WHEN the first spring breeze thawed Shanghai's earth and rejuvenated its living creatures, in one spot in the city, a once-ubiquitous harbinger of spring had already lost a battle to survive.

Despite its natural resilience in even the harshest environment, it now lies in decay under tons of newly paved concrete, granite or marble walkway slabs, no longer able to herald the change of season as it had faithfully done for decades.

By messenger of spring I'm referring to the grass seedlings that once graced the quaint old alleyways in Jing'an Villa, a 1930s-style residential block less than five minutes' walk from my office building.

In springtime, those verdant sprouts used to grow in seams between black, sometimes moss-covered bricks, enlivening the antiquated complex.

The bricks are now gone for good. In their place lie large, gray cement slabs that stretch for about 250 meters to the other end of the complex on Nanjing Road W.

Renovation on this 77-year-old complex, once home to luminaries such as Tsai Yuan-pei, first chancellor of Peking University, started last July and ended only recently.

In this spruced-up landscape, flowers are carved in relief - but are in no sense aesthetically pleasing - roughly every 20 meters apart, into the lane linking Weihai Road and Nanjing Road W. The drab, impervious cement ensures that grass or moss will never grow and spoil the smooth surface of the pavement.

Not only was grass purged from the old site. Other objects reminiscent of a not-too-distant past were defaced or obliterated as well.

What passes for renovation and sprucing up old facades is actually a kind of urban "vandalism," according to some observers.

Construction workers have chiseled off many original weathered brick surfaces - no effort was made to clean or "point up" the bricks - and replaced them with large brick-colored molded slabs with indentations for the "mortar."

Workers then painted in the gray mortar. Occasionally real new bricks, but very shallow, are used. Many of these new facades are so brittle that thin bricks can be easily kicked off and facades can be seen to be peeling away. Nor do these new "reinforced" walls offer any aesthetic benefits, comfort or insulation.

All this mess was never mentioned in an April 14 story in a major local newspaper exulting that Jing'an Villa has been "spruced up in the same style it was once in."

If only this were the case.

True, the relic may initially look more inviting after the face-lift, with its new "amenities" such as the pavement. (Oops! But aren't they intended more for cars than for pedestrians?)

These new features, along with the tranquil ambience, may be attractive to some young artists who have recently opened small galleries here. But not all of them welcome the changes.

On a recent visit to Ru-Wa Studio, where customers are taught to make Chinese folk toys, I tried to gauge the attitude of Li Jing, its proprietor, toward the new surroundings.

"The place may look neat now, but I miss those tiny grass sprouts and the old feel of the neighborhood, where things were in their original form, not arranged as they are now," she said.

Visitors to downtown shopping precinct Xintiandi will probably be amazed at the grass growing between paving stones. If even a purely commercial institution favors intimacy with nature, why should a traditional neighborhood like Jing'an Villa go to great lengths to end this intimacy?

With the purchase of concrete slabs and other "amenities" comes the inevitable question of what is the price for this massive - and costly - beautification?

The answer, it appears, is manifold. We do not know how much taxpayers' money went into this project. Yet apart from the expense and the charade of restoring the heritage structure's historic glamour, the most obvious price is exacted on people's health.

Barely two weeks ago, access to Jing'an Villa on Weihai Road was still obstructed by trucks unloading sacks of cement and sand, which turned the place into the eye of a minor sandstorm sending passersby scurrying past with their mouths and noses covered. No one stopped, let alone lingered, to appreciate the relic's art deco facade or its interior.

Another barely noticed impact may be ecological. One of the many benefits of paving stones set in the earth is that rainwater can seep through, watering plants and trees and replenishing the underground aquifer. With concrete and granite, however, the water runs off into the drainage system.

"In addition to increasing the capacity of the underground aquifer, trapping rainwater and filtering harmful airborne particles, permeable pavements can reduce urban run-off," Professor Dai Xingyi, director of Urban Environment Management Research Center at Fudan University, told Shanghai Daily on Tuesday.

Research cited by a Shenzhen Business News report on March 24 found that permeable pavement is five times as capable of absorbing heat as marble and 100 times as capable of storing rainwater as impermeable materials.

In searing summer heat, especially in a metropolis like Shanghai, having as many permeable sidewalks as possible can help cool the city, said Dai.

Alas, this simple wisdom doesn't seem to make sense to some urban designers, at least economically, when their urbanization mindset is all about tearing apart good roads, repaving them, and ripping them apart again.

This unending cycle of mischief is justified with an unassailable argument: boosting GDP growth. Even a heritage structure like Jing'an Villa hasn't been spared in the quest for GDP. Fortunately, a national reflection on obsession with GDP appears to be gathering momentum.

Insofar as building an environmentally friendly society is all about cutting back on meaningless waste, the low-carbon sloganeering that has percolated into every aspect of our life has yet to percolate through the cold, sprawling concrete that's snuffing out signs of spring.