Place-makers in the digital age: Lifestyle migrants and the emergence of lifestyle-oriented urbanization in China

ABSTRACT

The increasing significance of lifestyle migration provides a compelling opportunity for exploring the role that lifestyle migrants play in urban changes. This paper establishes lifestyle migrants as place-makers to comprehend their profound influence on Dali, a city in Southwest China. Three forms of place-making, namely creative, transgressive, and aesthetic place-making, are identified in this paper, which have forged connections between the online and offline worlds and transformed the city into an attractive place for developers, investors, and migrants, thereby giving rise to a distinct mode of urbanization (termed “lifestyle-oriented urbanization” in this paper). By characterizing this urbanization mode and the triad of place-making, this paper illuminates how lifestyle migration has sparked off socio-spatial rearrangements in a peripheral place and how these changes, in turn, have sustained lifestyle migration. Through this exploration, this paper highlights the importance of further research on the interplay between lifestyle migration and urbanization.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• real estate
• urban

Introduction

Lifestyle migration encompasses various demographic cohorts, including retirees, young professionals, and families with children (e.g., Chen & Bao, 2020; Korpela, 2018, 2020; Torkington, 2012). Digital nomads represent a burgeoning group who adopt a location-independent lifestyle. Many countries have instituted preferential policies to allure and accommodate this digital nomadic population. European countries such as Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Malta, and Norway have launched a Digital Nomad Visa scheme¹ and Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand offer migrants a tax exemption on incomes earned overseas.² The rationale behind these policies aligns with the scholarly discourse that acknowledges the positive influences of skilled newcomers on a destination. Sharon Zukin (1982), for example, recognizes that artists with their specific taste and aesthetic style has revitalized the urban center of New York, which used to be plagued by deindustrialization and depopulation. Richard Florida (2002), as another illustration, argues that the creative class, which refers to artists, high-skilled professionals, and managers, is crucial to a competitive city. These earlier research projects, despite not focusing on lifestyle migration, have revealed that newcomers with valuable skills and resources can substantially enhance local economies.

More recently, research attention has been directed specifically toward lifestyle migration with respect to its impacts on long-term residents. Sigler and Wachsmuth (2016), notably, argue that the cosmopolitan lifestyle pursued by the middle class has created gentrification when a transnational demand for housing is coupled with local rent gaps. Cocola-Gant and Lopez-Gay (2020), moreover, explicate that affluent lifestyle migrants have caused gentrification in tourist destinations. Likewise, McElroy (2020) maintains that digital nomads have displaced long-term residents as they move to foreign places. These interventions highlight that, while lifestyle migration boosts the growth of tourism and real estate industries, it has caused unfavorable changes when well-off migrants from privileged backgrounds move to less developed places.

It is important to note, however, that lifestyle migrants are not part of a homogeneous group; they vary in income and wealth, with some positioned at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum. For example, in Waldren’s (2009) research, some migrants live in harsh conditions, contrasting with their counterparts who are affluent and privileged. In other words, lifestyle migrants cannot be simplified as members of the middle class or agents of gentrification. The diversity among lifestyle migrants necessitates further in-depth investigations, particularly by urban researchers. The aim of this paper is to enhance the comprehension of lifestyle migration in the field of urban studies, elucidating the intricate relationship between this form of migration and urbanization. This paper examines the socioeconomic activities of lifestyle migrants, exploring not only how they consume amenities in a destination but also how they have translated their aspiration, creativity, preference, and skill into the socio-spatial arrangements of the destination. In doing so, this paper seeks to reveal how lifestyle migration has sparked off socio-spatial rearrangements and how these changes, in turn, have sustained lifestyle migration.

This paper draws on the case study of Dali, a city in southwest China that has ascended to become a destination for lifestyle migrants since the 2000s. The empirical story of Dali has the potential to illuminate urban changes in other Chinese cities such as Haikou, Lijiang, and Sanya where a similar trend of migration occurs (e.g., Chen & Bao, 2020; Li & Alencar, 2022; Wu et al., 2015; Xu & Wu, 2016; Zhang & Su, 2020). Additionally, Dali’s position as an economically peripheral place in the urban hierarchy makes it a pertinent case for the broader discussion on the variegatedness of urbanization, responding to the robust call for theorizing from “ordinary cities” (Robinson, 2006) and thinking “big about thinking small’ (Bell & Jayne, 2009).

Following Çaǧlar and Glick Schiller’s (2018) approach, this paper conceptualizes lifestyle migrants as place-makers who actively participate in various aspects of urban life. Lew (2017, p. 450) argues that placemaking and place-making, while used interchangeably, are two ends on a continuum of place making ideas, methods, practices, and theories. Placemaking is a top-down, deliberate, and purposeful approach where professional planning is used to market a place and impose social and political norms. On the contrary, place-making refers to a bottom-up, incremental, spontaneous, and unstructured approach that is usually performed by individuals such as long-term residents, migrants, and tourists. To clarify, this paper focuses on the activities of lifestyle migrants at the place-making end. Given their different socio-spatial implications, these activities are categorized into three forms of place-making—creative, transgressive, and aesthetic place-making. By recounting each of them, this paper explicates how lifestyle migrants have transformed a place, once primarily popular among tourists, into an attractive destination for entrepreneurs, investors, and migrants. Within this transformation, a new mode of urbanization emerges, which I call lifestyle-oriented urbanization.

