Urban And Cultural Economy: When Culture Penetrates The Bone Marrow Of The City

Ren Ming / Wen

Cultural economy is a hot topic at present. Urban and cultural economic issues have attracted more and more attention from academia and the government, because "culture" has increasingly become the main driving force for our surrounding environment, urban construction and industrial development. Culture is everywhere.

As noted by Thomas A. Hutton, a professor of urban and cultural economy and professor of urban studies and planning at University of British Columbia, Canada, "the mixed space of cultural production, cultural consumption and cultural activities symbolizes the rise of cultural regions (or regions), which seem to be everywhere nowadays, representing the general characteristics of urban development in the twenty-first Century". "Cultural planning is becoming more and more important in the areas and systems of local and regional policies, and has now penetrated into all major areas of metropolitan planning." American sociologist Daniel Bell pointed out two reasons why culture has become the most important factor in human society more than 40 years ago. First, culture has surpassed technology and become the most dynamic factor in human civilization; second, culture has made social economic transformation reasonable, because "change and new ideas have become more noticeable than actual changes". Admit it, we have already lived in a world more important than "facts", and our ideas are not unified.

With the development of the means of communication and the transformation of urban economy, human beings are more and more immersed in the ubiquitous influence of "culture". Professor Hutton's book "urban and cultural economy", translated into Chinese, has 34 words, which has made a valuable panoramic scan of the important topics and latest research results in the urban cultural and economic field, emphasizing the new investigation of some theories which are generally accepted by their novelty, such as the "creative class" theory of Florida, which is generally willing to follow the example of governments and developers at all levels. Some scholars have put forward the theory of "urban cognitive culture economy" and "urban creative capital", and think that the factors such as capital, labor market and agglomeration are more important to the development of creative industries, and more in line with the reality of cultural and economic development. These views deserve our attention.

Because the "cultural economy" is becoming more and more popular around the world, Hutton intends to criticize the relevant concepts and practices in this book, and debate the urban research discourse in developed and "transitional society". He believes that "it is necessary to conduct a rigorous assessment of the scale and growth of the creative economy (often exaggerated for publicity purposes), specifically describing the local regional development trend formed by occasional factors (but this trend is often summed up to generalise various phenomena) and accounting for the social benefits and costs of cultural industry projects (supporters of creative agenda often underestimate costs)." With the advent of the post industrial era, the cultural economy has been attached to all the economic fields of human society. People expect symbol value for all kinds of products and services. Under the background of the deep penetration of this "cultural economy", Hutton put forward the reappearance of urban geography in the contemporary era with "industrial area discourse", and re examined the essence of contemporary social changes through the construction of "urban industrial ethnography".

Taking the "Humanities and Social Sciences and urban planning management research" as the primary readers, this book covers a wide range of topics. The chapter discusses the trend of cultural and economic globalization, the political economy of culture and governance and agency issues, the living mode and housing problems of creative cities, the key space and theoretical Research of urban cultural production, the case studies of cultural industries in key cities of the world, cultural policies and project evaluation. Britain and London, the first to embark on the development path of the "creative industry", pointed out its rather cold social development background: in the era of Mrs. Thatcher's ruling (1979-1990), Britain began to implement post industrialism and Neo liberalism economic policies, belittling the social value of traditional manufacturing and production labor, resulting in the reduction of investment in urban industrial areas and the loss of labor force. While expanding the territory in this new economic field, the gap between the rich and the poor in the UK and the difference in regional development are widening. The latest issue of "off Europe" is undoubtedly a continuation and appearance of this crisis. Though concise and brief, Hutton's elaboration of this transformation process reflects the class position and Historicism attitude in my view: the divestment of the manufacturing industry has made the artists and middle class gentry occupy the industrial and working class communities again: it indicates the arrival of the new liberalism and disorder in the cities in the twenty-first Century.

In a true cultural attitude, Hutton pointed out that every economic system is essentially a "cultural economy", because every major stage of economic reform and structural adjustment is based on a certain cultural value, practice and traditional system. From this perspective, today's urban space construction, management and use, neighborhood and community cultural development, street economy and tax administration have many questionable and scrutiny places. The book quotes the western scholars' research, pointing out that there is a trend of "fast policy" in the field of urban construction and universal policy imitation in the international scope. "In many cases, the regional government agencies will help the development of a clearly successful cultural enterprise. No matter what circumstances the enterprise was in, it usually used" advanced driving backward "as a pretext, but rarely considered the actual situation and needs of the region. What they want more is to foster the development of local artists, industries and companies. "This method is not so attractive, but it is more progressive in terms of social significance".

Equally important is the globalization and localization of the cultural industry. "How do we view the transition from a localized product network to an increasingly globalized production system in the new cultural economy?" "The cultural economy is basically composed of local enterprises, and the companies and their associated systems are located in the specific areas of the city, and develop into a gradually globalized production network (an important feature of the cities and economies in the process of Globalization). What does this change enable us to find?" At the beginning and the end of the book, Hutton asked such questions, which reminded me of what kind of culture we are facing and what we are building in a world where culture is increasingly showing its significance and value.

As an academic review book, the book is a little bit of a reference to some viewpoints and research, but it certainly provides many sparks of thinking.