, Western fashion boutiques and an Italian restaurant. In 2019, a tram line opened linking Thames Town with the metro, a major bonus for the development and a sure-fire way to attract more buyers, renters and visitors alike.
House prices have surged, especially in the past couple of years. According to a local resident, the typical purchase price per square foot is now $715 (£517), up from just $100 (£72) in 2011. Typical monthly rental prices for the medium-sized properties range from between $1,235 (£894) and $1,550 (£1,120). The well-appointed villas and biggest apartments reportedly sell for not far off a million dollars these days.
Thames Town now has well over 100 stores and other customer-facing businesses but they were forced to close early on in the coronavirus pandemic. Since it reopened, Thames Town is reasonably busy now, particularly during weekends. Some reviewers on Tripadvisor and Trip.com have noted the rundown state of some of the buildings and the general unkempt appearance of the place, though others have nothing but praise for it.
The Atkins architect and planner Anthony Mackay, who helped create Thames Town and the wider Songjiang masterplan, has since turned his back on the project. In 2018, he told Slate he felt ashamed that the firm worked on the project, calling out the 'duplitecture' for being out of place and lacking historical context or meaning.
Even officials in China have turned against copycat buildings. The government issued a decree in 2020 strictly prohibiting “plagiarism, imitation and copycat behaviour” in architecture. The ban applies only to public projects but is bound to impact the private sector, effectively making developments like Thames Town a thing of the past.
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