In what follows, I first explain that lifestyle migrants can be productively conceptualized as place-makers in urban settings, after which China’s urbanization is delineated to contextualize this paper. The research methods are then outlined, with a clarification of why Dali makes an illuminating case for understanding lifestyle migration through the urban lens. In this section, I also introduce how three forms of place-making emerge in the data analysis process. Subsequently, the research findings are presented, followed by a conclusion that summarizes key points.

Establishing lifestyle migrants as place-makers

In the late 2000s, O’Reilly and Benson (2009) identified lifestyle migration as a distinct form of migration due to the significance of lifestyle choice in migration decisions. For O’Reilly and Benson (2009, p. 11), lifestyle migrants are capable and relatively privileged individuals who can respond to “practical, moral, and emotional imperatives” by the means of relocation. Clearly, they are not motivated by economic or political factors (Korpela, 2020; Torkington, 2012). The purpose of moving is to pursue a new, meaningful, and authentic way of life (Åkerlund & Sandberg, 2015; O’Reilly, 2014; O’Reilly & Benson, 2009). For example, Western people escape the trap of consumerism to seek spiritual and community ethos in less developed regions (Korpela, 2009), and young women run away from parental oversight to experience the transition to adulthood as they move abroad (Trundle, 2009).

While most research on lifestyle migration is led by migration researchers who address motivations, identities, and post-migration lives (e.g., Eimermann, 2015; Osbaldiston, 2022), several urban researchers have delved into the phenomenon shedding light on its urban implications. One notable line of inquiry revolves around the gentrification potential of lifestyle migration, pioneered by Sigler and Wachsmuth (2016). They argue that the arrival of transnational middle-class individuals in a historic district of Panama City has given rise to gentrification. Sigler and Wachsmuth (2016) coin the term “transnational gentrification” to highlight the globalization of rent gaps, which has since inspired research on lifestyle migration through an urban lens (e.g., Cocola-Gant & Lopez-Gay, 2020; McElroy, 2020). Navarrete Escobedo (2020), for example, demonstrates that lifestyle migrants have profoundly reconfigured Mexico’s real estate market, consequently affecting lower-income people’s right to the city. Related to gentrification research is a smaller body of literature centered on place marketing and urban speculation. Koh (2022), as an example, reveals that the surplus supply of residential units at the Malaysia-Singapore border has been advertised to lifestyle migrants who are seen as prospective buyers. Likewise, Hayes (2014) states that low-cost destinations in Ecuador have been promoted to North American retirees who display an interest in geoarbitrage. Overall, the urban scholarship has recognized lifestyle migration as a force driving changes in the real estate industry.

Expanding on this avenue of research, this paper explores urban changes that include but extend beyond the purview of real estate investment. To specify, this paper scrutinizes the socioeconomic activities of lifestyle migrants to gain insights into what and how urban changes have materialized on the ground and how these changes, in turn, have contributed to the continuation of lifestyle migration. To facilitate this endeavor, Çaǧlar and Glick Schiller’s (2018) conceptualization of international migrants is borrowed to comprehend the role of internal lifestyle migrants.³ In their research on urban restructuring in three cities—Mardin in Turkey, Manchester in the U.S., and Halle in Germany—Çaǧlar and Glick Schiller (2018) conceive migrants from around the world as city-makers who diversify the ethnic makeup of the city, provide inexpensive labor in service industries, and, more importantly, engage in the constant negotiation of displacement/emplacement within the ongoing processes of capital accumulation. In this way, Çaǧlar and Glick Schiller (2018) understand international migrants, who used to be researched as peripheral social groups, as active urban actors and hence acknowledge their important participation in economic, cultural, political, and social aspects of city-making.

Following their approach, this paper understands lifestyle migrants as place-makers. Within the field of migration studies, place-making is apprehended as a pivotal mechanism through which migrants establish attachment, identity, rightfulness, and a sense of belonging when they arrive in a new place (e.g., Gill, 2010; Li & Alencar, 2022; Palmberger, 2022; Pemberton & Phillimore, 2018). The use of place-making in this paper, however, serves a different purpose. As the aim of this paper is to understand the relationship between lifestyle migration and urbanization, place-making is used to analyze the activities engaged in by lifestyle migrants that have brought about urban changes. Seeing lifestyle migrants as place-makers allows for a nuanced investigation of how their activities have incrementally reorganized socio-spatial arrangements, which are often prescribed by powerful authorities, real estate developers, as well as design and planning professionals.

In addition to its analytical efficacy, this conceptualization aligns seamlessly with theoretical insights developed in previous research. For example, it is consistent with Massey’s (2005, p. 141) theorization of place, who argues that place is not a thing but is in a process of becoming with the “coming together of trajectories.” Lifestyle migrants who come from diverse backgrounds embody a variety of trajectories, and their encounter in a destination, which Qian (2022) would call as “provisional intersections,” constitutes a process where the destination experiences remaking. Hence, lifestyle migrants can be rightly theorized as place-makers. In fact, according to Pow (2009), all human beings are inescapably place-makers as they always fashion places based on their ideas and imaginations.

