The Xuhui Vanke Center Green Spine Park is a cutting edge and iconic 21st century urban park, serving as an exciting destination and cultural hub for the growing and dynamic Xuhui Center (South Station) district of Shanghai. The park is also a place of nature, recreation and repose – a refuge from the bustle and commotion of the surrounding city. The concepts that have guided the design of the park were inspired by the transportation infrastructure that surrounds and underlays it – the South Railway Station and its adjacent railyards, the subway lines, and the freeway. These are complex systems of linkage that facilitate movement, social and cultural interchange, and help organize the city. The new park, with its flowing pathways and linked gardens and facilities are, in a sense, an allusion to and poetic interpretation of the movement of the adjacent railway lines.