Urban culture stems from its unique historical accumulation and personality traits, which converge and influence the daily life of the city. In the busy work interval, a leisure book of easy to live, a brain-opening art exhibition, can make the soul poetic perch. It can be said that for a modern city, the "experience value" of the cultural space represents the "ideal value" of its life to a certain extent.
In order to better depict the appearance of the ideal city in 2021, the Southern Weekend City (Regional) Research Center refers to UNESCO's classification of cultural life cycles, quantitatively compares cultural production and supply, consumption and participation, connects the precipitated historical and cultural heritage and the vivid cultural ecology, and depicts the cultural faces of 57 cities.
Argument
Overall, the cultural space experience of the 57 cities on the mainland presents a regional pattern of "two strong and three poles". The Beijing-Shanghai fault is the leading cultural "big man"; the southwest culture represented by Chengdu and Chongqing, the Jiangnan culture represented by Southern Jiangsu and Hangzhou, and the Lingnan culture represented by Guangshen are the "three peaks" distributed on the cultural map of the mainland, followed by Wuhan, Changsha, and Xi'an, which are the "cultural highlands" scattered in the central and northwest regions.
Under the macro pattern of "two strong and three poles", the 57 cities present three major structural imbalances in cultural space: imbalance between supply areas, imbalances in supply content, and imbalances in production and consumption.
1. Regional imbalance: the north is far ahead, and the third city is not seen
In terms of the total score of supply capacity, the first place Beijing "doubled" 3, 4 Chengdu, Chongqing. Among the 16 secondary indicators subdivided by cultural producers, cultural production funds, and cultural service types (including books, film and television, cultural tourism, culture, sports and leisure), Beijing and Shanghai occupy 10 "champions". Among them, the number of cultural venues such as museums, libraries, cinemas, theaters, art galleries, and gymnasiums is far ahead.
This means that there are only two "first-tier cities" on the track of cultural supply. Whether it is Guangshen, which is regarded as the "first line", or the "new front line" with distinct regional culture, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Xi'an and Chengdu, there is no "cultural soft power" that is mentioned alongside the north.
As the "old partner" of the north, Guangshen's cultural supply ranked 5th and 7th, ranking behind Chengdu and Chongqing. For Guangzhou, cultural financial investment is the "short board" in the "barrel effect". Shenzhen's financial investment of twice as much as Guangzhou shows that the government attaches great importance to the cultural field, but this young immigrant city, due to the relatively weak accumulation of cultural history, the endogenous power of cultural production is relatively insufficient, and it has not shown a cultural level that matches the economy.
On the contrary, Chengdu and Chongqing have increased the total supply score by relying on the "long board effect". Chengdu, with 90,000 cultural and entertainment practitioners, has killed other competitors such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou, while Chongqing has rushed to the fourth place with the advantage of innate cultural tourism resources. But these "little pride" in front of Beijing and Shanghai are small witches, Beijing's cultural and entertainment practitioners are 2.02 times that of Chengdu, the number of museums is 1.79 times that of Chongqing, and the number of theaters in Shanghai is 3.18 times that of Chengdu...
The imbalance is not only manifested in the excessive excellence of the first two cities, but also in the regional performance. Among the top ten supply, 9 southern cities are attended, and only Beijing is prominently encircled in the northern cities; horizontally, the eastern Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration leads the way, Chengdu, Chongqing and other western cities also have outstanding performance, and the central cities dwarf each other, and only Changsha advances into the top ten.
2. Imbalance in supply categories: Libraries may have enough management, but there are not many opera houses
In addition to Beijing's unique "balanced quadrangle", the cultural supply content of most cities is seriously unbalanced: the reading resources are relatively sufficient, and the supply of culture, sports and leisure is slightly weaker; the historical and cultural and tourism resources of Chongqing, Beijing, Hangzhou, Suzhou and other cities are relatively rich, while Shenzhen and Guangzhou are relatively poor.
Among the four cultural resource supply contents, the relative abundance of book resources is a common manifestation of the city.
As a simple and convenient cultural behavior that benefits endlessly, it has become a common practice to read more books and read good books, and the overall reading service system of the city has also been improved. Of the 57 cities assessed by the research team, 13 cities have a per capita public library holding of more than 1.5 volumes, of which Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing have a per capita collection of more than 3 volumes, which is much higher than if IFLA's standard of "1.5-2.5 books per capita".
Compared with reading, the public's access to cultural and leisure resources is relatively rare.
The so-called cultural and sports leisure resources, that is, the supply of art museums, exhibition halls, gymnasiums and other places that are convenient for residents to relax and entertain. This is the weakness of most cities except Beijing and Shanghai.
