Artists and Shanghai's culture-led urban regeneration

JCIT-01519; No of Pages 7 Cities xxx (2015) xxx–xxx

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Artists and Shanghai's culture-led urban regeneration Sheng Zhong Department of Urban Planning and Design, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, 111 Ren'ai Road, Suzhou Dushu Lake Higher Education Town, Jiangsu Province 215123, China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 13 January 2015 Received in revised form 1 September 2015 Accepted 5 September 2015 Available online xxxx Keywords: Artists Culture Urban regeneration Shanghai

a b s t r a c t In recent years, Shanghai has seen a surge of culture-led urban regeneration efforts. The paper discusses the differentiated roles of artists in shaping Shanghai's three prominent arts districts. For simplicity of analysis and illustration, visual artists and environmental designers were crudely categorized into elite and non-elite groups depending on their exercised power in decision making in the transformation of the three sites. It was found that arts production and urban regeneration, two tightly state-controlled fields in China, were increasingly linked together in Chinese cities through capital circulation and conversion. Artists were a critical link of the two fields. There was a clear stratification and fragmentation among Shanghai artists. Elite artists possessed huge amounts of all types of capital, whereas non-elite members were disadvantaged on all fronts. In the field of urban regeneration, artists were not simply used unconsciously as “catalysts” by property interest and regeneration officials, but their elite segment also proactively helped reconstruct the physical and the symbolic urban spaces. The active participation in the real estate sector by cultural entrepreneurs aided the conversion of esthetic proposition in the arts field to culturally valorized spaces for sale in the urban regeneration field and this was enabled by the elite's extensive connections with other powerful social agents in the business and the state sectors built over previous experiences. For the non-elite artists, they participated in the transformative process unaware of their auxiliary roles yet they had not acted as a collective critical force against the hegemonic growth regime. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction In the past two decades, cities around the world have been actively seeking competitiveness in the cultural front (Kong, 2007; Miles & Paddison, 2005). Today, cities try to lure “starving” artists and cultural entrepreneurs as they do to high net-worth bankers and corporate managers because of this collective belief, rightly or wrongly, in the magical power of arts and culture (Strom, 2010). Although urban changes result from collective actions of multiple agents, artists have been identified as a group who occupy a unique social niche to significantly influence the construction and reconstruction of urban narratives (Bain, 2005). Many scholarships note the “catalytic” role of cultural workers (Ley, 2003; Vivant, 2010; Zukin, 1982). Although the internal diversity of the arts community has been acknowledged (Lloyd, 2006), there are few comparative analyses of differentiated roles of artist segments in shaping urban changes. The present research attempts to shed light on this fuzzy area by examining two segments of the arts community in three regenerated sites in Shanghai and their multifaceted roles within the intricate network of social agents in shaping the city's recent urban transformations. In 1998, a Taiwanese architect initiated the cultural revalorization of industrial spaces in Shanghai by converting a deserted grain warehouse into an architectural design studio amid much skepticism. Later, other

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environmental designers and experimental artists emulated this pioneering practice by occupying other “forgotten” industrial spaces including M50 and Tianzifang. While the former was a desolate textile mill managed by previous socialist cadres, the latter was based on a few disused neighborhood light industry estates under the supervision of the street-level government. After the two sites gained prominence, the municipal and the district governments intervened to promote them as Shanghai's new image and economic engines (Zhong, 2009, 2011). Since the mid-2000s, culture-themed regeneration projects on old industrial sites under the sponsorship of the entrepreneurial local governments and private capital gained popularity1 (Zheng, 2011). Red Town (RT), sitting on a derelict steel mill built at the peak of the communist “Great Leap Forward Movement”, is a prominent example in this regard. The space was owned by a restructuring state-owed enterprise but leased to a private developer under the sponsorship of Shanghai Municipal Government (SMG) for site regeneration (Wang, 2009). In the literature, the local state is often considered as a dominant agent in orchestrating urban changes in contemporary China (Li, Cheng, 1 Contemporary urban regeneration projects carried out in the Chinese context has a high physical bias, although economic aims are often present. In contrast, the social dimension is frequently missing from the regeneration agenda. Constrained by China's political system, regeneration projects had rarely involved participation of local residents (see Ye, 2011; Wang, 2009; Zhong, 2013). This is also a reason why roles of artist groups as a conventionally non-state force are highlighted here. In this paper, the term “placemaking” or “redevelopment” is sometimes used to refer to the dominant physical aspect of the regeneration project in concern.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2015.09.002 0264-2751/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Zhong, S., Artists and Shanghai's culture-led urban regeneration, Cities (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.cities.2015.09.002

