Themed business parks lead high-quality development

Editor's note:

Shanghai, a well-established destination for investment from home and abroad, is confident to ride the waves of a rising city to attract more quality investment with better policies and services.

Shanghai is accelerating the development of various industries with high growth potential via the introduction of a new batch of "themed" business parks.

The city is staying focused on optimising the ecology for selected industries as it moves toward its goal of high-quality development, government officials and industry experts told an industry event on Friday.

"A total of 13 new specialized parks have been recently introduced across the city, which mainly focus on areas including digital economy, green and low-carbon, intelligent terminal and metaverse," said Ding Xingyi, deputy head of the business park division of the Shanghai Commission of Economy and Informatization.

He was speaking at an event held jointly by the Shanghai Investment Promotion Service Center and global property services provider JLL, which has been recently named one of the 10 Shanghai Global Investment Partners.

"Covering a combined area of 40 square kilometers among which nearly 6 square kilometers is designated for industrial purpose, total gross floor area of properties at the 13 parks stands at about 7 million square meters," Ding said.

With the latest addition, the number of specialized parks in Shanghai now grows to 53, covering a total site area of 200 square kilometers with land plots designated for industrial use spanning 40 square kilometers. Total GFA of properties at the parks also rises to 29 million square meters.

In 2021, overall industrial output registered at the city's 40 specialized parks, launched in two batches in 2020 and 2021, was close to 800 billion yuan (US$118.4 billion) and business revenues exceeded 1.84 trillion yuan, according to government data released earlier.

For the past second quarter, the latest resurgence of the COVID-19 outbreak left a generally negative impact on various real estate sectors across the city with office, retail, residential and logistics all feeling a major blow.

However, the local business park market registered rather resilient demand with overall net absorption reaching 60,000 square meters and total transaction volumes seeing steady growth, according to the latest quarterly report released earlier by JLL.