A decade ago, as Shanghai’s population approached 18 million and housing prices skyrocketed, the city decided to act. City planners developed an initiative called “One City, Nine Towns”—satellite suburbs would be built on farmland outside Shanghai to house one million people by 2020.
Church Hill is changing. The historical Richmond neighborhood — site of old mansions, cast-iron work on porches, cobbled streets and the church where Patrick Henry made his impassioned cry for liberty or death — deteriorated rapidly in the mid-20th century. “Church Hill was the drug-infested shooting gallery” of Richmond, says John Johnson, president of the Church Hill Association. But in the past few decades, an aggressive historic preservation effort (and tempting tax breaks) have spurred revitalization and development.