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& Wang, 2014; Wu, Xu, & Yeh, 2007; Zheng, 2011). While this paper does not deny this aspect, it nevertheless attempts to use the artistic community as an example to illustrate the presence and the roles of non-state forces in China's recent urban transformations. The rest of the paper consists of four sections. The first section discusses research methodology and defines the artist group and subgroups within the local context. The second section reviews literature on the roles of artists in culture-led urban transformations. The third section summarizes empirical data. The last section analyzes findings and calls for a rethinking of the diversity within the arts community and the roles of non-state forces in China's urban changes.

2. Research methods and definition of “artists” Data used in this paper were primarily obtained from semistructured in-depth interviews with thirty-eight artists and twentytwo other professionals (e.g. art gallery managers, space managers, bureaucrats) who interacted with cultural workers in the transformation of three cultural districts in Shanghai: M50, Tianzifang and RT.2 The three sites were chosen because all had a large concentration of artists and were acclaimed by SMG as successful regeneration projects but they had different artist profiles. M50 and Tianzifang, two spontaneous cases, welcomed their first wave of artists around the turn of the millennium. In M50, earlier tenants were not well-known. However, some gained prestige later. Tianzifang initially had a few prominent artists, but unknown artists far outnumbered the big names. RT, deliberately planned in the mid-2000s, was largely occupied by elite tenants because of the high rents. Interview questions focused on informants' personal history, social networks, and everyday life that were related to the site regeneration. In addition, survey of ninety-four creative enterprises at the three sites provided additional data about formal and informal networks among firms. Supplementary information about a few high-profile artists, including a deceased Tianzifang master (dashi), was also obtained from extensive review of media reports and interview of their acquaintances. Defining the “artists” group, which is critical for this research, can be a daunting task (Bain, 2005). Becker (1982) sees artists as belonging to a profession rather than a leisure group. Nevertheless, the criterion of “profession” is problematic in the light of the part-time nature of many artistic pursuits (Markusen & Schrock, 2006; Montgomery & Robinson, 1993). At the operational level, Markusen (2006) examines writers, musicians, visual artists, and performing artists, who are the core of the artistic community. Other researchers regard design arts and architecture as legitimate art forms (Filicko & Lafferty, 2002). In the light of the conceptual difficulty, Karttunen (1998) asserts that the definition of “artists” should be aligned with the purpose and context of studies. This research adopts this embedded approach and focuses on visual artists and environmental designers in the three art districts because their number was large compared with other types of artists, say performing artists (survey results). As the study deals with the relationships between artists and place-based regeneration strategies, spatial anchorage in artist identification is deemed necessary.3 Treating the artist group as a monolithic whole may distort their actual roles in urban regeneration because of their internal diversity. This research is informed by Anheier, Gerhards, and Romo's (1995) classification methodology. Drawing upon Bourdieu (1986); Anheier, Gerhards, and Romo (1995) divide the artist group by status or hierarchy, depending on the overall composition of capital. Hierarchy in this study is conceptualized as a continuum, but this research simplifies 2 The fieldwork was conducted in two periods between June 2008 and November 2009 and between June and August 2012. 3 Although off-site artists may also exert influence on regeneration, their impact was presumably much smaller than those who spent significant amount of time on site interacting with other stakeholders. In addition, it was methodologically prohibitive to identify those off-site artists for the research purpose.

