Abstract
With economic restructuring many cities in China have entered post-industrial era, particularly in metropolitan cities such as Shanghai. Various informal uses have been observed on the former industrial land. One of the most liveable urban form is so-called “creative industrial park”, which is typical mixed use of culture, commerce and office. This type of bottom-up reuse of land breeds attractive urban space. However, not all creative parks are embodied with character of mixed use. Although some industrial sites have changed their name to creative parks, but they are dominated with monopoly function of office and closed for visitors. Meanwhile, despite its high attractivity such type of informal development is not integrated into the formal urban development plan by the government. Its formal land use is still industry. Sooner or later they will be replaced by mainstream development projects, mostly for commodity housing, commerce or office purposes. Several cases have been found that they are demolished and redeveloped for high-rise buildings bases on formal land use plan. The paper will examine the dynamic transformation of creative parks in Shanghai to understand top-down policies towards them by answering the following questions. How much percentage of creative parks is typical mixed use? Compared with other creative parks without mixed use, how the space has been shaped and used differently. Further, what is the mechanism behind those parks with different level of mixed use? The paper is based on empirical study of project investigation in Shanghai.
