"For many years, Montreal and Shanghai have nurtured strong, mutually beneficial ties," he said. "The World Expo provides an exceptional opportunity to strengthen those ties -- an opportunity we can't afford to miss."

"China and the city of Shanghai represent spectacular business potential for our companies -- all the more so in 2010, by which time we will very likely have seen signs of economic recovery," Leblanc said.

Montreal is also contributing an exhibit of its 48-hectare parkland called Saint-Michel Environmental Complex. It will be on display in the Urban Best Practices Area near Vancouver's architectural exhibit in the Canadian Pavilion.

Titled "Vancouverism: Architecture Builds the City," the display shows an easy blending of high density office and condo towers with natural features and public amenities such as art galleries and daycare centers.

IMPORTANT MOMENT IN CITY HISTORY

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"Vancouverism" is a word coined by the New York Times to reflect our unique style of urban design, said Trevor Boddy, architecture critic and curator of the exhibit.

The exhibition is a much-expanded, re-focused and re-named version of the exhibition which was on show at Trafalgar Square London last summer and Place d'Invalides in Paris last fall, he said.

The show demonstrates how Vancouver combines "High Density development with High Amenity" -- a superior quality of life that carefully uses natural resources to complement our beautiful natural setting by using land more efficiently.  

The show also demonstrates how the city's architects and engineers are using wood in revolutionary new ways, for instance, as the most sustainable of all building materials demonstrated in Vancouver's Speed Skating Oval for the 2010 Winter Olympics. The Oval is one of the largest and most innovative wooden roofs in the world, and a star of the exhibition.

"Expo 86 was a very important moment in the history of the city. We were just coming out of (an economic) slump, much like now, and it was a good reason to throw a party and show off," Boddy said of the 1986 World Expo in vancouver.

He also talked with great enthusiasm about the friendship between his city and Shanghai, adding that he was a visiting lecturer at both Chinese University and the University of Hong Kong.

Many people in Vancouver are from Shanghai, he said, including his partner on the project Nallie Cheng. Both are also trade cities on the Pacific Rim. Even the architecture of Vancouver's China Town is based on 19th Century Shanghai.

"That's why I think that of all the cities in the world they wanted to come, Vancouver was high on the list," he said.