the positioning system into a binary elite/non-elite split in order to highlight the internal difference of the artistic group. The criterion of grouping is the exercised power in the urban regeneration field obtained from interview. The paper compares the elite and non-elite artists (EAs and NAs) in terms of capital possession and the roles in site regeneration. It is true that the boundary of division is not clear-cut due to the difficulty of quantifying “capital” and “power”. However, given that the current research is done for exploratory and illustrative purposes rather than exact social positioning per se, the fuzzy group boundary need not be treated as a prohibitive obstacle. Nine of the thirty-eight artists included in the study may be regarded as the “elite”, who commanded some sort of formal decision power in site regeneration. The number of EAs is small and hence the research may run the risk of data bias on this subgroup. However, the small sample of “elites” within a larger cohort of arts professionals mirrored the winner-take-all reality in the cultural production fields (Hesmondhalgh, 2002). As the paper will demonstrate, the power exerted by this small group is by no means insignificant. 3. A review of artists' roles in culture-led urban regeneration Gentrification literature provides the most nuanced analysis of artists' roles in urban regenerations (Ley, 1996, 2003; Zukin, 1982). Bohemian artists are said to have a preference for marginal urban spaces not only because of the practical concern of low rents and space functionality, but also because such spaces represent non-mainstream values critical for sustaining an artistic identity (Bain, 2003). While artworks create appeal to the public, artists' eclectic consumption preference for coffee shops, museums, exotic restaurants and other urban amenities also serve as a magnet to the hedonic new middle class in their relentless search for edgy lifestyles. The outcome is often a dramatic physical makeover of artists' neighborhood by real estate capital that eventually leads to the socioeconomic displacement of the cultural pioneers. Ley (2003) suggests that among different waves of gentrifiers, latecomers tend to be financially rich but culturally poor. Mathews (2008) also notes that the symbolic influence of artists on urban places does not completely fade out after their exodus because historical narratives, artistic ethos, and artworks may endure although such elements are often adapted to different purposes by different social agents participating in urban changes. The “magic” power of artists to a large extent lies in the glamor around the arts profession. Lloyd (2006) notes that romanticism associated with the profession is forged by the bohemians' incessant search for creative freedom that distances them from the external purposes of production, such as profit or political interest. The heroic rejection of the capitalist economism and voluntary choice of poverty (including occupying marginal spaces), give the artist group a unique social niche. As societies tend to glamorize cultural nonconformance as the “edgy” or the “cool”, marginal cultures are often used as a cachet to repackage an otherwise non-descript real property product for excessive profitmaking. In the more recent mode of gentrification as a public policy (Cameron & Coaffee, 2005; Mathews, 2010; Smith, 2002), the cultural glamor around the arts profession is also purposively availed by regeneration officers to construct a distinctive urban ambiance. However, trenchant criticisms over the shallow and generic “loft and cappuccino glamor” engineered by uncreative policy tools abound (Vivant, 2010: 109; Peck, 2005). In the Chinese context, the identity of artists has to be conceptualized from a different tradition. Here, the aura surrounding artists comes from both their distance from commerce and their alleged moral superiority. In the Confucian tradition, the artistic scholargentry class was expected to assume the social responsibility of moral tutelage to lower classes (including the merchants). This understanding deviates from Bourdieu's (1993) belief that the guiding principle of high art is the internal logic rather than any extrinsic concerns. In the Maoist

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period, the “ethical” role of artists was carried to the extremes as the state apparatus turned art production into a sole vehicle for political propaganda (Kraus, 2004). Although the contemporary art worlds in China are becoming plural, the romanticism connected with the moral superiority and social responsibility of ancient artists still influences the public perception. In more recent years, the will of experimental artists to challenge official taboos and to test the limits of creative freedom reinforces the heroic image of this group in the unique Chinese institutional context (Wu, 1999). A few spontaneously formed art districts in contemporary China such as 798 in Beijing and M50 in Shanghai were pioneered by artists who sought to break away from the state control of cultural production (Currier, 2008; Zhong, 2011). However, like their western counterparts, the cultural glamor around such districts begins to fade once capital is injected to reshape urban spaces and generic commercial practice begins to take over artistic originality and morality (Currier, 2012; Wang, 2009). Another body of literature, which takes a strong normative tone, over-celebrates the role of artists in urban regeneration. Theses of creative class (Florida, 2002, 2005), creative city (Landry, 2000) and urban amenity (Clark, Lloyd, Wong, & Jain, 2002) all belong to this thread. Florida (2005) argues that urban regeneration depends on the renewal of residents. Artists not only are a member of the so-called creative class, but also serve as a kind of urban “amenity” to draw other creative members to the restructuring city. However, how artists actually work to make urban regeneration happen is never clearly articulated (Peck, 2005; Pratt, 2008; Scott, 2006). Leslie and Catungal (2012) further point out that the very idea of “creative class” is flawed as creative class cities are intrinsically unequal along racial, gender, and other lines. In the real world, academic critiques of the creative class and other related concepts, however, has not dampened the enthusiasm of governments around the world to follow Florida's prescriptions (e.g. Chang, 2000; Kong, 2007; Strom, 2010). In Chinese cities, entrepreneurial behaviors by local governments to attract talents have not actually led to urban competitiveness (Zheng, 2011). In addition, studies on the creative/cultural economy also touch on artists' role in urban regenerations. Here, artists are treated as a valuable factor of cultural production (Markusen & Schrock, 2006). Currid (2007) notes that in the cultural economy sector, the economic and the social realm overlap while Drake (2003) explains how place characteristics can feed into cultural products. A few studies also examine the nature of creative work in the recent wave of cultural capitalism. Wittel (2001) argues that the current “network sociality” is centered on fast exchange of information and “know-who” is a key to stay competitive in the flexible market. On the other hand, McRobbie (2002) critically comments on the loss of self-identity, cultural creativity, openmindedness, and political engagement of the cultural “indies” because of the speed and risk intrinsic to the flexible capitalism. More optimistically, Banks (2006) sees the possible transformative roles played by cultural workers owing to their reflexivity and moral–cultural commitment. Markusen (2006) has made similar observations. Furthermore, studies show that while many cultural economy clusters have an “accidental” origin (Ho, 2009; Hutton, 2010; Scott, 2000), public policies or deliberate efforts in nurturing the arts activities are necessary (e.g. Scott, 2000; Chang, 2000; Leslie & Rantisi, 2006). In China, large local state efforts had been made to promote cultural/ creative industry development; however, a conducive institutional environment for arts and creativity to flourish is yet to materialize (Zheng & Chan, 2013). In sum, gentrification literature highlights the cultural and symbolic role of the arts profession in conditioning upscale property development at the neighborhood level; amenity and creative class theses see artists as an instrument for place branding and social engineering at the city level; and cultural economy literature emphasizes the economic value of arts in post-industrial production and the ethical-political outlook of the creative occupations. In all three perspectives, artists' roles in urban regeneration are largely depicted as passive. That is,

