Germany's Bremen, for example, demonstrates the practice of transport resource-sharing. Through a rental system, a citizen's private vehicle can be shared by other people, thus reducing the number of cars on the street and the entailed pollution pressure on the environment. The city has also introduced cars that use wind power as an alternative energy source.

Microsoft's "School of the Future" in Philadelphia, U.S.A. is served by a powerful wireless network that provides a paperless education venue for its students.

The brand-new "24-hour Sun newspaper headquarters" of Italy's Milan is installed with window blinds that use sustainable materials and technology; they can open and close automatically and collect energy by methods that adapt to the season.

Rhone-Alps of France has created an energy-saving lighting system by using special building materials to adjust interior temperature and light. And Liverpool of England has worked with corporations and commercial organizations in protecting and utilizing architectural heritage.

Part of the 80 models are operating life-size cases and the remaining take the form of exhibitions. Half of them are from the developed cities of Europe and 10 are from China.

Solutions to Common Urban Problems

"One hundred and fifty years ago, only 6 percent of the world's population lived in cities; today that figure has reached 50 percent. Shanghai 2010 ponders the future of the city both from an historic angle and these sorts of moving targets, and in so doing tries to reach a worldwide consensus on what the future will look like," says Wu Zhiqiang, chief planner of the Shanghai World Expo.

The city, as a form of compact living, marks the maturity and civilization of humankind. But the rapid ballooning of cities willy-nilly has brought about a series of social, cultural and environmental plagues - overpopulation, pollution, damage and loss of cultural heritage, and more acute urban-rural disparity. Can we find solutions to these common problems that cities face today, through the UBPA's showcases?

The "Cycle City" of Odense, the third largest city of Denmark, may shed some light on the answer. Back in the 1970s, when many cities were replacing bicycles with private cars as a means of communication, the Odense municipal government began to build cycle lanes, which expanded into a 550-km network.