In the digital age, people’s place-making capabilities have been enhanced by technological innovations. Townsend (2013), for example, argues that new technologies have afforded new ways of seeing, imagining, and creating places among urban residents who increasingly become tech-savvy agents of urban changes. de Waal and de Lange (2019), moreover, claim that digital platforms promise the opportunity of hacking, which can potentially evoke inclusive, open, and collaborative place-making. Within the context of migration, Palmberger (2022) notices that refugees in Vienna have used information and communication technologies to navigate citizenship and maintain transnational care relations. Similarly, Witteborn (2012) recognizes that forced migrants in Berlin and Munich have used social media platforms to carve out a collective sense of belonging. In China, older lifestyle migrants use smartphones to cultivate interpersonal connections and a sense of community (Li & Alencar, 2022), and rural-to-urban migrants use social media platforms to foster a feeling of being at home (Costa & Wang, 2019). These empirical examples corroborate the assertation made by Halegoua (2019) that digital technologies have facilitated the emplacement of people within urban spaces, despite their disparate positions of social power, differential access to resources, and different levels of digital literacy. Considering these new affordances, this paper takes the digital dimension of place-making into account, examining lifestyle migrants’ online activities in addition to what they do offline.

In brief, this paper draws upon theoretical and empirical insights to conceptualize lifestyle migrants as place-makers who straddle across online and offline worlds. The examination of their place-making activities facilitates the understanding of the multifaceted nature of lifestyle migration as well as its significant urban implications. Moreover, this paper engages with the research on China, particularly the scholarly literature on internal migration and different modes of urbanization, which are outlined in the next section.

Contextualizing lifestyle migration in China

Lifestyle migration is a relatively new phenomenon in China, where rural-to-urban labor migration remains the dominant form over the past 4 decades, representing the largest population movement in human history (Johnson, 2017; Zhang & Song, 2003). Urban research so far is usually oriented toward rural migrants concerning their influences on urban spaces, lives, and governance (e.g., Lee, 1998; Solinger, 1999; Swider, 2015; Zhan, 2018). Comparatively, lifestyle migrants are less researched through the urban lens; the existing research concentrates more on migrants themselves, including their demographic features, identities, and imaginaries, rather than on their interactions with urban spaces. Chen and Bao (2020), for example, examine the seasonal movement of retirees from Northern China to Sanya and Haikou, revealing that their perceptions of time have influenced their identities and post-migration lives. Zhang and Su (2020), as another example, research well-off lifestyle migrants in Lijiang, demonstrating that they have used various strategies to develop an ideal home.

Unlike rural migrants who move for work opportunities (Fan, 2008; Zhang, 2001), lifestyle migrants in these accounts display pronounced agency when engaging in tourism-related and leisure-based activities, a characteristic they share with lifestyle migrants in other countries (e.g., Åkerlund & Sandberg, 2015; Benson & O’Reilly, 2009; Ono, 2015; Torkington, 2012). This characteristic distinguishes lifestyle migration from rural-to-urban migration, making it an important topic for research on China’s urbanism and urbanization. In fact, this characteristic, which exhibits a distinct facet of behaviors and preferences, can potentially give rise to new spaces in China, given what has transpired in other countries like Spain (e.g., Cocola-Gant & Lopez-Gay, 2020; O’Reilly, 2017). Therefore, lifestyle migration is investigated in this paper in a way that emphasizes its significant role in urban changes.

In China, several modes of urbanization have unfolded in peripheral places, with “rural urbanization” (Shen, 2006) being a well-studied one. In post-reform China, many small towns and villages rely on collectively owned township and village enterprises (TVEs) for urbanization, a mode also known as “in-situ urbanization” (Zhu, 2000) or “urbanization from below” (Cui & Ma, 1999). TVEs have proliferated in the 1980s and 1990s when the state relaxed its tight control on rural industrialization. They absorbed surplus rural laborers, restructured rural economies, and transformed market towns into urban centers (Shen, 2006). With China’s gradual integration into the global economy, small towns, especially those in the Pearl River Delta, have also attracted foreign investment in export-led manufacturing industries and been urbanized by the influx of global capital, representing the second mode of urbanization (Smart & Lin, 2007).

Additionally, there is the third mode called “tourism urbanization” (Qian et al., 2012). Originally proposed by Mullins (1991, 1992, tourism urbanization refers to the process whereby urban areas are specially developed for the production, sale, and consumption of tourism entertainment (see also Gladstone, 1998). Unlike the first two modes where spaces of production are created, tourism urbanization unfolds as spaces of consumption are produced (Qian et al., 2012). In China, due to the expanding demand for leisure consumption, tourism provides momentum for urban development in cities like Sanya (Chen et al., 2022), Zhapo (Qian et al., 2012), and Dali (in this paper). Qian et al. (2012) argue that this mode of urbanization has brought about rapid economic growth, socio-spatial reorganization, as well as a change in local employment structure as peasants become involved in the tourism industry.

