Shifting meanings in changing contexts: the role of the creative city in Shanghai,Hong Kong and Taipei

Abstract

This paper probes the underlying motives behind the adoption of the ‘creative city’ policies in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taipei. It argues that while the global appeal of the creative city is commonly attributed to urban entrepreneurialism, this reason alone is insufficient in explaining the so-called ‘cultural turn’ in these three cities, because none of them ascribe to the conventional format of the post-industrial ‘entrepreneurial’ city. In order to identify other major forces driving the adoption of creative city initiatives in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taipei, this work delves into the ways in which the idea of the creative city is reworked within the context of global city making. The study found that in addition to urban entrepreneurialism, the inherited cultural policy agenda, which largely stems from national interests, also plays a significant role in directing (and changing) the ‘global cultural city’ making process. By looking into different roles attached to the ‘imported’ policy discourse of the creative city in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taipei, this study not only contributes to the understanding of urban cultural policies within the Chinese-speaking world and East Asia more generally, but also lends some insights to the developing field of cultural policy mobility.     

郑州商城宫殿区商代板瓦发掘简报

1986年以来在郑州商城宫殿区三个地点的考古发掘中曾多次发现弧形板状陶器残片,本文对此进行了报道,认为这类遗物极有可能就是早期的建筑材料——板瓦。不仅从层位上推定了板瓦的确切年代,从制作工艺上也进行了相对准确的定位,同时对板瓦的用途也做了大胆推测。这些板瓦从出土位置和形制看,与两周时期发现的板瓦有许多相似之处,但也有较原始的特点。     

东晋士族世袭领州制初探

东晋时期,在士族势力高度发展和东吴世袭领郡制的基础上,两者结合形成了士族世袭领州制。士族之间凭门户势力的较量,分别相应地统领不同的州,虽随条件变化作出进退,但都围绕着一州的统领权作为轴心来运转。其实质是士族把持政治,按门户档次分配地域权益,并希望世代保持下去。     

Othering,governing, and resistance of abject urban animals: Egyptian geese and their right to the city

In this paper, we examine the controversy over the use of urban green spaces and water bodies by Egyptian geese in the German city of Frankfurt am Main as an example of more-than-human political conflicts over the right to an environmentally just city. Specifically, we analyze the media discourse and interviews that we conducted as multispecies go-alongs to identify how othering in media and policy constitutes Egyptian geese legally and discursively as “alien, invasive, and aggressive” as well as “disgusting, polluting, and health-threatening.” This othering constructs Egyptian geese as abject animals and justifies their governing through “geese management” technologies, ranging from monitoring to atmospheric engineering and to killing the birds. While the management objective is to displace the Egyptian geese from urban spaces dedicated for human recreation, these spaces also turn out to be places of animal resistance.     

主观感知的城市环境对居民健康的影响研究——基于全国60个县市的大样本调查

在“健康中国”战略推进和健康城市建设背景下，关注城市建成环境对公共健康影响的研究日益增加。目前相关研究主要纳入了客观测量的城市环境变量，而主观感知的城市环境变量能够体现出客观测量的城市环境变量难以捕捉的健康影响效应，具体作用有待深入探究。本研究建立了个体、社区和城市三个层面的分析框架，基于中国社会科学院社会发展战略研究院于2016年开展的“社会态度与社会发展状况”全国大样本问卷调研数据，探究主观感知的城市物质环境和服务环境对居民自评健康的影响作用并识别显著影响要素。研究发现：感知的城市环境对居民自评健康具有显著影响，其中居民对城市绿化、基础设施状况、住房保障和医疗服务的感知是影响自评健康较为主要的环境感知因素。最后本研究基于定量分析结果讨论对健康城市评价和研究的启示，推动健康城市的发展。     