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whether they spontaneously agglomerate into an urban district or are availed by property interests or the state to serve extrinsic purposes, and whether they embrace progressive values or are complicit in sustaining the neoliberal regime, artists are not understood as consciously and purposively shaping urban changes, hence they are not a proactive part of the capitalist or the state “conspiracy.” This paper attempts to revise this generalization by arguing that in addition to shaping urban changes inadvertently, a small cohort of artists also proactively participate in the purposive reconstruction of spaces in Shanghai and this was both a reason and an outcome of the internal stratification among cultural workers. 4. Artists leveraging in different fields of power The paper invokes Bourdieu's concepts of capital, habitus and field. Bourdieu (1986) argues that capital, which determines the power of social actors, is represented in three fundamental forms: economic, cultural, and social. Economic capital includes money and institutionalized property rights. Cultural capital may exist in embodied, objectified and institutionalized states. Social capital refers to the actual or potential resources in a social network. Symbolic capital, related to reputation and prestige, can be part of other forms. The different capital forms are convertible among themselves with different ease of conversion. Capital possession in a particular field shapes a person's habitus, in other words, his/her predisposition to think and behave in a particular way that often leads to outcomes reinforcing the original power structure in the field (Bourdieu, 1990; Swartz, 2002). Bourdieu's analytical framework not just represents a counterpoint to the ahistorical and decontextualized “rational choice model,” but also can serve as an overarching theoretical scheme. That means, it is capable of explicating both economic and noneconomic behaviors, and practices in different cultural fields that are susceptible to various levels of “rational” logic (Bourdieu, 1985, 1986). Therefore, it provides an unparalleled perspective to understand Shanghai's cultural workers who straddle both the arts and the urban regeneration fields in a period of transition from socialism to capitalism. 4.1. Cultural capital Cultural capital, which defines the arts profession, is a primary resource for artists. Education is perhaps the most easily identifiable form. As an early influence, education also produces more enduring impacts on an artist's habitus (Bourdieu, 1990). It was clear that education qualifications divided EAs and NAs. Eight of the nine EAs graduated from prestigious arts or design schools, such as Shanghai College of Fine Arts and Tongji University. At least four had post-graduate education. EAs also tended to have close connections with high-profile state arts or educational institutions as a direct result of superior educational experience. Although often claimed as “independent”, four EAs still maintained part-time positions or some informal relationship with previous state employers because of the extra information or contacts that the latter could provide. Also notable for EAs was their international profile. Four of the nine EAs had arts education or experience aboard. Elite fine artists were frequent participants in major international art exhibitions, such as Art Basel, Venice Biennale, and Shanghai Biennale, to name a few. Well-known foreign or Chinese art galleries represented their artworks, whereas prestigious museums around the world also featured some of them. The elite environmental designers had participated in flagship design projects such as the National Stadium and quite often won major design awards. To get those superior opportunities, both the quality of work and “know-who” mattered. The international experience was said to have shaped EAs' thinking, which included an understanding of place-making that dominated the area regeneration agenda in Shanghai. Such knowledge may be thought of as embodied cultural capital, which took a long time to acquire. For

