For a modern city, the "experience value" of the cultural space represents the "ideal value" of its life to a certain extent.
With the popularization of 5G, consumption out of focus, national tide carnival and other changes of the times, in 2021, urban culture, consumption, technology and further integration and innovation, so that residents in it, in the cultural space experience, have more new choices. The level of experience value has also become a new variable for population flow.
How to promote the birth and innovation of new cultural spaces and increase the soft competitiveness of cities will become a long-term issue in the second decade of the 21st century in Zhucheng, China.
So, where is the "new" in the new cultural space, and why does it arise? Which cities are more likely to foster innovation, and what direction will they go?
Where's new?
The old and the new are relative, dialectically integrated. Before defining a new type of cultural space, we may wish to look at the conceptual connotation of the original cultural space.
Different from the perspectives of anthropology, culture, and sociology, in the field of urban studies, "cultural space" is equivalent to "urban public cultural place", which belongs to the narrow category of cultural space, focusing on urban culture, modernity and globalization. Under the influence of this theory, bookstores, museums, art galleries and other architectural places are the most accustomed traditional cultural spaces.
In 2021, under the pressure of the epidemic, some gratifying phenomena have met unexpectedly, soothing people's tired souls.
In April, the "City Well Culture Representative Brand" Super Wenheyou entered Shenzhen with a new look of "Shenzhen-Hong Kong Cultural Complex", and more than 50,000 people made reservations to brush up the circle of friends; in May, the "Fox Demon Little Red Lady" scenic spot in Hangzhou Heqiao Ancient Town opened, creating a new model of animation + technology + night tour, bringing tourists a new immersive cultural tourism experience; in June, "Only Henan Drama Magic City" opened the city to accept guests, sound, light, electricity, painting, etc. Under the terminal control of the intelligent digital control system, 21 theaters turned around and sangtian...
"Only Henan Drama Magic City" (Visual China/Photo)
These steaming new cultural spaces are full of life and full of light. The research team believes that compared with tradition, the new cultural space has three significant characteristics:
First of all, the investment and operation entities are becoming more and more diverse. According to the China Tourism Research Institute's "2021 China Tourism Group Top 20 and Nomination List", the Jianye Group behind "Only Henan" and the Hangzhou Commercial and Trade Tourism Group behind the "Fox Demon Little Red Lady" scenic spot are listed among them, and the entry of large market entities allows the change to have more sufficient financial support for the choice space, at the same time, Wenheyou and other small and medium-sized private institutions independently create territories, and the operation method is more market-oriented.
Second, the integration of culture and consumption, and scientific and technological elements. Under the guidance of competing creativity, "Culture +" has become more and more popular, showing a clear trend of integration with consumption, technology, etc., providing a new experience of immersive interaction.
On the one hand, the catering and entertainment brands represented by Wenheyou excavate regional characteristics and combine trend culture to form a new business model of culture + consumption; on the other hand, with the development of Internet technology, scientific and technological innovation beyond the limitations of material space has brought people new surprises.
The use of naked-eye 3D, holographic imaging, AR augmented reality and other technologies in the scenic spot of "Little Red Lady fox demon" creates a cultural display mode that is different from the traditional one-way degree, providing new experiences such as immersion, interaction, and boundlessness.
None of the "+" is useless. The combination of culture and consumption and technological innovation is not only the magnificence and coolness of the new cultural space, but also the complex functional experience provided by the space: from leisure to aesthetics, from visits to consumption, from material to spiritual.
The new subjects, new forms and new functions of the new cultural space add a brilliant aura to the competition of the urban cultural track.
So what is the reason for this innovation?
Why?
In fact, the exploration of new cultural spaces has been hazy as early as ten years ago. In 2013, CNN featured a special report on Nanjing Pioneer Bookstore and praised it as "China's Most Beautiful Bookstore", a cultural and creative brand with the theme of "academics, cultural salons, coffee, art galleries, films, music, creativity, life, and fashion", which is one of the early samples of the exploration of new cultural spaces.
