Billionaire Shui On Land Chairman Vincent Lo, right, and American architect Benjamin Wood, left, pictured in 2006, have teamed up on iconic real estate development development projects in China in the past quarter century including Xintiandi in Shanghai.
Studio Shanghai
American architect Benjamin Wood has made a name for himself in China for his work on a long-shot project that has gone on to become a Shanghai icon. Xintiandi is a rags-to-riches neighborhood for which developer Shui On Land of Hong Kong won awards for rejuvenating old structures and breathing new life into one of Asia’s richest cities. A more recent Shui On Land project with Wood, Panlong Tiandi in a water town on the western outskirts of Shanghai, combines commercial and residential buildings with historical conservation village houses and infrastructure such as bridges and canals; it has won awards and been a hit even with tourists who visit from Shanghai.
The success of Xintiandi and Panlong Tiandi at creating neighborhoods that combine work, life and play point to “incredible opportunities” to change the way people think about urban environments and point to a path forward for Chinese cities grappling with large-scale oversupply of real estate, 77-year-old Wood said in a recent telephone interview.
Rather than separate office districts and residential clusters, city planners should aim to combine living and work areas into more of a “semi-autonomous’ mix of neighborhoods with their own character, said the architect, whose firm Studio Shanghai is currently pursuing new projects in Xi’an and elsewhere based on that approach. MIT-educated Wood is a protégé of legendary Boston architect Benjamin Thompson, famed for his work on the city’s popular Faneuil Hall area in the 1960s.
China could use some bold ideas. China’s property glut has way-laid many real estate developers from the ranks of the world’s billionaires and stuck bond investors with losses. Most notable is China Evergrande Group founder Hui Ka Yan, who topped the 2017 Forbes China Rich List with an estimated fortune worth $42.5 billion but now reportedly is detained under the weight of massive debt.
By contrast, Xintiandi and Panlong developer Shui On Land’s Hong Kong-traded shares, even after losing a third of their value in the past five years, still have a market capitalization of HK$5.6 billion; chairman Vincent Lo is still a billionaire worth $1.5 billion on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list today. Xintiandi attracts thousands of visitors daily and boasts global fashion tenants such as lululemon along with locally owned restaurants; Wood himself holds court there at the “DR” bar whose name harkens back to a chain of Design Research lifestyle stores founded by Thompson from a Harvard Square flagship.
Even as China’s export-supported GDP growth reached 5% in 2025 compared to a year earlier, the average time needed to sell existing home inventory in 100 major cities as of November was 27.4 months – twice a 14-month period regarded as the outer limit in a balanced market, the government-published China Daily reported on Jan. 15, citing Shanghai-based E-House China R&D Institute. In lower-tier markets, the wait for buyers was more than three years, the report said. China isn’t alone in working through excess supply of real estate. New York, for instance, has become an epicenter for conversation of commercial space into residential units after its own glut during Covid. Notable projects include the transformation of the office tower at 25 Water Street into more than 1,000 rental units.
Beyond Xintiandi and Panlong Tiandi, Wood’s other work to combine work and life includes Zhongshan Avenue in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, one of the country’s ancient business hubs. Some 254 hectares were transformed from a dilapidated space into thriving multi-use area where many locals were incentivized to stay and upgrade their shops and homes as part of a public-private partnership, Wood said.
Xintiandi in Shanghai is a popular destination for locals and overseas visitors alike.
RFF
A new government-coordinated project covering 44,055 square meters based on a Wood master plan is now under way in an area near the intersection of the eastern China cities of Suzhou and Shanghai with Zhejiang Province, and takes in a cruise ship terminal hotel, offices and apartments. Another in Shanghai’s Pudong district on Hengmian Old Street currently under development by state-run China Jinmao Holdings combines ancient town character and culture in an environmentally friendly style. The two draw on public-private partnerships with locals that have brought together small neighbors and shops in a manner similar to Wuhan and another Wood high-profile project on Enning Road project in Guangzhou, Wood said. “Neighbor helps neighbor, and better neighborhoods – each with a unique identity — make better cities within cities,” he said.
Besides architecture talent, success requires both creative and realistic thinking among developers, regulators and financiers, Wood said. Regulators in the country would do well to allow faster approvals for relatively small community-level projects to help solve the market oversupplies and try new ideas, the former Air Force pilot noted. Wood also sees a slower rollout of large projects launched in the country in a big wave ahead of the 75th anniversary of the Communist Party in 2024 as a potentially wise thing. “You don’t have to do a whole project and then learn for the next big project. You learn the mistakes you’re making on the first phase. It’s better to open a project over a period of two or three years, and see what the demographics are going to end up being,” he said.
It’s a part of nearly three decades of design and business experience that have made for a continuing American success story amid the ups and downs in China’s real estate industry.