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instance, an M50 architect C attributed his locating into M50 to his experience in East Berlin, where he shared a big warehouse with artists. He recalled: “When I came here [M50] in 2004, the buildings were quite deteriorated .…. Local architects at that time… would rather choose a cozy office … [because] old industrial spaces did not have face-lifting effects that new start-ups needed. …. For me at that time, M50 resembled an ambience I was familiar with.… [My life at] East Berlin was like that.” (Personal communication, 15 October 2008). C was the first tenant to undertake serious renovation of the desolate space at M50. This effort was later emulated by other tenants and eventually led to the wholesale rehabilitation of M50 by the property managers, who, as former cadres of a socialist firm, knew nothing about arts and culture from their earlier experience. Inspired by C's vision, property managers later commissioned C to redesign the M50 entrance. The implemented proposal was later shown in an exhibition in Europe and helped publicize C and M50. In this kind of “knowledge transfer”, former socialist cadres learned the tips of combining designers' cultural capital and their own economic capital (real property) to generate steady cash flows and symbolic influence for the site. EAs working at Tianzifang and RT also attributed their predilection for old industrial spaces to their international experience. The RT Corporation was headed by an artist-turned developer who graduated from prestigious Shanghai Theater Academy, taught arts in Tongji University, worked in cultural exchange in Hong Kong, and enrolled in short courses on historic rehabilitation in Paris. Artistic insights (yanguang) acquired in his early experience was said to be crucial to help him identify old buildings with great cultural value and hence market potential (Personal communication, 10 June 2009). The development in Tianzifang was kick-started by a wealthy Chinese expatriate who had a large network of well-known artist friends. His knowledge about cultural make-over of industrial space was also informed by his life overseas (Personal communication, 21 June 2012). NAs had quite different profiles. Nine declined to disclose their educational attainment. Most of the rest had degrees or diplomas from unknown schools in second- or third-tier cities (e.g., local teachers' college). Two revealed that they never had formal arts education. NAs tended to hold unstable jobs when they first arrived in Shanghai. And a shared contempt over state-affiliated EAs was discernable among NAs largely because opportunities to participate in prestigious provincial and national arts exhibitions had mostly been reserved for the well-connected elite. Also rarely were NAs represented by private art galleries. Unknown artists had little bargaining power when dealing with galleries because of their low-profiles and the lack of commercial experience. Instead, the non-elite relied heavily on rented spaces for exposure and survival. A Tianzifang artist explained: “When I first came to Shanghai… I rented a cheap space in a suburban location. A year had passed and I was not able to sell one piece. …. At that critical juncture, a buyer bought over ten oil paintings for a bit more than 20,000 yuan. The price was cheap but the money enabled me to extend my stay in Shanghai. I … rented a studio here [Tianzifang] at a much higher rate… I sold one piece for 20,000 yuan in the first week…. Tianzifang helped me survive as a professional artist who had no connections in this city…” (Personal communication, 21 June 2009). NAs got social recognition from places they inhabited. Lacking opportunities to participate in state-sponsored exhibitions, many of them saw market acceptability as an endorsement of their talent. To them, maintaining a place at a prominent art district in Shanghai was a hallmark of artistic success and their linkage with such places connoted professional excellence and pride. Although NAs' initial location decisions were mostly based on utilitarian concerns, as time went on,