Of the 57 cities assessed, Beijing, Zhuhai, Wuxi, Xiamen, Suzhou, Hangzhou and Qingdao are 7 cities, with less than 100,000 people sharing an art museum and more than 200,000 people in 17 cities sharing an art museum. The data of the concert hall is even more amazing, the best performing Xiamen and Changsha, the single concert hall service is less than 500,000 people, 238,000 people / seat, 494,000 people / seat, respectively. The average number of people served by a single concert hall in 57 cities is about 2 million people.
The Jiangsu Grand Theatre, the largest modern grand theater in mainland China, can accommodate less than 8,000 people, including opera halls, drama halls, concert halls and comprehensive halls, which is far from the number of people it serves.
Of course, the demand for cultural and sports venues is not as common as reading, and the audience of art exhibitions and opera musicals is relatively small. This "poor student" taught by the two teachers of supply and demand is still a long way from comprehensive development.
Different from the relative identity of reading and leisure resources, there are obvious differences in cultural tourism resources between cities. After all, other types of services can be "cultivated" the day after tomorrow, while natural and historical and cultural tourism resources have a "fateful" element of luck. It is accumulated from the innate characteristics of the city's own history, culture, geography and climate, folk customs, etc., including national scenic spots, 5a scenic spots, museums, intangible cultural heritage, etc.
Chongqing is a city favored by the goddess of luck, the landscape and natural history and culture are both, the number of national scenic spots, 5a scenic spots can be comparable to Beijing; the number of museums and the thousand-year-old ancient capital of Xi'an are on a par, and the intangible cultural heritage is second only to Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou.
3. Loss of production: Changsha supports huge cultural consumption with very few resources
As different parts of the same chain, production and consumption go hand in hand and complement each other. The data shows that among the top 30 cultural productivity, 20 cities have declined in the ranking of cultural consumption power, and the gap is as large as 30 places. That is to say, while a large number of cities are unbalanced in supply, there is still a structural imbalance between cultural production and cultural consumption that cannot be ignored.
Xiamen, Chengdu, Jinan and other countries stand in the "dislocation team" with clear banners, and the common feature of cultural consumption power is lower than cultural productivity. Among them, Xiamen was promoted to "captain" with 31 places; Chengdu transformed from the third runner-up in cultural production to the top ten "goalkeepers" in cultural consumption; and key industrial cities such as Fuzhou, Wuhan, and Tianjin all had similar performances.
Changsha, Nanjing, and Wuxi have formed another faction of "counterattack teams", supporting a strong consumer market with relatively weak resource supply. Among them, Changsha jumped into the top five with the greatest energy leap into the "Dragon Gate", and the per capita cultural education and entertainment expenditure of urban residents and the proportion of cultural and entertainment expenditure in the total consumption expenditure were the top three; Guangzhou surpassed Beijing to win the second place in cultural consumption power; Nanjing, Wuxi and other cities have significantly improved their cultural consumption rankings compared with cultural supply.
Whether it is a strong supply of resources but a relatively weak consumer market, or a weak resource supply capacity to support a strong consumption power, it means that urban culture is misplaced in supply and consumption.
Why do the three major imbalances of regional distribution, supply categories, production and consumption occur?
Tracing
The Southern Weekend Urban (Regional) Research Center proposes four elements that influence cultural space: financial resources, suppliers, creativity and consumption structure. Based on this, we believe that the four aspects of insufficient investment, single supply subject, outdated creativity and housing consumption run are inhibiting the balance and vitality of the mainland cultural space.
1. Insufficient investment: not enough money, culture is enough
We analyzed the correlation between the cultural resource supply score and the level of economic development and found that there was a strong positive correlation between the two. The economic foundation determines the superstructure, and Beijing and Shanghai, which have strong economic strength, have more abundant funds poured into the support of cultural undertakings and the construction of cultural industries.
In 2019, chongqing's final expenditure on culture, tourism, sports and media was only 46.6% of that of Beijing and 30.5% of That of Shanghai. This value ranks 4th in 57 cities.
More cities are far less financially invested, but not because of "lack of attention" or "lack of effort."
The data shows that in terms of the proportion of investment related to cultural construction, Chengdu, Nanjing, Dongguan, Suzhou, Taiyuan, Jinan and many other cities are higher than Beijing and Shanghai, but they are subject to the "size of the money bag", and this catch-up process may be long-term and slow.
2. Single supply of the main body: the government's public welfare space, not enough to quench thirst
The supply model refers to the organization and provision mode of public cultural services, including the formulation of policies, the arrangement of systems, and the production and provision of products. According to the different providers, it can be divided into different models such as government supply, market supply, and diversified supply.
In the mainland, the government has long occupied the main position in the supply of public services, mainly using the allocation of taxation and fiscal policies to provide cultural services and products that meet the needs of citizens, its advantages are relatively stable, with strong public welfare, but the process is slower, lack of change in creative production, and can not meet people's diversified cultural needs.
