As many as 2.5 million Shanghai households of residents have benefited from an old district rebuilding project since 1990, according to reports released by the information office of the Shanghai municipal government.  

A large number of people moved to bright and clean apartments after massive urban construction, said Cai Yutian, director of a Shanghai real estate bureau at a press conference Friday, adding that the living area per person increased significantly from 6.6 square meters in 1990 to 13.1 square meters in 2002.

The project has helped 800,000 families to leave old communities which were usually full of shanties and pigeon-cage like attics and were unsanitary or without gas supply.

Statistics indicate that by the end of the 1980s, there were one million traditional non-plumbed toilets and 800,000 coal stoves left to Shanghai urbanites by history. The rebuilding project became a necessary measure to solve housing shortages and improve living standards.

During the 1990 to 2002 period, as much as 38 million square meters of old houses and apartments were removed.

(Xinhua News Agency August 9, 2003)