The UNESCO Creative City Network initiated by UNESCO was established in October 2004. To initiate cultural diversity, encourage urban residents to develop diversified cultural resources and create sustainable new economic models is actively encouraged by the UN. This has become the fundamental purpose of the "Creative City" scheme and an important trend in human civilization as it deepens globalization. Creative cities aim to inspire and stimulate people, and turn this energy into significant assets and social wealth that can be value added, invested in and circulated.
In consideration of this, the Creative City should focus on building a cultural space. This can be described as a smart, compact and intelligent urban physical space full of design, symbolism and art, transmitting its heritage, cultural imagination, aesthetic judgment and diversified charm. The cultural space offers a comprehensive cultural field for creativity, experience, production, exchange, and the merging and spreading of ideas. Spaces have the following four features: firstly being a cluster of intensively productive cultural creators who can attract resources including monetary capital, social capital and cultural resources.
Secondly, centralizing cultural infrastructure and various cultural services, so that they become cost efficient, convenient and highly internationalized, enabling the generation of various creative results. Thirdly, pooling cultural and artistic activities, convenient for cultural producers to engage in R&D, creation, performance and exchange, and for the public to participate in and share creative results, thus having the active humanitarian value. Fourthly, the cultural space acts as a place of experiment endowed with aesthetic and artistic value. These four aspects are fundamental features we should see in a cultural space in a Creative City.
Inside space of a Metro Station in Shanghai
Only if a Creative City has a quality and important cultural space can it lay the foundations for creative results. As it is insufficient to play its role as the arts and trade center, a city of culture must also become a place for artistic production, sales and consumption, and its core is the characteristic cultural spirit of the city. Looking from the practice of building creative cities in various countries, for a city, regardless of its geographical space and population, the more cultural space it has, the more vigorous its creativity and vitality. Just like the first UNESCO Creative City in the US, Santa Fe, with a population of just 70.000, it has over 250 art galleries and distributors. Known as the country's third largest art market, Santa Fe has countless art shops, small museums, galleries, craft bars, bookstores, cafes and creative cuisine restaurants along the two sides of Canyon Road, scattered in picturesque disorder. It is rightly because of its cultural space that Santa Fe has become famous. Every year, people from across the world gather there for art events.
BUILDING A LARGE SCALE INTENSIVE CULTURAL SPACE
The building of the Creative City in the post-industrialization time brings about the cultural spaces with a large scale. The key is not to how king size it is and what a big volume it has, but to the high-end configuration of resources, sophistication of dominant philosophy, and the effectiveness of the running mechanism, so that it can gather batches of cultural producers and creators.
The US scholar Joel Kotkin pointed out in NEW GEOGRAPHY: How the Digital Revolution Is Reshaping the American Landscape that the rising digitalization and new economy makes the USA to deeply adjust and transform its culture, economy and topography.
A metropolis will integrate the publication, film, advertising, new media, thematic parks, etc. This is critically positioned in the overall urban planning and forms a super large 'cultural industry complex' thus becoming an effective carrier of urban competitiveness." At the backdrop of globalization, the building of the large cultural space of the Creative City not only considers the layout of the macro-space, but also highlights the innovation benefits and optimizes the micro-mechanism, in order to conglomerate the most precious space resources in the city towards the combos and projects that are the most innovative, prospective and representative in the market, and what is more, establishes the wide international relation to combine the cultural creative resources in various cities in the world to form a network of cooperation and exchange, thus making the urban space have the conglomeration function and radiation that far exceed the physical area. Although such "super large cultural space" is physically limited, it assembles the cultural entities with the most innovative vitality and can become the international hub and port that intensify various cultural creative resources. This "super cultural area" may be flexibly combined, like heritage and innovation, public services and scaled-up strength, local context and international inclusion, or on-the-up urban and industrial transformation tide in the world.
It is typically represented by the "City of Film" - Bradford, which was the first Creative City named by UNESCO in the UK. Bradford, located in the northern part of England, was the most polluted textile center in the UK before, and Dawson International PLC, one of the largest wool processing enterprises in the world, was headquartered here. The city welcomed the 21st century by investing more in the industrial transformation and environmental reform and successfully transformed into the greenest city with full vigor in the UK, where the film industry, as one of the emerging green industries, plays its key role. The director of the "City of Film" is Bradford Urban Committee, which selected those major partners from local entities, including the National Media Museum, University of Bradford, Yorkshire and Humber screen agencies, and Yorkshire Big Screen, etc., and then facilitated these museums, universities, organizations and enterprises to synergize to form the Industry-Academe-Research interactive mechanism, thus creating the large- sized film conglomerate space that plays its role of connecting the western culture and the eastern film. Bradford becomes one of the most important overseas exchange centers for Indian movies. Yorkshire, where Bradford is located, is the city winning the award in the International Film Festival of India 2007, and keeps in close touch with South Asia, including India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, etc. with respect to film and culture. The Indian film Slumdog Millionaire that received awards at several international film festivals was "born" here. It was very successful because of, among other things, Bradford's inclusion of diversities.
"Magic Forest" in Hanzhong Metro Station in Shanghai
This case inspires the builders of the Creative City - the core to build the cultural space is conglomeration. For a Creative City, only sufficient innovative factors and quality can result in the intensive effects of creativity and innovation, so that a city can play its critical role in the global industrial chain.
BUILDING A SMALL DIFFERENTIATED CULTURAL SPACE
Nevertheless, the building of a cultural space for a Creative City not only focuses on large cultural entities, but should also project flexible and rich small cultural projects, in order to establish a rich integrated, clustered and networked social fabric. Developing a small cultural space requires flexibility to bring elements together like technology, creativity, business and trade, art, recreation, and fashion, to form a cultural ecology that inspires and stimulates people to imagine and create. This is driven by the laws of the modern creative economy. In the third phase of the globalization, innovative market players and talents should be able to bring together their knowledge and experience from different fields. From a global perspective, the innovative activities of cities act according to a geo-distribution principle. The innovative "shoal" does not exist in any one place, but instead is active in waters with a sound ecology. Small cultural spaces in a Creative City should operate like these sound waters.
The design of the inside of Hanzhong Metro Station in Shanghai is one such sound water. This mini cultural space was designed by Norman Foster and received the participation of other international teams including the Architectural Association School of Architecture and the Royal College of Art. It is a dazzling "Magic Forest" comprising of one 140m core tube and five adjacent structured oblique pillars in the transfer hall. In such a transportation and art space, 2015 butterflies flash and fly continuously, and the circular pillars are like sunshine.
Four species of butterflies are used for lighting design, representing the four development phases of the Shanghai Metro. 18 colors are used for butterflies that magically dance around the core tube using photoelectric digital technology, representing a network of 18 metro lines to be completed by 2020.
The alluring mini cultural space design gives this ordinary urban transport hub a poetic flavor, offering light, butterflies, love and magical trees to those waiting for the train. It may not be a major historic reserve, protected building or industrial park, but it can still sow creative innovative seeds for millions of passersby. As cities advance, more and more commercial, traffic, green and residential spaces will be endowed with cultural and artistic functions and become integrated mini cultural spaces. (By Hua Jian)