UBPA structures could stay

• Source: Global Times
• [09:30 May 17 2010]
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By Zhou Ping

Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng said at a meeting with the mayor of Montreal that the Urban Best Practices Area (UBPA) pavilions are going to become permanent sights in the city after the 184-day event comes to a close, but the pavilions are still waiting for a formal notice of who can stay and who must go.

"We've heard that pavilions in the UBPA may be permanent but we haven't been informed officially whether our pavilion is going to be kept," Tao Liang, a staffer at the media department of the Vancouver Pavilion told the Global Times. "We hope our pavilion can stay."

Mayor Han said at a meeting with Gérald Tremblay, mayor of Montreal, on May 12 that the UBPA will be kept because this area is the first of its kind at a World Expo.

Huang Gan, curator of the Taipei Pavilion said that the Taipei Pavilion is going to be kept but how it will be used has not yet been revealed, according to the Singapore-based Lianhe Zaobao newspaper.

"We haven't received any formal notice about the future of the pavilions in the UBPA," an official with the Shanghai World Expo Coordination Bureau, who did not disclose his name, told the Global Times Sunday. "I think those pavilions will be kept as models of urban construction, but whether they will be kept entirely won't be revealed until the end of the Expo."

"The news might reduce visitor flow as some people put off their visits to these pavilions untill after the Expo," said Zhaoyang Qiaoxian, head of the pavilion representing three cities from Switzerland.