places also acquired symbolic meanings and became part of their professional identity. When spaces had turned increasingly upscale, the non-elites' dependence on space also shifted from appropriating low economic rents to appropriating the symbolic values of places. This effect was not quite apparent for EAs because they were acknowledged by their own names rather than the addresses. The prestige of Shanghai's art districts was socially constructed. The critical density of artists, both elites and non-elites, obviously added glamor to these sites. Moreover, the presence of elite artists enhanced the local branding effects. Many unknown artists choose Tianzifang because they wanted to follow the “masters” already there. By working in physical proximity with the “masters,” NAs at Tianzifang were able to appropriate the cultural and symbolic capital of the elite group, although the price of appropriation (e.g., rents) was not cheap. In this sense, place served as a superficial link between the two subgroups, although their social networks did not actually overlap much, as the paper will demonstrate later. 4.2. Economic capital Neither the image of self-sacrificing “starving” bohemians in the West nor that of off-mundane scholar-artists in the Chinese tradition was an accurate depiction of Shanghai's contemporary EAs. Following the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident, China's art worlds took a commercial turn and the prices of Chinese contemporary art surged in the international market. Then big cultural centers, such as Beijing and Shanghai, saw a proliferation of market-oriented arts institutions. Many Chinese experimental artists began to take to commercial production, hence blurring the distinction between arts and commerce. EAs led comfortable lives as the commercial infrastructure of the city had enabled them to cash in on their cultural capital and social connections built over previous experiences. In addition to high sales income, various types of support from art district managers, ranging from rental concessions/exemption to free coffee, enhanced the economic position of the elite. Art district managers understood that elite tenants were more footloose than unknown ones, so they required more efforts to retain. The story about NAs was quite different. The impact of the 2008 global financial crisis was bitterly felt because investment enthusiasm of the deep-pocketed international buyers had subdued afterwards. When the economy later picked up, escalating rents became the main threat. Without any external support, NAs resorted to spatial self-help strategies. A common practice among NAs was to sublease spaces underground. Some might allow another artist to share their studio, whereas others sell the “wall space” to even more marginal artists for hanging artworks. Urban informality, which exists in diverse forms, is a common practice among groups of low socioeconomic status in China. In a context of rising risks in the arts field, the boundaries between culture and commerce had turned increasingly blurry for NAs. Interviews showed that EAs generally were more positive toward the market than NAs although they were conscious of its constraints on cultural production. Their basic argument was that the market liberated them from producing for the Party propaganda, although ironically, their “independence” and “liberation” was to a large extent enabled by their past and continuing connection with the party state. Their responses were suggestive of EAs pragmatism rather than idealism in dealing with the opportunities and constraints embedded in China's changing cultural fields. NAs' attitude about market forces tended to be more ambivalent as they had a mixed of winning and losing experiences. On the one hand, they depended on art sales and prominent art spaces for building professional reputation. On the other hand, they begrudged the widening inequality and moral corruption from the excessive commodification of art districts and in the arts field. These sentiments reverberated with scholars' critique of the contemporary creative professions (Leslie & Catungal, 2012; McRobbie, 2002).

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4.3. Social capital The division between EAs and NAs was evident in their social networks. Elite visual artists at the three sites not only maintained close relationships with well-known players in the fine arts field, such as gallery owners, art critics, museum curators, collectors and so on, but they also frequently networked with prominent regeneration personnel, including environmental designers, property developers, space managers, and sometimes government officials. The relationships could be either formal or informal. And private parties and gatherings by invitation were important means of extending and regulating personal networks. Elite networks enjoyed substantial power in determining both the physical appearance and the cultural agenda of individual art districts. For example, M50 had an informal organization4 called “Artists' Confederation” (AC), which comprised well-known artists and had a clear purpose of site regeneration. On a daily basis, it served as the “brain power” of the property managers who were conscious of their own lack of cultural insight. At the same time, management also hoped that conferred decision power would give the footloose elite more incentives to stay in their premises. As former socialist cadres, property managers had intricate connections with government officials, hence bringing state power into the elite networks as well. State connection was particularly important in the property development sector in China because all urban land is owned by the state and various types of government permissions must be obtained before physical projects get started. Coincidently, cultural production is another tightly controlled domain in China. For example, the hosting of cultural activities such as arts festivals requires government endorsement while the censorship system exerts constant surveillance on arts production. Therefore, the inclusion of state power in the elitist cultural-capital network could greatly facilitate the execution of physical and eventbased regeneration strategies and help maintain the stability of art districts. As space competition at M50 had become increasingly tense, AC helped management determine the suitability of potential tenants by offering opinions on their artworks. Also importantly, AC members were consulted extensively on M50's rehabilitation. EAs regarded their esthetic advice as representing “the most advanced international design concepts” that could help M50 “catch up with global practice” (Personal communication, 12 August 2012). By serving as gatekeepers and redevelopment consultants, elite members helped determine both the form and function of M50. Similarly, an exclusive elite coalition masterminded the transformation of RT. The CEO of RT Corporation Z embodied a combination of cultural, economic, and social capital as he was a trained artist, had served in big public institutions and had done business in both arts and urban development fields in and out of Mainland China. Z also teamed with a landscape designer who had a Ph.D. degree from prestigious Tongji University and work experience with Shanghai's largest public investment consulting company and the municipal government. In addition, an award-winning architectural firm established by three Tongji University graduates also aided Z in the rehabilitation design of the district. By undertaking the RT project, Z not only made more bureaucrat friends, but also won several official awards, drawing even more social, political, and symbolic capital to his already large possession. The elite network of Z also determined the cultural agenda of RT as Z selected first tenants among his friends and acquaintances. In addition, elite artists and municipal officials together determined the types of artworks (particularly sculptures) on display in RT. Elite network also shaped changes of Tianzifang that used to be a mélange of traditional lilong housing, vacated industrial spaces, and wet markets. W, a Chinese expatriate with financial resources, artistic 4

