Characterizing Shanghai’s creative industries and districts

In this chapter, I primarily focus on characterizing Shanghai’s creative industries and its spatiality. To begin with, the background for the development of creative economy in China will be briefly introduced. It involves the issues of functional transformation of key cities in coastal China and the traditional park-zone economic model in China. Thereafter, an overview of Shanghai’s history, with a particular focus on Shanghai’s urban culture, namely, Haipai culture, as all cosmopolitanism, dating back to the semicolonial period, will be addressed. Shanghai today is then reemerging as a global city in leading development of creative industries and creative spaces in China. Economically, Shanghai applies the creative industry district model as a panacea for the reconstruction of its urban economy and function. Socially, Shanghai’s rapid rise of youth-centered creative workers is regenerating a social structure of the city. Finally, physically, an increasing number of creative clusters in Shanghai reorganize the urban landscape and structure of land use.