Cosmopolitan spaces, transnational networks: creative incubation in city-center Shanghai

Abstract

Shanghai’s economic liberalization, accelerated since the beginning of the 1990s, is followed by a fast-learning re-globalization process. This is evidenced by the evolving system for spatial production in the city center neighborhoods, where creative incubation and heritage recognition as global aspirations are often dictated by top-down efforts. Although the quickly learning state has usurped pioneer examples set by bottom-up creative entrepreneurial efforts and institutionalized the processes into business plans for creative industry incubation by the mid-2000s , the self-organized efforts nevertheless continue to innovate through the cosmopolitan agents who bring the latest know-how from transnational linkages. The cosmopolitan small entrepreneurs not only resist and evade institutional appropriation, but also continue to develop mechanisms for heritage protection and creative innovation.