The third mode is certainly the most relevant for lifestyle migration, as lifestyle migrants resemble tourists in at least two ways. First, they usually have visited a place as a tourist before deciding to move there (Åkerlund and Sandberg, 2015; Benson & O’Reilly, 2009). In other words, lifestyle migrants are former tourists of a certain place. Second, lifestyle migrants share spaces with tourists, albeit that they do not identify themselves as tourists (Cocola-Gant & Lopez-Gay, 2020; O’Reilly, 2017). Their arrival often contributes to the formation of tourist enclaves (e.g., Cocola-Gant & Lopez-Gay, 2020).

Nonetheless, the role of lifestyle migrants in urbanization should not be conflated with that of tourists, an assertation this paper seeks to substantiate. As this paper shows, new urban spaces have been created by and for lifestyle migrants. These spaces simultaneously appeal to tourists, thus bearing a striking resemblance to spaces produced under tourism urbanization; they, however, exist outside the conventional scope of tourism urbanization. This paper ventures to characterize these spaces in relation to the place-making activities of lifestyle migrants so as to highlight an emerging mode of urbanization—“lifestyle-oriented urbanization.” It has materialized in Dali and potentially other places that experience a comparable influx of lifestyle migrants.

Research methods and the case of Dali

Dali is a county-level city in southwest China, covering a land area of 1,815 square kilometers and hosting over 650,000 local-born residents as of 2022.⁴ It is nestled between Mount Cangshan and Lake Erhai, one of China’s largest freshwater lakes. The city was officially re-opened to foreign tourists following China’s “Open Door” reforms and has since remained a popular tourist destination. In 2013, a New York Times article⁵ reported an emerging trend of lifestyle migration in China, where people move from polluted megacities to smaller cities like Dali for better air qualities and healthier lifestyles (see also Zhang, 2018). I noticed this trend in the same year when carried out a research project on Dali’s tourism growth. From 2013 onward, I have done extensive research on the city, seeing it become a population destination for lifestyle migrants, real estate developers, tourists, and vacation-home owners.

During the last 2 decades, Dali has captured media attention and served as a prominent backdrop in many movies, reality shows, and television series. Notably, some of these movies and television series feature post-migration lives (e.g., Breakup Buddies and Meet Yourself), portraying the city as an ideal destination for those who aspire for a pleasant life. With the substantial influx of lifestyle migrants, Dali has undergone remarkable changes, making it an apt case for investigating the dynamics between lifestyle migration and urbanization. The empirical story of Dali offers insights into urban changes in other places that have experienced a comparable trend of lifestyle migration, including Chinese cities such as Lijiang (Zhang & Su, 2020) and Sanya (Chen & Bao, 2020 and cities outside of China such as Cuenca in Ecuador (Hayes, 2014), Mazatlán in Mexico, and El Campello in Spain (Lizarraga et al., 2015).

The case study of Dali is conducted through multiple data collection methods including interviews, life histories, and observations. The fieldwork in 2014 provides an overview of the expansion of tourism as well as its cultural, economic, and social impacts. The subsequent rounds of fieldwork in 2017, 2018, and 2019 reveals the complexity of lifestyle migration, including but not limited to the socioeconomic diversity and a variety of aspirations and preferences among migrants. The findings presented in this paper derive from semi-structured interviews with 25 lifestyle migrants as well as observations of numerous events and urban scenes between 2017 and 2019. All migrants had stayed in Dali for at least six months at the time of the interview, and they were recruited through convenience sampling and purposive sampling. Each interview lasted one hour on average and several individuals were interviewed more than once. As migration is embedded in the life course (Clark & Huang, 2004), life histories were collected with a small number of interviewees to comprehend their migration decisions and post-migration lives. Moreover, I visited events and points of interest mentioned by lifestyle migrants to supplement my understanding of their activities in Dali. I paid attention to new spaces produced by and for lifestyle migrants. For example, I visited Renmin Street in Dali Old Town several times, observing how migrant vendors operate their business. To triangulate the first-hand data, I consulted advertisements, government reports, and newspaper articles that are publicly accessible.

All materials were organized along the data collection process, which allows refamiliarization (Crang, 2005). They were then well through line by line for me to gain a sense of what had been covered. When analyzing the interview data, “open coding” (Crang, 2005) was used to record initial ideas that emerged from the data. For example, I wrote down street vending, friends, freedom and other codes as I open coded the interviews with lifestyle migrants. Next, “axial coding” (Cope, 2010) was performed to identify connections between initial codes and combine them into a smaller set of themes. Three categories of place-making activities emerged, prompting me to revisit the data for a more refined categorization, during which “selective coding” (Cope, 2010) was used. I linked these activities to the wider academic literature to differentiate and understand them, after which each category was given a meaningful name. Three descriptive words (creative, transgressive, and aesthetic) were drawn respectively from Florida’s (2002) creative class proposition, Cresswell’s (1996) in place/out of place thesis, and Degen and Rose’s (2022) urban aesthetic research to distinguish three forms of place-making, which are elaborated in the next section.