In contrast, the funding channels for the operation of foreign art museums and museums are diverse, and in addition to ticket revenue, their derivative retail income, foundations and board members are important supplements. Since the end of 2000, the National Museum and Art Gallery have been free to open, with financial support from the government accounting for only 30% of its total revenue, and derivative sales are its main source of income.
3. Traditional space monotony: no creativity, who likes
Whether it is the imbalance of regional distribution caused by economic strength and financial strength, or the imbalance of service content categories caused by the single supply subject, it is a unilateral problem on the supply side, but the structural imbalance between production and consumption needs to jump out of a single perspective and grasp it from the interactive relationship between supply and demand.
Similar to the diversification trend of supply subjects, the cultural needs of citizens are also developing in the direction of personalization and diversification. In the traditional space, reading books, art edification, communication and so on can only be carried out in designated places such as libraries and art galleries, and people's compound cultural needs must be realized one by one, which increases the cost of time, transportation and money, which naturally reduces the motivation for cultural participation and consumption.
However, in the final analysis, the strength of "motivation" is only willingness, and it is not enough to meet this condition. As the concept of "demand" in economics says: the number of goods that consumers are willing and able to buy at a given price level over a certain period of time. For cultural demand, consumption willingness and consumption capacity are indispensable.
So who is influencing the cultural spending power of residents?
4. Housing consumption run: money to the house, can it also be given to the opera house?
Comparing the TOP3 cities with the rise and fall in the ranking of cultural consumption power, we found that the "consumption power winners" Nanjing and Wuxi were in the first gradient with disposable income of more than 60,000 yuan; the "supply power winners" Jinan and Fuzhou were in the third gradient with an income of about 50,000 yuan; but the two "leader" cities with the largest changes in ranking, Changsha and Xiamen, were in between.
That is to say, the influence of income on the consumption of residents' entertainment is not absolute, and there are still other factors that are "secretly doing harm". The structure of income disposable may be more suspicious, so where is the money in the pocket spent?
The answer is: residence.
The data shows that in the three cities with the largest degree of error in the ranking of cultural consumption, the per capita living expenditure of urban residents accounted for more than 30% of the total consumption expenditure in 2019; while in the top 3 cities, this proportion was only about 20%. This means that the higher the cost of investing in the basic living security of "living", the stronger the suppression level of residents' cultural and leisure consumption expenditure.
This conclusion is not only true in the above-mentioned second-tier cities, but also in first-tier cities. Beijing, the king of cultural production, was surpassed by Shanghai and Guangzhou in terms of cultural consumption power and became the third runner-up. It is not unusual for you to come and go in the Beijing-Shanghai game, but the counterattack of Guangzhou is impressive. As a first-tier city with the lowest housing price-to-income ratio, the lower living pressure has liberated the material shackles of Guangzhou people to a certain extent and released the consumption energy in the spiritual and cultural fields.
In Calvino's The Invisible City, Mark tells Khan, "What you like about a city is not seven or seventy wonders, but the answers she gives to your questions." "The secret of solving the problem may be contained in urban practice."
Action strategy
1. Encourage multi-subject participation in cultural supply
Since the 1990s, governance theory has increasingly become a prominent science in Western public administration, and Rhodes advocates that third sectors such as private institutions, civic organizations and non-governmental organizations should cooperate with the government to manage public affairs.
This idea is also accepted and practiced on the mainland. In 2016, the mainland began to deepen the structural reform of the cultural supply side, and successively issued many documents to encourage and promote the implementation of the PPP model (Public-PrivatePartnership), that is, public-private partnership.
The cooperation of multiple subjects and the introduction of market mechanisms can not only improve the efficiency of supply, but also encourage enterprises to carry out cultural innovation and production, encourage cultural and artistic enthusiasts to spontaneously invest in the supply ranks, alleviate the "Beijing-Shanghai gap" caused by the gap between economic and financial strength, alleviate the short-board effect of cultural and sports leisure supply, and improve the quantity and quality of cultural supply.
However, the transformation from a single-center supply model to a multi-center and diversified one-time development is not achieved overnight, and in the process of practice, how to establish a fair risk sharing mechanism, an appropriate benefit sharing mechanism, and a good long-term operation and management of the project are all issues that need to be paid attention to in the promotion of the PPP model.
2. Create a new type of integration space to enhance cultural vitality
In his book The Death and Life of America's Great Cities, American urban planner Jane Jacobs argues that diversity is an important factor in maintaining the vitality of cities. Through the rational opening of space, the integration and unification of space, culture and even consumption seems to be a new way to increase the cultural supply experience.
