Why it looks like this

West of the Huangpu River lies every layer of pre-1990 Shanghai. The oldest is a circle: the Chinese walled city, its ramparts built in 1553 against pirates and demolished in 1912, leaving a perfectly round road (Renmin Lu and Zhonghua Lu) around the old town's lanes.

North and west of the circle, the treaty-port concessions laid their own networks after 1843: the International Settlement's business grid behind the Bund, and the French Concession's plane-tree avenues, whose low-rise lanes and lilong housing remain the city's most loved streets. Puxi is where all those geometries meet.