■ Text by Reporter Xing Beilin
The facility of public rest seats with charging sockets is already available for citizens. Since this year, Jing’an Temple Sub-district has carried out pilot work to improve the innovative public resting seats, putting these seats into service in 117 sites under its administration. The effort, using seats to build a community that allows people to take a load off, manifests the warm humanistic care.
The top ten “popular shared rest spots” in Jing’an Temple Sub-district were officially unveiled at the launching ceremony for public rest seat subscription in Shanghai on December 23. These good-looking public rest seats in different shapes not only provide citizens with facilities to rest at any time, but also add a personal touch to Shanghai.
Public rest seats, the most attractive city view
Citizens may encounter awkward situations when they need to sit down for rest in public space, but have “no place to sit” or “seats are too dilapidated to sit down.” In response, Jing’an Temple Sub-district wisely mobilized extensive communities, businesses and residents to participate in the project of adding public rest seats, upgrading the quality of public rest seats around public green spaces and building shared rest seats near shops along streets. In total, the project launched public rest seats in 117 sites, enabling nearly 700 citizens to stop on the way for a rest at a time.
These seats, such as terraced seats embedded in the arch on Yuyuan Road and the bridge-shaped seats connecting flower beds, seem simple, but embellish the surroundings. A coffee shop popular online around the shopping center has posted eye-catching signs of “shared seats” on its outdoor seats, which means that citizens and tourists can sit and rest without consumption in the shop. The public rest seats with historical features become the brightest embellishments to the roads with the iconic Shanghai style. A creative shop by the street makes the rest seats full of artistic and design sense the “spokesman” of its management concept. Whether in the wide streets and narrow lanes or in the bustling business district of Jing’an Temple Sub-district, the public rest seats, which are built in combination with local culture and for landscaping and artistic beautification, make these places distinctive and add enchanting cityscape.
The reporter learned from Jing’an Temple Sub-district that in addition to adding, rebuilding and improving these seats, the sub-district has also advocated some business buildings and shops to make full use of their outdoor seats, that is, to allow the public to rest on seats during off-peak business hours. Of the newly added sites of public rest seats this year, 61 are shared by businesses.
Moreover, the sub-district encourages surrounding residents to actively participate in the shared leisure seat adoption scheme. For example, residents who live on Yuyuan Road particularly “customized” cushions for each leisure seat along the road, as well as regularly conduct cleaning and washing to maintain the seats in a good condition.
Small seats embody huge care
More and more mature business districts have emerged, the improvement of public leisure seats cannot be completed solely by government sectors. Where should the public leisure seats be located? What convenient functions should the seats have? And how to conduct daily maintenance?
Details like these require more attention. Accordingly, through the regional Party building platform, Jing’an Temple Sub-district invited more than 20 community units and resident representatives, including Shanghai Federation of Literary and Art Circles, Huadong Hospital, Elite Union, Park Place, 1788 Plaza, and Jiuguang Department Store, to carry out brainstorm and widely solicit public opinions based on many aspects, such as the arrangement, location, amount, and design of the leisure seats.
After reaching the consensus that the public leisure seats not only form the space for relaxation, but also are the carriers of urban civilization and urban culture, demonstrating the rich cultural deposits of the sub-district, the public leisure seats are built one after another. Nowadays, these small and charming public leisure seats have played many important roles. They not only set the warm land for residents and tourists, but also form the urban scenery vividly embodying the cultural texture of the sub-district. In particular, they are the firm means of arousing residents’ enthusiasm to closely care for the city and actively take part in urban governance.
Until the report is published, there are 12 celebrities who have donated for the public leisure seats in Jing’an Sub-district and left their words for greeting and blessing on the seats. For example, Lyu Qiming, honorable recipient of the July 1 Medal, sent the words, “Writing for my motherland, for the Party, and for the people, is a lifelong noble vocation and holy mission for me” to encourage himself. Famous conductor Cao Peng left his motto, “Perform good deeds to spread love, abide by morality to behave myself.” Diving Queen of Olympics Wu Mingxia, who has won five gold medals marked her life motto on the public seats to encourage contemporary adolescents to insist on chasing their dreams.
Specially, a group of Uyghur adolescents from Kashgar, Xinjiang left their most brilliant dance in front of the public leisure seats which are inscribed by Huang Doudou, allowing more people to see the aspiration of these young children, “Deliver Chinese style through dancing and build your hometowns as splendid as Shanghai.” These public leisure seats highlight and convey positive energy to provide rest areas for pedestrians and promote the cultural connotation of the sub-district.
It is reported that by December 2021, Shanghai had completed 9,508 spots of public leisure seats for optimization and improvement, of which 5,295 were newly built, 2,840 were renovated and improved, 523 were donated and adopted, and 850 were socially shared.
At the launching ceremony, Greening and City Appearance Administration of Shanghai said that at the next stage, Shanghai will carry on the public leisure seats upgrading scheme through new construction, renovation and improvement, donation and adoption, and social sharing to upgrade more than 5,000 spots of public leisure seats in 2022. Meanwhile, research on the arrangement and management standard system for public leisure seats will be put on agenda to explore and formulate an arrangement and management guideline, and deeply encourage society to participate in seat donation and adoption, taking a further step to enlarge the social influence and achieve the goals of “small seats embodying huge care.”