Hello neighbor! We live just off of East Coast Road not far from Katong i12. We looked at some places a bit closer to the Kembangan MRT but were turned off by the lack of grocery stores and other shops nearby. (I moved to Singapore from Shanghai...so no longer in Shanghai)
Do you speak Chinese? If so, one of the best ways to apartment hunt I found was to walk into some random real estate offices in the neighborhood(s) you're interested in and ask to see some apartments. Typically all of the agents have access to the same lists of apartments and can take you to view. My second year, after a cold winter my first, I insisted on double-paned windows, which raised the price but also the quality of the places I was taken to. There's a Shanghai Expats web site which has a fair amount of info and forum posts on it, including some helpful on (at least it did a few years ago)
Your office would be on line 2, but do you know whether in Puxi or Pudong? (I'm guessing either somewhere in Lujiazui, along Nanjing Road, or maybe out by Zhongshan Park) Both the French Concession and Jing'an are decent to live in, for a runner the French Concession is nicer. Not a lot of parks but a lot of smaller, tree-lined roads to run and bike along, especially earlier in the morning. (One thing I really miss about Shanghai is biking from my apartment to work through the French Concession) If you're working in Lujiazui, you might look at places near Century Park, but that area and most of Pudong in general were too suburban and not-happening for me.
I also find the weather, apart from the smog, to be better than in Singapore for outdoor activities most of the year, but maybe that's because I like cold more than heat and would rather have to work up to a sweat than start sweating immediately after stepping outside...