I saw the doco and have read on an architecture forum that not much has changed with vacant investments in the residential areas at least.
The weirdest thing is the church - a copy of an English one. They have weddings in front of it but not in it, and they use it to celebrate Christmas, but not as a religious festival.
from:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=6608596
Shanghai's city planners are carrying out an ambitious scheme to relieve population pressure: They are resettling 500,000 people in nine new towns in the suburbs. Each is built in a distinctive style, including an Italian town with canals based on Venice and a German town designed by Albert Speer, the son of Hitler's favorite architect.
Thames Town is one of these new settlements. It features cobbled streets, half-timbered Tudor houses, Edwardian townhouses, and a covered market with a clock tower and weather vane on top. Thames Town looks like an English country town. And that was the whole idea, to re-create Middle England in the Middle Kingdom.
Paul Rice, of the British company Atkins, was the lead architect for Thames Town. He says the developers of the community wanted a complete, functioning English town, with its own schools, shops, and residential and recreational areas.