In March 2021, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and other three ministries and commissions jointly issued the Opinions on Promoting the High-quality Development of Public Cultural Services to encourage innovative cultural formats, and all localities actively promoted the construction of new public cultural spaces accordingly. Industry experts generally believe that the upgrading of public cultural spaces has risen to the strategic level, and the construction of new cultural spaces is being promoted and popularized from grass-roots pilot exploration to the whole country.
In the past ten years, the new cultural space has gone from individual germination to comprehensive popularity, from individual testing of the water to policy encouragement, from small steps of exploration to comprehensive innovation. What accelerated this change?
As the two sides of the coin, production and consumption go hand in hand and complement each other, and the cultural space is the main area where the link between the two is constructed.
Before explaining the reasons for the birth of a new type of cultural space, we may wish to look at the relationship between cultural production and cultural consumption in different cities through data.
According to the China 57 Cities Cultural Space Experience List, among the top 30 cities in terms of cultural productivity, the cultural consumption power ranking of 20 cities has declined, and the gap has reached 30 places. Of course, the bit difference is only a comparison of the relative positions of the two indicators in 57 cities, and cannot represent the absolute performance of the two data. But it can also help us to peek into the leopard and understand the relative weaknesses and strengths of the city in comparison.
A complex cultural game, two columns of teams quietly formed, not to say that the sword is fierce, but it is indeed a different mode of different styles.
Changsha, Zhuhai, Wuxi and other rates of "counterattack team" is a faction of its own, with relatively weak resource supply to support a strong consumer market. Among them, Changsha leapt into the "Dragon Gate" into the top five cultural consumption capacity, and the per capita cultural education and entertainment expenditure of urban residents, and the proportion of cultural and entertainment in the total consumption expenditure of urban residents ranked in the top three of the 57 cities; Guangzhou surpassed Beijing to win the second place in cultural consumption power; Yangzhou, Sanya and other cities cultural consumption ranking has been greatly improved compared with cultural supply.
For such cities, strong consumption energy is difficult to meet and consume in the existing cultural resources, more market players see the blue ocean, take the initiative to join the supply ranks, the active integration of the commercial end is one of them, which is also the initial driving force for the birth of a new cultural space.
In the 1970s, under the combined action of consumerism and the experience economy, the boundaries between public space and private space became blurred, and spatial places that integrated consumption and culture began to appear, which Ray Oldenburg called "the third space".
With the development of the times, the integration of business initiative and culture is not simply the icing on the cake, but gradually becomes a means of self-help.
The continuous impact of the epidemic black swan, the further sinking of online consumption, the emergence of new consumption formats such as script killing, and the original shopping malls, restaurants and other commercial units have become increasingly difficult to grasp the consumption preferences and pain points of young people. In Wu Xiaobo's view, "consumption is out of focus" has become one of the keywords in 2022.
Shanghai Bailian TX Huaihai (Visual China/Photo)
In this case, for cities with weak production and strong consumption, the integration of culture + consumption is a willing two-way rush. The deduction of the trend of the times such as the rise of the national tide and the popularization of 5G has also added new counter-attack variables for cities with "strong production and weak consumption".
In 2021, under the "catfish effect" triggered by henan satellite TV's "Chinese festival" series of programs, a boom in the deep ploughing and reproduction of excellent traditional culture was set off across the country, and the "inner volume" style was introduced, so that the cultural relics collected in museums, the heritage displayed in the vast land, and the words written in ancient books were "alive".
The improvement of the country's economic strength and national status, the sense of national belonging and pride stimulated by the unity against the epidemic, various reasons have made the mentality and aesthetics of young people turn, and they appreciate the profundity and solemnity of traditional culture, and explore the exquisiteness and dexterity of traditional art. The enthusiastic interaction and "wild ordering" of netizens with domestic products such as Hongxing Erke, Li Ning, and Guijin Bird also proves the support of contemporary consumers for the national tide cultural brand.
In addition, a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation are developing in depth, and digital transformation has become the trend of the times. On December 12, 2021, the State Council issued the 14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Digital Economy, proposing to "promote the integrated development of culture and tourism with digitalization". Further open up to encourage the application of new technologies such as VR, AR, and holographic projection, and the integration and innovation of new cultural formats has become the call of the times.