Lifestyle migrants and place-making in Dali

Many lifestyle migrants had studied or worked in megacities, and a small number of them are affluent individuals who easily translate their creativity, identity, and taste into their post-migration activities. Despite the diversity among them, lifestyle migrants encompass four groups: (1) affluent entrepreneurs and investors who are involved in various businesses across different industries; (2) small entrepreneurs who run their own business, mainly in the tourism industry; (3) employees who are hired by the first two groups; (4) freelancers who usually juggle multiple activities such as street vending and bar singing.⁶ These newcomers have brought about urban changes in Dali through three forms of place-making.

Creative place-making

Around the world, creative professionals who move to peripheral places tend to be active urban actors (e.g., Ocejo, 2019; Waitt & Gibson, 2009). Newcomers in Newburgh (a city located 60 miles north of New York City), for example, “frame the city as a place ripe for development and themselves as the actors capable of developing it” (Ocejo, 2019, p. 1173). Rather than generating the discourse, newcomers in Dali have engaged in the actual production of new spaces. One telling example is Dali Art Factory (Figure 1). A few years ago, a well-off migrant came to rent and regenerate the state-owned factory complex, which had been abandoned for more than a decade (Long et al., 2019). The factory was transformed into an art zone, resembling 798 Art Zone in Beijing, Eastern Suburb Memory Park (Dongjiao Jiyi) in Chengdu, and Pier-2 Art Center in Kaohsiung. Individual rooms are subleased to entrepreneurs, most of who are creative newcomers operating their studios, workshops, galleries, and handicraft shops. Pop-up market events are occasionally held in the courtyard, where paintings, photographs, handicrafts, antiques, or anything that is deemed to have cultural, creative, or aesthetic value by event organizers are sold (interview with a vendor in 2019). Its artistic director said that Dali Art Factory aims to provide an affordable and exclusive space for artists and thus the available rooms are only rented to those who will use them for art-related activities (Yang, 2015).

Figure 1. A renovated building at Dali Art Factory. Source: Author.

Siji Market is another example where creative newcomers establish a new marketplace on the site of a former farmer’s market. There are semi-permanent shops (converted from shipping containers) and pop-up vending stalls, most of which are operated by lifestyle migrants to sell a variety of goods such as hand-brewed beer, vintage clothing, and antiques. Many vendors present what they sell as cultural products with distinguishable uniqueness, sophisticated craftsmanship, and dedicated ingenuity. A lifestyle migrant who works at Siji Market said, the preceding farmers’ market was declining when her boss rented and revitalized it (interview in 2018). An opposite story, however, was told by local-born residents—they disclosed that the farmers’ market had been bustling before it was squeezed into a corner by Siji Market (interviews in 2018). Two marketplaces are separated by a tall wall. Due to the reduced land size, the farmers’ market hosts less than 10% of its original vendors. Worse still, many shoppers shop elsewhere, thinking that the market no longer exists (interview with a vendor in 2019). Apparently, the arrival of the so-called creative class (Florida, 2002) has displaced long-term residents, though less acutely than in other contexts (e.g., Catungal et al., 2009; Ocejo, 2019).

Local artists and craftspeople are invited to Siji Market, with do-it-yourself activities such as knitting and tie-dying being arranged to encourage visitors’ participation. These arrangements fall within the ambit of creative place-making, defined by Crisman (2022) as a place-based, collaborative, and participatory process. They, however, only involve a select group of people, mostly lifestyle migrants and tourists. Local villagers are largely absent at Siji Market except for those who are hired to prepare food for visitors (Figure 2). When asked, villagers who live nearby said that they do not feel Siji Market is a place for them. One of them said: “I never went to the place. I heard that it’s a group of newcomers selling stuffs there. I’m not interested.” Another villager said: “it’s a place for newcomers. I don’t know what they’re doing in that place” (interviews in 2018 and 2019).

Figure 2. Local villagers in ethnic costumes prepare food for visitors. Source: Author.

Dali Art Factory and Siji Market show that creative newcomers have produced new spaces of consumption in Dali, which boast a visually captivating environment, a vibrant artistic aura, and a fusion of cultural and creative experiences. They are exclusionary by design or in practice, and have become enclaves for nonlocal people, analogous to “foreign only” enclaves in Barcelona where lifestyle migrants and tourists congregate (Cocola-Gant & Lopez-Gay, 2020). These new spaces, when their images, texts, and videos are posted online, make the city appear to be a suitable destination for those who aspire for creativity, interaction, and a sense of community (more on this later).

