The relocation of residents to make way for the 2010 World Expo site has begun.

One hundred families, the first of 17,000 households expected to move, left their homes in Pudong on Sunday for temporary housing.

Brand new apartment blocks will be ready for them some time in the next three years.

Around 300 businesses will also have to move to make way for the exposition site.

City leaders and officials from the Shanghai World Expo Bureau saw the families off and gave them gifts including electric fans, flowers and cakes.

"Most of the residents are happy to move," said Huang Jiqin, a resident and an official from Zhoujiadu Neighbourhood, one of the three areas involved in the move.

She said citizens were excited to be moving to better accommodation.

"These are the first of the 3,100 households supposed to move out from the Zhoujiadu, Shanggangxincun and Nanmatou neighbourhoods before May," said Cen Yi, an official from Shanghai Pudong District government.

The government has compensated each of the 3,100 families with at least 20,000 yuan (US$2,418), depending on how many people the household has.

It will also give extremely poor families 1,200 yuan (US$145) each month to pay for temporary lodging.

By the end of the year, 80 percent of the three areas' residents - more than 10,000 households -should have left, said Cen.

The families will first move to temporary homes until their new homes in Sanlin Town, also in Pudong, are ready, according to Cen.

The size of each new home will depend on the number of people and how big the former home was.

"Schools, roads and other facilities will be finished at the same time to make their lives as convenient as possible," said Cen.

The new homes mark the beginning of the city's largest ever real estate development, covering 5.28 square kilometers along the banks of the Huangpu River.

Cen said negotiations to relocate more than 100 firms in Pudong have begun.

In 2007, Shanghai will start to build the World Expo Park.

It will be made up of 80 exhibition halls.

Detailed plans are still being worked on and a business plan on how to attract exhibitors is being drawn up.

At the end of the month, Shanghai will submit its registration report to the Bureau of International Expositions, which includes information about the budget, scale and plans for the 2010 event.

(China Daily April 12, 2005)