Cities with strong production and weak consumption, such as Luoyang, Xi'an, Chengdu, Hangzhou and Xiamen, have either a long history and rich cultural heritage, or a beautiful environment and good natural resource endowments, or both. The rise of the national tide and the popularization of 5G have made it a "new darling" on the tide of the times, and it is also logical to become the breeding base of the new cultural space of "culture + technology".
The domestic and international dual cycle has become a new pattern of development, the domestic consumer market is becoming more and more important, excellent traditional culture has once again become the mainstream aesthetic, the 5G infrastructure and technology level are becoming more and more mature, the internal and external conditions of cultural space innovation tend to be mature, and we have stood at a new starting point for a decade of innovation in new cultural space.
"Barbell" cultural space innovation
The research team believes that the innovation of cultural space will mainly occur in cities at both ends of the cultural production capacity, showing a new pattern of "barbell-style" urban cultural space.
Wu Xiaobo wrote in "Thirty Years of Turbulence", "Any objective conditions in terms of industrial foundation, policy support, humanistic literacy and even geographical location cannot match the local sense of reform and innovation." "The truth of this industrial development also applies to the path of cultural development.
The source of cultural innovation in weak supply cities comes from consumption energy that is difficult to consume endogenously. That is to say, the "weak production" end of the barbell does not refer to the weakness of cultural production capacity, but to the scissor difference relative to cultural consumption ability.
When a city's cultural supply ranking in 57 cities is smaller than the cultural consumption ranking, strong consumption energy is difficult to meet and consume in the existing cultural resources, and more market players see the blue ocean and take the initiative to join the supply ranks. The most typical of these is the active integration of the commercial end, such as shopping malls, cafes and restaurants. This is happening in Changsha, Zhuhai, Kunming, as well as some Cities in the Yangtze River Delta such as Yangzhou, Changzhou, and Shanghai.
In the 2021 Yangtze River Delta and the most beautiful public cultural space competition in some cities across the country jointly created by dozens of provinces and cities, a total of six space categories were collected, in addition to traditional spaces such as cultural and art spaces and public reading spaces, commercial circle cultural spaces and cross-border cultural spaces were also listed.
Among the 20 most beautiful public cultural space award-winning projects, "Bailian TX Huaihai | Youth Force Center" has become a beautiful landscape. Without the "shopping mall" and without the "mall" suffix, the "Young Force Center" will hold 354 curatorial exhibitions in 2021, through testing and colliding with consumer needs, stimulate new business inspiration, and create a space that conveys multiculturalism and young lifestyles by meeting the complex needs of consumption, exhibition, leisure, and social interaction.
For business establishments of other units, this "+ culture" is more common. Taking Super Wenheyou as an example, the external modern and prosperous commercial complex, but the interior uses a 7-story "old building" to recreate the old Changsha in the 1980s, through the in-depth excavation and detail reproduction of local culture, Changsha Super Wenheyou has awakened the urban memory of a generation and built itself into a "living room" for new and old friends in the city.
Changsha Super Wen Heyou (Visual China/Photo)
The infiltration of commercial power and consumerism injects the impetus for innovation at the end of the weak production barbell. At the other end of the barbell, the city that strongly produces and supplies, the source of power for innovation is the rise of the national tide and the progress of science and technology. The innovation of this model has occurred in Luoyang, Xi'an, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Xiamen and other cities with profound heritage.
The ancient cities with thousand-year-old civilization, encouraged by the trend of national tide culture, deeply excavated their own resource advantages, and greatly stimulated the rise of new cultural tourism formats under the empowerment of AR, VR, cloud computing, AI and other technologies, setting off waves of new cultural space innovation.
During the May Day period, Hangzhou Lin'an Heqiao Town, the 35-meter wall surface all uses virtual reality technology to reproduce the whole picture of Tushan Ancient City, and under the blessing of new technology and IP, this once depressed national 4A-level scenic spot has reappeared lively.
In addition to enriching the feelings of offline cultural space, technology is also shaping online virtual cultural space. 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 shows strong development potential.
Under the impetus of the epidemic, the "Yunyou Museum" online series of cultural activities are widely popular; since the Spring Festival Gala "Tang Palace Night Banquet", a series of Chinese festival programs launched by Henan have exploded on the Internet, and with the help of video works, a new platform for people to share and feel culture has been constructed.
