Industrial heritage reuse ideas on the move: comparative case studies in Shanghai and Chongqing, China

ABSTRACT

Following the transnational flow of industrial heritage conservation, urban China has adopted a cultural strategy – adaptive reuse of industrial heritage – for the transformation of the inner-city industrial landscape. However, a wide gap exists between the concepts and outcomes of conservation practices in most urban regeneration projects. Taking Shanghai and Chongqing as cases, this study traces the origin, process, and outcomes of industrial heritage reuse ideas. The analysis unravels the rationale for the making of discourse on heritage in local urban policies or projects. The territorialization of an idea of adaptively reusing heritage for urban regeneration merely commenced on a poetic imagination but closed on a real estate dimension, which responds to local institutional contextual constraints. This study relates the relationality – territoriality approach to heritage studies, reveals industrial heritage reuse ideas on the move in China, and argues that the reshaping of industrial heritage reuse ideas entails territoriality and relationality.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban regeneration
• industrial heritage reuse
• relationality–territoriality approach
• institutional arrangements
• power relations

Acknowledgement

The author is grateful for the guidance of Professor Bruce Judd in the development of the Chongqing case, and the editor Professor Oliver Bennett and two anonymous reviewers whose comments have been extremely helpful in sharpening the argument.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. The key participants in semi-structured interview include the previous factory owner (coded as F), government officials (G), property developers (D), planning and design consultants (C), experts (E) including university professors, urban planners, property developer, and heritage professionals, and the local artist community (A). There were 15 and 41 interviewees in the Shanghai and Chongqing cases respectively. The semi-structured interview asked about the participants’ contribution in the two projects and sought their opinions about the outcomes of two projects as well as the heritage conservation efforts in Shanghai and Chongqing.

2. The expert panel consists of the representatives of local governments and government departments, property developers, SOEs, and experts in urban planning.

3. The integrity principle derives from the preservation of the full range of a heritage site’s values or all the significant components that reveal a site’s values (ICOMOS China 2015, 67–68).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant No. 52008300]

Notes on contributors

Jie Chen

Jie Chen is Assistant Professor at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, China. She completed her PhD on Planning and Urban Development at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Her research interests have focused on urban regeneration, industrial heritage reuse, urban informality under ambiguous land property rights.