Cultural industries and creative clusters in Shanghai

This paper is based on a 3-year (2008–2011) research project (This project has received funding from Australian Research Council between 2008 and 2011. Project no. LP0991136. The official title of the project is ‘Designing Creative Clusters in Australian and China’. This project works in partnership between Queensland University of Technology, Shanghai Jiaotong University, ARUP and ‘Creative 100’.) on creative clusters in China, documenting and investigating the proliferation of ‘creative clusters’ in three cities – Shanghai, Shenzhen and Qingdao. This paper focuses on one of them – Shanghai – the first to adopt the concept of ‘creative clusters’ in China and which has the largest stock of creative clusters. Most theorizations of ‘creative clusters’ are based on the experience of post-industrial cities in the West. This paper attempts to add to the emergent accounts of creative clusters from experiences in Asian cities. Using the empirical research in Shanghai, this paper will identify where cluster theories fall short in application to a very different social, political and culture context. In a different fashion to the ‘organic’ emergence of neo-bohemian cultures, lifestyles and creative industries zones well known in cities such as New York, London and Berlin, most of the Chinese creative clusters have been developed by real estate developers in partnership with local governments – often directly invested in by these local governments. This paper examines the basis, development process and the meaning of these ‘official’ creative clusters within the wider urban context. In this paper, I will focus on one aspect – the relationship between these creative clusters and their urban forms. I choose three conceptual approaches used to explain such relationships in Western creative clusters. Attempting to operationalize a policy concept borrowed from theWest, Chinese creative clusters assume this can be applied in a different urban and national context. But can they? I discuss three creative clusters: ‘M50’, ‘Tianzifang’ and ‘1933’ in Shanghai, all developed according to western cluster