The drunkard’s intention lies not on the wine: Reinterpreting culture-led urban redevelopment in China amidst profound regime changes

Abstract

This research engages with ongoing debates over the global proliferation of culture-led urban redevelopments through a study that examines the pattern and process of culture-led redevelopment in China amidst profound regulatory changes. A systematic statistical analysis has found that the extent of culture-led redevelopment has little to do with the degree of marketisation, level of economic growth or concentration of creative human capital but is closely related to the pressure of central regulatory control over local urban land expansion. Municipalities with less quota for newly added urban land are found to be more proactive to leverage on the rhetoric of developing a cultural 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 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. 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. 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 and regime changes in the state-economy-politics arena as an important lens to understand the sophisticated dynamics and diverse trajectories of urban transformations in China and beyond.