河谷型城市居民生活空间质量特征及社会效应——以兰州市为例

城市居民高品质生活建设是推进新型城镇化、提升城市功能品质的有效途径。以兰州市为例，借助步行指数从安全性、健康性、便利性、舒适性和社会性五个维度构建城市生活空间质量指标体系，对兰州市河谷地区1221个居住小区生活空间质量及其产生的社会效应展开分析。结果表明：①兰州市城市综合生活空间质量整体偏低，呈“一主两次”的多核组团式空间结构，且具有“东高西低”的不均衡特征。②舒适性空间呈“高值—分散、低值—集中”；便利性空间呈多中心向外递减的趋势；健康性空间呈“中间高，两头低，高值偏东”格局；安全性空间呈河谷中心向外递减的趋势；社会性空间呈河谷中心高度集聚、边缘低值集中连片分布。③生活空间质量以中等质量生活空间、较低生活质量空间、低质量生活空间为主，较高生活质量次之，高质量生活空间最少。④兰州市生活空间质量分异产生了居民住房不平等与居住分异、资源配置失衡与空间剥夺、社会信任危机与社会隔离，以及居住区有机更新和空间重构等社会效应。     

Learning to belong? ‘Culture’ and ‘place making’ among children and young people in Hull,UK City of Culture 2017

ABSTRACT

Despite the rise of ‘child-friendly cities’ internationally, and a growing interest in youth engagement in urban planning, the role of children and young people in culture-led regeneration and ‘place making’ schemes, remains under-researched. Notwithstanding the wealth of research into childhood and youth cultures, little is known about the ways in which the abstract (and perhaps predominantly ‘adult’) notions of ‘culture’ and ‘place’ are negotiated by younger citizens. Drawing on participative research with schools across Hull, the UK City of Culture 2017, this contribution explores children’s and young people’s understandings of culture and place within this cultural regeneration event. Although our findings suggest that the City of Culture designation has brought benefits to children and young people in a marginalised city, there is still much to be learned from their often personal and informal interpretations of ‘place’ and ‘culture’, as well as the role played by schools in this context.     

Visions of the North-West

Like so many European cities that developed city planning to handle urbanization and industrialization in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the municipality of Copenhagen (Denmark) discussed, planned, and erected new neighbourhoods for the growing working-class population on the city outskirts. In doing so, the politicians and professionals expressed different visions of the working class and its territories, thus creating a symbolic space of representations alongside the physical spaces of the actual neighbourhoods. Taking the north-west neighbourhood of Copenhagen as a case, I investigate the socio-historical construction of this neighbourhood from the early 1900s to 1950. Drawing on a selection of state policies and municipal plans and debates, as well as on public debates among the professionals who took part in building the new neighbourhood, I analyse the symbolic struggles involved in the construction of the neighbourhood and the population that was meant to live there.     

Governing Post Apartheid Spatiality: Implementing City Improvement Districts in Cape Town

Abstract: To achieve a world‐class city capable of attracting business in a competitive global market, the municipal government of Cape Town, South Africa, like many cities of the global North, has adopted a model of urban revitalization popularized by New York City: business or city improvement districts (BIDs or CIDs). By examining CIDs in city center Cape Town, the paper casts light on the socio‐spatial relationship facilitating the neoliberal post‐apartheid regime and its governance. Analyzing discursive and spatial practices of Cape Town Partnership, the managing body of downtown CIDs, from 2000 to 2006, the paper reveals its difficulties in stabilizing the socio‐spatial relations of a transnationalizing urban revitalization strategy and rejects the view of CIDS as simply a global roll‐out of neoliberal urban policies. It highlights how CIDs are challenged from both within and outside of their managing structures by contentious local issues, and in particular by vast social inequalities and citizens' historical struggle for inclusive citizenship and the right to the city. Whether and how CIDs' inherent limitations can be overcome to address socio‐spatial inequalities is an open question.     

How ‘creative’ is remembering? Culture-led regeneration and the politics of memory in Bogota,Colombia

ABSTRACT

Recently, Colombia’s post-conflict transition has experienced strong international attention. In Bogota, commemorative politics of the conflict insert themselves in complex processes of place branding: employing culture to rescale the city image from unsafe and violent to culturally vibrant. However, how to reckon with the country’s violent past in the culture-led renaissance of Bogota? Based on the author’s four-month of in-depth qualitative fieldwork on the main street Avenida 26 – at the center of both branding strategies and politics of memory – this paper shows the failure of institutional efforts to promote a brand of Bogota as a ‘City of Memory’. Socio-political divisions over the interpretations of the country’s past result in multi-scalar conflictive negotiations between politics and practices on the street: they reveal the tight link between memory, social justice, and urban segregation while denouncing the exclusionary visions of citizenship bared in political efforts to display memory as a territorial mark.