Informality or creativity? The development and demolition of artist and IT worker villages in metropolitan Beijing: Fid-Bau Portal

Informality or creativity? The development and demolition of artist and IT worker villages in metropolitan Beijing

Liu, Ran / Greene, Richard

Abstract The creative industries and the digital economy have become the drivers for the metropolises of China. Despite the rapid transformation towards knowledge production in China, the understanding of the role of informalities (like urban villages) in creative cities is still lacking. This paper examines the following interrelated questions: a) why have urban villages become the cluster/assemblages for a circuit of knowledge production (e.g., digital work, media, and arts); and b) how is the assemblage of creative communities created by the growing rent-gap seeking regimes with different agency and everyday practices as shown in Beijing's artist and IT worker villages? Our investigations of the Heiqiao and Shigezhuang Villages in Beijing reveal that the Chinese rural land system has shaped the porous and interstitial spaces (e.g., urban villages as the “semi-commons” for landowners and migrant tenants) in the regime-specific community-making and is distinctive from Western models of creative cluster formation. This study refines Florida's elitist-oriented analysis where the “creative class” prefers the “quality of place,” and the city thus needs to enhance the quality of life to attract creative workers. The artist and IT worker villages, as a microcosm of the like-minded creative worker assemblage, are also sites for establishing contacts and fostering interaction in creative production. It is the quality of the public realm and networking (beyond the quality of the built environment) that shapes the assemblage of creative communities in urban villages. The networking and grass-roots alliance (as “semi-commons”) can help cope with the appropriation and provision problems facing “commons.”

Highlights • Urban village as semi-commons is a floating oasis for low-wage creative workers. • We need a relational and negotiated view on temporary land use in semi-commons. • Creative workers can unleash creativity in the Rent Gap Seeking Stage II. • Artist and IT worker villages take varied spatial forms and neighborhood activity. • Urban planning can become “softer” to allow for temporary uses of space.