Due to the state control over non-government organizations, many organizations existed without formal status.

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insights, a large network of elite artist friends and official connection kick-started the site transformation by hosting social gatherings in the old industrial buildings. These gatherings were examples of “club sociality” that only served to build personal capital for the invited (McRobbie, 2002). Later, site rehabilitation took place with the financial backing from W's company and a few others in W's network. In contrast, NAs virtually had no decision power with regard to place-making and local cultural agendas. They were rarely notified of impending site rehabilitations and instead were simply told to foot the bill in the form of increased rents. Neither did they have much say in space usage, except for the underground subleasing that evaded the eyes of the property managers. Although NAs could frequent the elite studios in the vicinity, interactions among them were thin. The present study acquired interview contacts through snowball sampling. Referrals from an EA always turned out to be other elite people, whereas the same was true for NAs. In other words, both EAs and NAs tended to keep to their own worlds. Physical propinquity only offered some superficial linkage between the two socially disparate worlds. 4.4. Re-examining the roles of artists in culture-led urban regeneration Much existing urban study literature treats artists as a homogenous group. For example, Montgomery and Robinson (1993) show that artists are largely well educated but impoverished, whereas Markusen (2006) observes that artists tend to embrace progressive political stance. And Florida (2002, 2005) lumps artists into the ill-defined “creative class”. In addition, numerous studies point to the unconscious and passive roles of the artists in culture-led urban regeneration: they are positioned in the weak field of power, and used by developers to increase profits or by the state to achieve policy objectives. Such a proposition overlooks the proactive roles that EAs played in China's contemporary urban transformations. A detailed study of artists in Shanghai reveals several different perspectives. There was clear stratification and fragmentation among artists. EAs possessed huge amounts of all types of capital, whereas NAs were disadvantaged on all fronts. Diverging from the Western bohemian or the Chinese scholar-gentry ideals, Shanghai artists showed greater tolerance toward commercial practice in the arts field. EAs benefited enormously from their wealth and fame, whereas NAs used various rational strategies to advance their career and livelihood.5 This state of affairs has to be understood in the light of China's unique sociopolitical context in which state control exerts stronger effects on cultural production compared to liberal market economies. Here the cultural “coolness” is constructed more by artists' distance from the state than from commerce (Kraus, 2004; Wu, 1999). Most interviewees viewed the establishment of an arts market and the burgeoning cultural industries as a “liberating” force, although the classical debate over the conflict between arts and commerce had never completely died out. Clearly, the identities of Chinese contemporary artists are negotiated within a unique power matrix of the country. The propensity or “habitus” (Bourdieu, 1990) for cultural workers to tolerate market forces can greatly facilitate capital accumulation in China's recent embrace of cultural capitalism. Although conflicts arising from the widening gap between the two subgroups were evident, moral-political engagement within the arts field was largely missing. For NAs, their discontent was mitigated by their heavy reliance on the arts market and the prestigious art districts for career success.6 For EAs, they gained financially from the market yet failed to completely break away from the authoritarian state because connections with the latter were critical both for their arts career and involvement in site regeneration. A question remains whether a more reflexive arts community will emerge in China if the arts field becomes further stratified. 5 Vivant's (2010) study of off cultural scenes reveals similar rationality among artists in Paris. 6 In China, support for arts from the social sector is virtually non-existent.

