The cultural approach to industrial heritage reuse: experience from Shanghai, China

The cultural approach has been gradually applied to urban regeneration practices. The existing literature has identified the progressive, creative and entrepreneurial cultural strategy in urban regeneration, and summarised four aspects of characteristics. These approaches form the theoretical framework within which to classify diverse sets of industrial heritage precincts. A scoping study of cases of industrial heritage reuse in Shanghai was undertaken based on this progressive, creative and entrepreneurial cultural framework. The selected cases have common characteristics: inhabiting the former abandoned industrial areas and having been converted to the three cultural uses. The scoping study investigated the commencement time of the transformation, the original factory characteristics, cultural approach, precinct type, tenants, the development process, and the relevant policy. By summarising Shanghai’s experience on industrial heritage reuse, this paper expanded the main characteristics of the progressive, creative and entrepreneurial cultural approaches into seven aspects, namely, architectural type, potential value, goals, main stakeholders, target audience, type of cultural programs and facilities, and cultural activities. The progressive approach aims at providing opportunities for participation in the public social life, widening access to the arts, and utilising high-quality art to revive the sense of community and improve the image of neighbourhoods. Major actors include local governments and the public sectors. Examples include city-operated community art spaces and neighbourhood arts organisations, education facilities, public parks, museums and/or exhibition spaces. Such cases in Shanghai include the Shanghai International Sculpture Space and Shanghai Yangpu Waterfront Park. The creative approach aims at developing sectors of the economy in the cultural and creative industries. The target audience is the creative class. Major actors include government departments of creative industries, private sectors and special agencies that are established by local governments for the management and operation of creative class clusters. Examples cover independent artist’s studios, companies in the cultural and creative industries, and private or public owned art galleries. In Shanghai, Tianzifang, M50, the Bridge No.8 and 1933 Old Millfun are the examples of cultural clusters reused by local successful artists in Shanghai. The entrepreneurial approach seeks to create an attractive business environment by providing high-profile facilities and events, iconic architecture and landscape. The main goals in these kinds of strategies coincide with city government’s broader entrepreneurial agenda, including fostering private developments, generating local tax, boosting consumption, branding the city image as ‘a place to play’, and promoting economic growth in the tourism, cultural and information technology industries. Major actors include city governments and private developers with the dominance of public-private partnerships. The Shanghai 2010 Expo was the most notable example. By summarizing the main characteristics of the cultural approach to industrial heritage reuse in Shanghai, this paper attempts to in enrich existing literature on urban regeneration and heritage conservation, and provide a reference to the industrial land regeneration practice in China.