Taking Beijing’s Songzhuang Art District as an example, this paper conducts an integrated evolutionary and multi-scalar governance analytical framework through participant’s observations, in-depth qualitative interviews, and extensive evaluations of policy documents. It aims to explore the transformation modes of art districts under the intervention of multi-scalar spatial governance and the roles of local governments in the course of development. The research places the spatial development into a wider theoretical context of local developmental state, local state corporatism, and entrepreneurial state, as well as to combine the socio-political objectives together with economic goals of the local government. The study argues that Songzhuang has witnessed a unique form of artistic urbanism, a process of rapid urbanization of villages in the art-led development. Local governments have competed for taking control of spatial governance through actions characterized by decentralization, alliance, and entrepreneurship, following the logic of performing an overall control over the socio-political, economic, and cultural aspects of art districts, and profiting from land market.
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