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The Shanghai case also shows that the role of NAs in the culture-led urban regeneration was quite similar to that depicted in much existing literature. They agglomerated into certain urban districts out of individual concerns. Collectively but unconsciously, they helped shape an urban ambiance that property developers or the state could take advantage of. In their everyday struggles, urban places and the careers were mutually constitutive. However, while they helped build the reputation of the art districts, their ability to appropriate the symbolic capital of urban space was not guaranteed because they may be priced out someday. With limited bargaining power, NAs were at the mercy of elite networks that eventually determined what Shanghai's art districts would be like, physically, economically, socially and symbolically. Studies on the influence of the cultural elite on Shanghai's built environment are not new (Olds, 2001). But rarely has any attention been devoted to the roles of local EAs. As is shown, the real estate sector not simply appropriated symbolic cultural capital unconsciously built into urban spaces, but also solicited the conscious participation of some artists in site regeneration. EAs embodied all capital forms, or they built coalitions with other elite players commanding diverse resources, including property developers, space managers, and bureaucrats. How the coalition was built varied among cases. However, it was clear that past and current connections, formal or informal, between EAs and state institutions served as a bridge between the public and the private sector. In addition, culture-led regeneration projects on old industrial sites, which were promoted by recent municipal policies, provided a wide platform for EAs to extend networks and exert influence beyond the field of cultural production. Through deliberate transfer of “artistic insights” or “design advice”, cultural entrepreneurs helped convert cultural capital into urban spaces with high price tags. In return, they reaped financial benefits in the form of profit or rental subsidy. Meanwhile, they also established some sort of symbolic design “authority” in the field of urban regeneration that would further shape local agenda. Past studies have pointed to the antithetical relationship between cultural industries and the real estate sector (Currid, 2010; Lloyd, 2006). For the non-elite, this was certainly true. However for the elite, their artistic careers did not have to be victimized by property development as they had become “insiders” of the property business. Those having to bear the costs, mostly NAs, were positioned outside of the redevelopment process. Power begot power. Huge disparity initially created and accumulated in the cultural industries became magnified in the culture-led urban regeneration processes. A few factors may be employed to further explicate the divergent trajectories of the two subgroups. First, different educational training and early work experiences had prepared EAs and NAs with different capital possessions even before China embraced market principles. The unique position that EAs enjoyed was their ability to avail state support to reinforce their new market positions first in the arts and then in the urban regeneration field. Second, different life experiences also fostered different “habitus” or way of thinking and behaving (Bourdieu, 1990). EAs' international exposure equipped them with new place-making insights ahead of others. Their past experience as frequent winners and their encounters and interactions with other elite members in the business and the state sector built their own entrepreneurial impulse necessary for proactive participation in urban regeneration projects. More importantly, this entrepreneurial propensity matched perfectly with their superior capital possession and the new opportunities afforded by China's changing arts and urban regeneration fields. These three mutually-constitutive conditions enabled EAs to exercise greater influence on urban changes that would further consolidate their power. Third, the exclusive nature of “network sociality” (Wittel, 2001) means that the privilege to shape urban transformation and reap benefit from it was restricted to a small cohort of EAs. Therefore, even if NAs had substantial cultural capital in the cultural production field, they could not get access to the opportunities in the regeneration field and could only see the gaps between the two subgroups further widen.

To conclude, arts production and urban regeneration, two tightly state-controlled fields in China, are increasingly linked together through capital circulation and conversion. Artists are a critical link of the two fields. The Shanghai case demonstrated that a small number of EAs played both reactive and proactive roles and the latter was enabled by the elites' extensive connection with other powerful social agents in the business and the state sectors built over previous experiences. Here, the EAs can hardly be conceptualized as an independent force but rather a de facto partner in the local growth coalition. However, some nuances can be discerned. The awareness of the classical debate about arts and commerce among EAs set them apart (though not very distantly) from other growth interests, such as property developers and managers. EAs did gain materially in the regeneration projects. But they also had some sort of passion in selling a good vision (e.g. heritage preservation or cultural revitalization) to officials and the general public. They tended to act opportunistically and pragmatically rather than simply offer unquestionable support to the neoliberal agenda. That being said, EAs' “moral” and “reflexive” role in regeneration was quite limited given their disengagement from the local community and the wider arts field.7 For the large number of NAs, they had kept a certain distance from the growth interests and had aided the transformative process unaware of their auxiliary roles. Nevertheless, they had not acted as a critical force against the hegemonic growth regime despite their being victimized by it. Therefore, NAs' independence was relative and conditional. In contemporary China, where a mature and healthy civil society critical for meaningful democratic participation is not yet in sight, the future of its urban regeneration will remain perilous. 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Please cite this article as: Zhong, S., Artists and Shanghai's culture-led urban regeneration, Cities (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.cities.2015.09.002