Transgressive place-making

While some spaces are produced by lifestyle migrants through formal arrangements with local authorities, others arise in a rather informal and spontaneous way as lifestyle migrants inscribe their aspirations and dispositions on urban spaces. The street market on Renmin Street represents a remarkable example. Across China, city leaders consider street vending as ugly to potential investors and thus control and regulate it amid inter-city competitions for investment (Solinger, 2013). In many cities, street vendors are predominantly rural-to-urban migrants and urban laid-off workers, who constantly suffer from the plight of harassment, corruption, and sometimes violence (e.g., Bell & Loukaitou-Sideris, 2014; Hanser, 2016). Vendors on Renmin Street are strikingly different, as many are young, well-educated lifestyle migrants (Yu & Fan, 2014). In the early 2010s, several pioneers set up vending stalls, despite the citywide ban on street vending, and were soon joined by other newcomers (Yu & Fan, 2014). Street vendors sell handicrafts (e.g., braided bracelets and leather wallets), CDs, postcards, and small accessories; they also sell services such as hair braiding, tattooing, and music and dance performance (Figure 3). The street market was unusual in China at that time due to the persistent ban on street vending. On social media platforms, people called Renmin Street “the paradise for wenqing” (wenqing means young people interested in arts and culture).

Figure 3. Vending stalls on Renmin Street. Source: Author.

Local authorities named Renmin Street the “Culture Street” and designated it as a pedestrian-only street to encourage vending activities. This recognition made Renmin Street a space of exception to the street vending ban. While spaces are usually constructed by powerful authorities to maintain order and propriety (Cresswell, 1996), this example demonstrates the transgressive nature of vending activities performed by lifestyle migrants, which have successfully challenged the prescribed use of street space and led to a regulatory revision. The bustling street scene posted online presents Dali as a tolerant place where autonomy, freedom, improvisation, and spontaneity are accepted.

Another example is the proliferation of guesthouses in peri-urban villages. In China, each household in a village is allocated a piece of housing land as a form of welfare on the stipulation that the land cannot be sold or rented to people from outside of the village (Ho, 2017; Xu et al., 2009). Nonetheless, lifestyle migrants in Dali have rented housing land from local villagers to operate a guesthouse business. Guesthouse owners hire casual workers, many of whom are young lifestyle migrants. These guesthouses bring urban dwellers and the urban way of life to the countryside and precipitate the urbanization of peri-urban areas. In this example, lifestyle migrants have transgressed the rural land system by commodifying housing land and producing new spaces of consumption. As lifestyle migrants and tourists post peri-urban landscapes, including exquisitely designed guesthouses, on social media platforms, the city becomes increasingly known for its rural idylls.

These two examples display that lifestyle migrants have shaped urban spaces in a way that contests top-down planning and regulation. Dali in this process has been displayed online as an ideal destination for people who would like to experiment with new entrepreneurial ideas, including those that might cause transgressions. In this regard, the influence of lifestyle migrants on the destination extends beyond making an ideal home (e.g., Zhang & Su, 2020) to encompass the facilitation of urbanization and migration, which is achieved through aesthetic place-making.

Aesthetic place-making

Hjorth and Pink (2014) argue that photo-sharing on smartphone apps has become part of the ways that online and offline worlds are negotiated, during which smartphone users, the digital realm, and the physical realm are intertwined in a place-making process. With technological innovations, smartphone users share not only photos but also audios and videos online, effectively participating in aesthetic production (Degen & Rose, 2022). For example, those who post snapshots of the Culture Mile in London have contributed to place branding, as they create a favorable image of the place highlighting its functional, symbolic, and experiential aspects (Degen & Rose, 2022).

Through similar sharing practice, lifestyle migrants have shaped Dali in the online world, as the wanghong economy takes off in China. Wanghong is the Chinese term for influencers, and the wanghong economy refers to a business ecosystem that seeks to commodify a wanghong’s influence over their followers (Han, 2021, p. 319). Over the past decade, the use of wanghong has expanded—the term has been widely used as a prefix to a person, a snack, a restaurant, a building, a neighborhood, a city, or anything that becomes popular online. For example, a wanghong guesthouse refers to one that is highly recommended on the internet, usually with visually appealing features.

Within Dali, Lake Erhai is one of wanghong tourist attractions and has attracted numerous lifestyle migrants to pursue a guesthouse business along the lake. A migrant used up his savings to build a dream house near the lake. To make the house appealing to tourists, he has decorated it with plants, lights, and, in his own words, “anything that would look good in photos.” He continued: “Every lake-facing room provides a floor-to-ceiling window so guests can enjoy stunning views of the lake and take beautiful photos.” This migrant regularly posts photos of his house, Erhai, and other intriguing scenes online (interview in 2017), which is indeed a common practice among business owners in Dali. Unlike older migrants in Sanya who mainly use smartphone apps for social connections (see Li & Alencar, 2022), these business owners harness the symbolic power of images, which can not only aid tourism but also encourage lifestyle migration, according to Cocola-Gant and Lopez-Gay (2020).

Most lifestyle migrants interviewed like sharing delightful moments on social media platforms. For example, an interviewee posts photos when she visits a beautiful place or enjoys delicious meals. Another interviewee usually shares photos of idyllic landscapes. Like the photos of the Cultural Mile (see Degen & Rose, 2022), the photos of Dali are rarely just casual snaps—they are deliberately crafted emphasizing sensory qualities such as taste, texture, color, and pattern. These photos capture dramatically aestheticized moments, as Degen and Rose (2022) would argue, and coalesce into a visual narrative that presents the city as an ideal place to visit, stay, and make investment.

