Culture, creativity and commerce: trajectories and tensions in the case of Beijing's 798 Art Zone

摘要

The use of cultural and creative clusters to achieve a range of regeneration outcomes is now common practice in cities world-wide. However, clear evidence is lacking on the potential sustainable benefits of such approaches, particularly where they would appear to be based on planning for the primacy of short-term economic aims often linked primarily to consumption-based uses. The case of Beijing's 798 Art Zone is illustrative of a creative cluster which has achieved major outcomes in terms of city branding and tourism, but which has also suffered from the dilution of creative production activity and related effects of gentrification. This provides lessons for other cultural clusters in China and beyond.