Asian cities capitalising on culture

But while the aims of providing cultural experiences to the citizenry, burnishing city and national reputations, and providing performance and exhibition spaces to local artists are still apparent, a new economic logic has come to the fore. Arts and culture are increasingly seen as key factors in urban and national economic competitiveness: promoting economic growth and regeneration, cultivating the in-flow of tourists, creating environments supposedly attractive to a transnationally mobile and cosmopolitan professional labour-force, and nurturing creativity and entrepreneurialism within the resident citizenry. As far as cities and states are concerned – perhaps above all in contemporary Asia – the arts are now big business.

This book, authored by scholars from Taiwan (Ching and Chou) and Singapore (Kong), takes as its subject matter the processes of urban transformation that have followed in the wake of the attempt by Asian cities and states to harness the economic potential of the arts. The volume is divided into two sections and bookended by broader discussions both of the theoretical literature on arts spaces and global cultural cities and of the lessons that might be drawn from specific Asian contexts for studies of urban governance, city transformation and the global city project. The bulk of the book, however, consists of detailed studies of particular cities’ arts projects, supported by fieldwork interviews conducted with arts practitioners, government officials, scholars and creative-industry managers.

The first section concerns itself with a number of contemporary arts mega-projects: Beijing’s enormous ovoid National Grand Theatre, Shanghai’s arc-roofed Grand Theatre and its orchid-shaped Oriental Art Centre, as well as Singapore’s Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay (said to resemble a durian due to its distinctive sun-shades). The authors also explore several instances where cities have struggled to bring large arts projects to fruition, tracing the failures of the central government to realise the Taipei New Grand Theatre as well as the controversies and protracted delays surrounding Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District project. The authors trace how each of these projects have emerged as a manifestation of cities’ desires to position themselves at the peak of a hierarchy of global cites (Beaverstock, Smith, and Taylor 1999, Taylor 2000) and how they function to signal to both domestic and international audiences a series of messages about national and urban cultural sophistication, economic competitiveness and “global fluency” (Wang 2013). At the same time, the authors explore how the outward-looking, cosmopolitan and high-cost nature of these projects can mean that they often exist at some remove from the citizenry of the cities they purportedly serve. High ticket prices, the steep costs associated with staging events at new world-class venues and relatively small local arts-going audiences can mean that these high-profile spaces remain largely the preserve of a cosmopolitan, transnational and globally-mobile elite of both performers and audience-members.

The volume’s second section turns its attention to instances where urban authorities have sought to encourage the emergence of arts clusters through the re-use of existing building stock. Focusing on the same cities as in the first section, the authors explore how former factories, industrial estates, breweries, slaughterhouses, convents and schools have been repurposed as creative hubs, housing artists, cafes, design studios and associated retail outlets. In many instances, this has been accomplished through policy interventions such as rezoning, rental subsidies and promotion of the resulting neighbourhoods and their creative qualities. While in some ways the availability of cheap(er) working environments in which artists are able to pursue their creativity allows for a more organic relationship of local artists to space than is the case with the mega-projects studied in the first section, the authors are clear that state and urban authorities still retain significant control over these new arts hubs (not least in their frequent role as landlord). Indeed, one of the arts clusters explored in this section – Singapore’s Old School creative hub – was closed following five successful years of operation when its site was sold to property developers by the government. The policy-driven repurposing of urban space to create creative clusters (studied in developments such as 50 Moganshan Road (M50) and Tianzifang in Shanghai as well as Taipei’s Huashan 1914 Creative Park, Chienkuo Beer Factory and Songshan Cultural and Creative Park) often prioritises the demands of private sector involvement. Local citizenries can value consumption opportunities in the form of retail stores, exhibition spaces, recreational facilities and food and beverage outlets over the hubs’ goals of nurturing artistic endeavour. Such outcomes, the authors suggest, potentially run counter to artists’ creative aspirations and desires, even while underwriting many of the costs of running the spaces they occupy. Several studies in this section also point to the fact that simple colocation of artists within a repurposed space or neighbourhood may not necessarily lead to artistic cooperation or synergistic outcomes.

The processes identified here are proceeding apace across many parts of Asia. For this reason, it is a little disappointing that the majority of the fieldwork amassed here was conducted between 2007 and 2010; those seeking a more up-to-date account may find themselves frustrated. While the case-study chapters are comprehensive, the two framing chapters could also have been given more attention. The theoretical frameworks regarding the global city hierarchy, the contribution of creative industries (and “creativity” more generally) to economic growth, and the reasons behind the emergence of cultural clusters within the city are presented in a relatively uncritical fashion. The very different political and economic realities, censorship regimes and cultural milieux in which the arts operate in Asian cities (in comparison with the Western environments from which much of the theory introduced here was developed) gives pause and was deserving of greater critical attention. Similarly, the “Asia” explored in this volume appears to be remarkably rich and predominantly Chinese. The case studies are drawn from the cities of Taipei, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. There was scope here – especially in the concluding comments – to explore how the “global cultural city” narrative is being consumed and replicated in other parts of Asia. How might these processes of urban transformation proceed similarly – or differently – in (say) Malay, Thai, Indian or Cambodian contexts? Might there be a shift in the actors involved, given different postcolonial national, political, cultural and urban settings? Just how persuasive is the “global cultural city” developmental model as either a route to cultural efflorescence or economic vibrancy? The reader is left with a range of provocative – but largely unanswered - questions.

That said, there is no doubt that this is a highly valuable volume. It draws our attention to one of the major drivers of urban transformation taking place in the contemporary Asian city-space. It signposts the tensions between top-down policy implementation of “creativity agendas” and the aspirations of artists and citizens to define, create and consume arts in spontaneous and locally-relevant ways. It also indicates the ways in which the provision of arts infrastructure needs to engage the interest and support of local citizens and be accessible and affordable to them. In tracing some of the ways in which Asian cities have struggled to deliver on large scale creative infrastructure projects – due to issues of cost, public-private partnership disagreements, bureaucratic delay or even lack of popular support – the volume also suggests something of the richness and complexity of the processes that underpin the perpetual (re)making of the Asian urban environment. It deserves to be widely read by political scientists, political economists, urban planners, cultural geographers, arts and cultural policy-makers and all those interested in the contemporary Asian city and its futures. 

Simon Obendorf, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Lincoln (sobendorf@lincoln.ac.uk) 

Citation: Obendorf, S. 2016. Review of Kong, L., Chia-ho Ching & Tsu-Lung Chou. 2015. Arts, Culture and the Making of Global Cities: Creating New Urban Landscapes in Asia. Posted on New Asia Books on 23 Feb 2016; newbooks.asia/review/asian-cities-capitalising-culture

References

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