By posting a vast array of crafted photos and videos, lifestyle migrants have created an appealing atmosphere of Dali in the online world where the city is staged as an aestheticized commodity that can be sold to prospective investors and migrants. The atmosphere of a place is more compelling than place image, Böhme (2014) maintains, as the former is produced by people who actually live there revealing the way life goes on in that place. That is to say, the atmosphere of Dali, co-created by lifestyle migrants online, shows what the city looks like as well as how its residents feel it.

Several interviewees recalled that their decision to move was influenced by the photos, texts, and videos shared by previous migrants (interviews in 2018 and 2019), revealing that lifestyle migrants’ online sharing practice can really encourage lifestyle migration. Apparently, new technologies have facilitated this place-making process, aligning with Halegoua’s (2019) observations.

To sum up, lifestyle migrants have engaged in three forms of place-making. Creative place-making involves the so-called creative class who translate their ideas and preferences in the creation of exclusionary spaces. Transgressive place-making, engaged in by small entrepreneurs such as street vendors and guesthouse owners, challenges place norms and expectations set by local authorities. Aesthetic place-making, performed by many migrants in their daily life, establishes an appealing atmosphere of the city in the digital realm. These three forms, while exhibiting differences with respect to urban implications, often intersect. For example, a street vendor who posts photos of Dali engages in transgressive and aesthetic place-making simultaneously, and a pop-up market organizer who shares videos of the event performs creative and aesthetic place-making at the same time. In fact, three forms of place-making have reinforced each other. Notably, transgressive place-making broadens opportunities for lifestyle migrants to engage in creative place-making, creating new spaces that feature culture and creativity and fulfill lifestyle aspirations. For example, lifestyle migrants have enclosed and privatized the waterfront area along Lake Erhai to set a café, lounge, or photography studio.⁷ Moreover, both creative place-making and transgressive place-making create scenes (e.g., street market) that can be captured by digital visual tools, thereby facilitating aesthetic place-making. Collectively, the triad of place-making have connected the online and offline worlds, transitioning Dali from a tourist destination to a place that entails desirable lifestyles. More importantly, they have contributed to the emergence of a new mode of urbanization.

Lifestyle-oriented urbanization in Dali

Over the past 2 decades, Dali has experienced urban changes that I argue to be the moments of lifestyle-oriented urbanization. While this mode of urbanization resembles tourism urbanization (see Qian et al., 2012) in terms of the appearance of new spaces of consumption, it displays four distinguishing features. First, lifestyle migrants, particularly through creative and transgressive place-making, are agential creators of new spaces, challenging the conventional understanding that the socio-spatial (re)arrangements in China are led by the state (see for example Li et al., 2014; Wu, 2018, 2020). Certainly, state actors remain indispensable, as they provide a favorable environment for newcomers. For example, the expansion of Renmin Street market or the establishment of Dali Art Factory would not be possible without their support. New spaces created by lifestyle migrants have generated a circle where more lifestyle migrants are attracted to Dali, who in turn contribute to the production of new spaces.

In this looping process lies the second feature of lifestyle-oriented urbanization—urban development has been organized around desirable lifestyles. Following the arrival of lifestyle migrants, several leading developers in China have launched real estate projects in Dali, many of which are built on barren and uncultivated land. The developers bought the land at a low price and then transformed it into expensive residential and commercial units worth thousands of times their original value (interview in 2018). A real estate professional introduced that these properties are sold to lifestyle migrants and vacation-home buyers who aspire to lead a pleasant life in Dali (interview in 2018). The Dream Land, a newly built resort town on the east side of Lake Erhai, is one of these projects. The new town combines retail spaces, tourist accommodations, and luxury housing, and is advertised as China’s Santorini due to its picturesque lake views and distinctive architectural style. The developer promises its buyers an exotic lifestyle without the need to travel abroad. Real estate projects like the Dream Land are designed and marketed in a way where a certain version of lifestyle is attached to the properties, which in effect urbanize rural areas and give rise to spaces exclusive to well-off newcomers.

With the influx of lifestyle migrants, the demographic makeup of the city has changed, representing the third feature of lifestyle-oriented urbanization. In China, newcomers residing in a place for at least six months are regarded as residents of that place and used toward the calculation of its urbanization rate. According to the official data, the number of Dali’s residents increased by approximately 2% from 2012 to 2017. This increase does not reflect the actual number of lifestyle migrants, however, as many do not report their arrival to local authorities and thus their residence in Dali is not recorded by the official data. A government employee estimated that in 2017, the number of migrants exceeded 120,000, including lifestyle migrants and rural-to-urban migrants (interview in 2018). While there is no data available on the exact number of lifestyle migrants, this group constitute a visible portion of the city’s urban population.

