Xu said in "My Bid for Shanghai World Expo" that in the period of industrial development, people often measure the development and advanced degree of a city by the number and height of skyscrapers, but now more and more countries have put improving people's quality of life in the first place in urbanization. Therefore, the ultimate slogan of the World Expo is "Better City, Better Life".
This theme is chosen because with the urbanization of human society, how to improve the function of the city itself as a carrier and mechanism of human life and how to shape the healthy and harmonious relationship between the city and its countryside and the natural environment is becoming a topic of global concern.