1153 | 694 | The drunkard’s intention lies not on the wine: Reinterpreting culture-led urban redevelopment in China amidst profound regime changes | Ronghao JIANG; George C.S. Lin
Competing interpretations of the global proliferation of culture-led urban redevelopments have been made by some who pinpoint the economic and social value of cultural resources in the cities and others who see culture presence as catalyst for facilitating land revalorization. Attention is drawn primarily to the presumed relationship between the promotion of cultural activities and urban change. A systematic analysis of the data for the China’s 324 municipalities has identified an intriguing pattern contrary to normal expectation. The extent of culture-led urban redevelopment has little to do with land commodification, market openness, level of urban economic growth, or concentration of creative human capital but is closely related to the pressure of central regulatory control over local urban expansion. Municipal governments with less quota for newly added urban land are found to be more motivated to leverage on the rhetoric of developing a culture economy through the regeneration of old industrial land in the name of culture-led redevelopment for the hidden agenda of lucrative commercial developments. The extent of culture-led urban redevelopment tends to be higher in the cities where greater local administrative supports are made available for culture-led redevelopment projects to circumvent central regulations on the redevelopment of administratively allocated industrial land. Our study of the city of Guangzhou at a finer scale has shown that the bulk of culture-led redevelopment projects are masked superficially in the name of culture to serve the real interest in profitable commercial activities. These research findings challenge the popular perception of culture-led urban redevelopment as a reasonable and legitimate strategy of place making/promotion and bring to the fore regulatory changes in the state-economy-politics arena as an important source of insights into the sophisticated dynamics of urban transformation not just in China but beyond China as well.
Ronghao JIANG; George C.S. Lin
Department of Geography, The University of Hong Kong
ID Abstract: 694