In this regard, lifestyle-oriented urbanization shares similarity with “spontaneous urbanization” that involves rural-to-urban migrants (see Shen, 2006). In both processes, the movement of migrants increases the urbanization rate of a place. Whereas rural-to-urban migrants are disadvantaged and marginalized in a destination (e.g., Solinger, 1999; Swider, 2015), lifestyle migrants articulate their agency and remain active urban actors. This can be attributed, at least partly, to the positionality of lifestyle migrants, many of whom are well-educated and resourceful. A government employee commented that Dali used to be unattractive to investors and high-skilled workers, compared with big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. For local authorities, the arrival of lifestyle migrants brings in creativity and skills as well as financial resources necessary for urban growth; their socioeconomic activities are thus readily supported (interview in 2018). In other words, the economic constraints faced by peripheral places like Dali have led local authorities to embrace creative and transgressive place-making performed by lifestyle migrants. This constitutes the fourth feature of lifestyle-oriented urbanization—it is likely to unfold in places that seek growth but are constrained by limited resources.

These features define lifestyle-oriented urbanization in Dali, and possibly other Chinese cities of similar economic conditions. They also seem to apply in other countries such as Ecuador (Hayes, 2014), Malaysia (Koh, 2022), and Panama (Sigler & Wachsmuth, 2016) where demographic change and real estate investment have been caused by lifestyle migration. It is important, however, to recognize that this emerging mode of urbanization may acquire additional features in a different context, especially where urban governance and policymaking operate differently. Therefore, the manifestation of lifestyle-oriented urbanization needs further empirical research.

Conclusion

Within urban studies, migrants are seldom understood as active actors in urban transformation, despite a small body of literature that seeks to recognize their role (e.g., Çaǧlar & Glick Schiller, 2011, 2018). When it comes to the relatively new phenomenon of lifestyle migration, the urban scholarship focuses on the influence of well-off newcomers on tourism and real estate industries (e.g., Cocola-Gant & Lopez-Gay, 2020; McElroy, 2020; Sigler & Wachsmuth, 2020), remaining insufficient to account for the diversity among lifestyle migrants. Following Çaǧlar and Glick Schiller’s (2018) approach that centers migrants in urban research, this paper conceptualizes lifestyle migrants as place-makers, which proves to be analytically productive in illuminating various post-migration activities that spark off urban changes in Dali. These activities are categorized into creative, transgressive, and aesthetic place-making, which connect the online and offline worlds to the effect of transitioning the city from a tourist destination to an attractive place where lifestyle aspirations can be fulfilled. On the one hand, lifestyle migrants articulate agency when use and refashion urban spaces, demonstrating how bottom-up, incremental, and spontaneous activities can challenge top-down planning and regulation. In this sense, their activities display opportunities for building a more democratic and inclusive place (see similar argument in Crisman, 2022). On the other hand, lifestyle migrants have contributed to the creation of exclusionary spaces, a process observed in other places (e.g., Cocola-Gant & Lopez-Gay, 2020). While lifestyle migrants stimulate growth in the tourism and real estate industries, their presence has caused displacement and exclusion. This dual effect underscores the intricate role of lifestyle migrants in urban settings, expanding on what has been discussed in urban research.

By recognizing the triad of place-making, this paper draws attention to the emergence of lifestyle-oriented urbanization in Dali. This mode of urbanization is different from other modes due to the significant contributions made by lifestyle migrants, who not only consume amenities in the destination but also have translated their aspiration, creativity, skill, and taste into its socio-spatial arrangements. In this regard, lifestyle-oriented urbanization differs from tourism urbanization, despite both involving the creation of new consumption spaces. Alongside lifestyle migrants are real estate projects that are organized and advertised in a way that emphasizes desirable lifestyles. Under lifestyle-oriented urbanization, the demographic makeup of the city has changed with lifestyle migrants constituting a noticeable portion of urban population. Certainly, this urbanization mode is contingent on local economic conditions. This paper shows that lifestyle migrants are readily welcomed by local authorities in Dali, a positionality that explains why their place-making activities are allowed, or even supported. In other words, economically peripheral places are more likely to experience lifestyle-oriented urbanization due to the growth constraints they face.

Overall, this paper enriches the limited urban scholarship on lifestyle migration. Three forms of place-making can potentially serve as an analytical framework for researching the influence of lifestyle migration on urban spaces in and outside of China. The new mode of urbanization delivers insights into urban China research and enhances the understanding of the relationship between lifestyle migration and urbanization.

Acknowledgments

The author expresses sincere appreciation to the editor and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, which have significantly enhanced the quality of this paper. The author also acknowledges the contributions of research participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yawei Zhao

Yawei Zhao is a lecturer in the Department of Geography at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on digital technologies in the urban context, and she also works on the intersection of lifestyle migration and the urbanization of peripheral places. Her work has been published in Area, City, Cities, and Geoforum.

Notes

1. A list of countries can be found: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2022/10/27/live-and-work-in-europe-more-countries-including-portugal-offering-trendy-digital-nomad-visas/

2. More details can be found: https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/leisure/article/3195801/which-southeast-asian-countries-offer-digital-nomad-visas

3. Internal means that the migrants under study move between places within the same country.

4. The data can be accessed: http://www.yndali.gov.cn/dlszf/c103380/tydp.shtml

5. The article can be accessed: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/world/asia/urbanites-flee-chinas-smog-for-blue-skies.html

6. This categorization does not include those who do not engage in income-generating activities.

7. This is no longer the case since the mass demolition in 2018.