Where is it going?
In Wu Xiaobo's view, we have now entered the K-type era: simply put, the sharp differentiation of the industry. The profits of an industry are likely to be concentrated in only a few companies that can cope with change and achieve innovation.
The K-type era
In the allocation of national resources and policy guidance, the K-type era will not be the end of urban development. However, under the reality of full liberalization and settlement and voting with feet, the flow of talents may reproduce the K-shaped trend: the population of a small number of cities is further concentrated, and the population outflow area is further contracted. This will inevitably indirectly affect the fate of the city. Meeting the experience value and employment value of workers in the new era and improving the cultural experience value of the city is the key to enhancing the attractiveness of the population.
Cities at both ends of the barbell seem to have found opportunities for change, but this road of innovation is full of dangers and obstacles, especially in the integration of culture + technology, culture + consumption, we must grasp the scale and properly handle the "sense of visit and participation" and "center and edge" and other groups of contradictions.
Urban cultural space uses the strategy of interaction and participation to eliminate the sense of distance from space for people "elsewhere", and carefully displays the "visitability" of culture; at the same time, with the trend of commodification of cultural space, the consumption attributes of individuals are infinitely expected and amplified, and the demand for "participation" is placed on the back burner. The contradiction between "sense of participation" and "sense of visit" is reflected in this.
This is the main view of postmodernism, under the control of power and capital, those cultural spaces with distinct local characteristics gradually tend to homogenize, the "sense of place" is lost, the "culturality" is weakened, and the space for citizens to exert creativity and express real needs is shrinking more and more.
The loss of "sense of being in the ground" is also deeply felt by the social anthropologist Xiang Biao. He described it as a "center-periphery" contradiction. In an interview with Wu Qi, he once said, "Today, the cultural significance of 'place' is really emptied. "Many museums and cultural tourism projects have not been able to discover and systematize the voice of the place, and they have lost the local characteristics of the local things, and it is difficult to enter the hearts of the people." The so-called "local voice" emphasizes pluralism, encourages the cultural self-consistency of local society, and appeals to the cultural meaning and spiritual feelings of local residents.
As American urban planner Jane Jacobs argues in The Death and Life of America's Great Cities, diversity is an important factor in sustaining the vitality of cities. Through the rational opening of space, a new cultural space that integrates consumption, technology and culture is one of the sources of this vitality. However, in the future development, we must adhere to the authenticity of culture, avoid excessive infiltration of business, and properly handle the relationship between "sense of visit and participation" and "center and edge".
[1] Wu Xiaobo, "Thirty Years of Turbulence"
[2] Xiang Biao and Wu Qi, "Using Yourself as a Method: A Conversation with Xiang Biao"
[3] Jane Jacobs, Death and Life in America's Great Cities
[4] Wu Leping, Zhang Xiaoping, "Multidimensional Perspectives on Cultural Space Research at Home and Abroad"
[5] Wu Xiaobo, "Foreseeing the 2022 Wu Xiaobo Year-end Show"
[6] Wu Dandan, "Research on urban cultural space construction based on the perspective of social innovation"
[7] Yang Chao, "Research on urban cultural space reproduction based on the theory of cultural capital"
[8] Sun Xiaoyi, The Production of Space and the Rights of The City: Theory, Application and Its Chinese Significance
[9] Fan Sally, "Research on Experiential Cultural Space: A Case Study of Furniture Workshop Space"
[10] Wang Chenfang, "Research on the Optimization of Urban Cultural Spatial Structure under the Background of Cultural Consumption Era"
[11] Yang Qi, "Research on Chengdu Cultural Consumption Space Based on Spatial Production Theory"
[12] Chinese government website, Notice of the State Council on Printing and Distributing the 14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Digital Economy
[13] Pudong released, "Good looking" + "easy to use"! The Most Beautiful Public Cultural Space Competition Upgraded to "National Edition"》
[14] Wang Bin, "The Construction of a New Public Cultural Space Has Won 'High Policy Match'"," The Paper reports
Southern Weekend researcher Qianqian Guo