This is not simply the regeneration of a certain type of cultural resources, nor is it the construction of a pure commercial center, but a new type of cultural space that integrates multiple scenes and multiple needs, which is the "third space" in the eyes of the American sociologist Ray Oldenburg.
In the 1970s, under the combination of consumerism and the experience economy, the boundaries between public space and private space became blurred. Ray Oldenburg refers to informal public gathering places outside of residences and workplaces as "third spaces."
The sweep of the third space began with the traditional bookstore. Nanjing's pioneer bookstore innovates in the selection of goods and space creation, creating a new liquid space, where loose connections and collisions of inspiration can occur at any time. The unique cultural atmosphere and free experience attract a large number of young people to stop at the punch card.
While bookstores, museums and other reconstructed based on traditional cultural scenes, the new cultural consumption integration space is also teasing people's nerves. The exterior of the modern and prosperous commercial complex, but the interior of the 7-story "old building" to recreate the old Changsha in the 1980s, through the in-depth excavation of local culture and the reproduction of details, Changsha Super Wenheyou awakened the urban memory of a generation, like a "living room" for new and old friends in the city.
The theory of the third space and the practice of Nanjing Changsha enlighten us that the integration of multiple parties and bold innovation, creating a new cultural space, and providing novel cultural experiences may be a feasible way to alleviate the imbalance of urban supply and enhance cultural vitality.
3. Modern technology creates online virtual cultural space
The new integration of offline space is in full swing, and the innovation of online virtual space is also changing the world. In the era of mobile Internet and Internet of Things, the network virtual space environment not only expands the connotation of cultural space, but also breaks through the dependence on physical space, changes the traditional way of cultural participation, and thus releases strong consumption potential.
Under the impetus of the epidemic, the "Cloud Tour Museum" online series of cultural activities are widely popular; since the Spring Festival Gala Tang Palace Night Banquet, Henan has launched a series of Chinese festival programs that have detonated the network, with the help of video platforms, to construct an alternative virtual cultural space for people; and the maturity and application of virtual reality technologies such as AR and VR have broken through people's imagination. During the May Day period, the whole picture of Tushan Ancient City was reproduced in Lin'an Heqiao Town, Hangzhou, and with the blessing of new technology and IP, this once depressed national 4A-level scenic spot reappeared lively.
The above practical cases tell us that the use of cutting-edge high-tech, enhance innovation and aesthetic capabilities, and create an online virtual cultural space is also the choice of the times.
4. Reduce the pressure of living and release energy consumption
As mentioned above, the willingness to consume and the ability to consume together constitute the demand for cultural consumption. In addition to creating a new cultural space offline and online to stimulate people's willingness to consume, it is also necessary to alleviate people's housing expenditure pressure and release consumption energy.
According to the "2021 National Youth Expectations of the Two Sessions" survey conducted by the Social Survey Center of China Youth Daily, in terms of housing, 65.8% of respondents hope that house price control measures will remain stable, and 45.4% of respondents hope to increase the supply of housing rentals to make it easier for people to rent houses.
The research team believes that cities should increase the supply of affordable housing, strengthen the control of the real estate industry, and let young people have their own houses and find a sense of belonging in the struggling cities. Only when the basic life guarantee can be realized, can we have the mood and confidence to enjoy the spiritual level.
1. "Research on the Supply Model of Public Cultural Services in mainland China: Based on the Reference of the United States, Britain, and Japan", Zhao Chunmei
2. "Research on the Classification and Supply of Public Cultural Services in Mainland Cities", Jiang Han
3. "Problems and Countermeasures To Be Paid Attention to in Promoting the PPP Model", Zou Shinian
4. "Research on the Dimension and Evaluation of Virtual Cultural Space Scenes: Taking the "Cloud Tour Museum" as an Example", Chen Bo, Peng Xinrui
5. "Creating a Virtual Public Cultural Space to Expand Cultural Tourism Consumption", Chen Bo, Song Shiyu, Li Hao
6. "Analysis of Influencing Factors of Chinese Household Cultural Consumption: Evidence from CHFS", Zhao Jilin, Gui Heqing
7. "Research on the Influencing Factors of Cultural Consumption of Mainland Urban Residents and Their Regional Differences", Nie Zhengyan
8. UNESCO Cultural Framework
9. "The Construction and Practice of China's Urban Cultural Indicator System", Huang Changyong, Xie Xuefang
Indicator model: Dai Chunchen, Guo Qianqian
Author: Guo Qianqian
Editor: Dai Chunchen
Data and material collection: Chang Yuanyuan, Li Houze, Tan Huawei, Shi Dengjiang
Posters and visualizations: Huang Siyi, Shi Dengjiang, Deng Yue, Guo Chenjie, Bai Hua
Southern Weekend researcher Qianqian Guo