The creative spatio-temporal fix: Creative and cultural industries development in Shanghai, China

摘要

As the idea of creative city becoming a universal panacea for economic stagnancy and urban boosterism, the heavy dependency on creative fixes has widely spread to cities around the globe through urban networks and neoliberal urban policies. Since the late 1990s, Shanghai has expeditiously embraced the idea of making creative city and enthusiastically promoted the development of creative and cultural industries (CCIs). This research proposes the idea of 'the creative spatio-temporal fix' to interpret Shanghai's CCIs development over the last decade: under an overarching framework of creative entrepreneurial governance, the creative reconfiguration of the built environment (spatial fix) and temporal deferral of crisis and long term speculation on land (re)development (temporal fix) are in place to cope with the crisis of capital accumulation. Two rounds of creative spatio-temporal fix are discerned and epitomised in the case of Red Town, an iconic CCIs zone in Shanghai. Drawing on policy analysis and in-depth fieldworks, this study scrutinises into the creativity of the spatio-temporal fix and the spatiality and temporality of the creative fix in Shanghai. The findings are threefold. First, CCIs development is underwritten by a multi-scalar entrepreneurial network and its alliance with SOEs landlords and private developers. Second, the creativity of the spatio-temporal fix can be seen in the creative institutional design enabling CCIs development and forming an alliance with the SOE landlords, as well as the strategic speculation on the theme of creative city. Third, the spatiality and temporality of the creative fix are manifested in the temporal deferral of the crisis of deindustrialisation and limited spatial reconfiguration at the first stage, and a radical spatial restructuring with a temporal fix introducing financial capital at the second stage.