Moving Urban Sculptures towards Sustainability: The Urban Sculpture Planning System in China

Zhe Liu, Pieter Uyttenhove and Xin Zheng
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Zhe Liu: School of Architecture, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
Pieter Uyttenhove: Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent University, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
Xin Zheng: School of Architecture, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 12, 1-24

Abstract: Following the continuous development characterized by large-scale constructions, Chinese urban development has shifted to the promotion of refined urban space quality. Urban sculpture, an important part of public arts, has been receiving increased attention in China as an important carrier for highlighting urban characteristics, culture, and history within cultural policies. As a type of cultural capital, it offers innovative methods to address the issues of economic, social, and environmental sustainability, in particular cultural sustainability. Interdisciplinary theories of urban planning are creatively applied to guide, coordinate, and improve the sustainable production of urban sculptures in China. This research was initiated to: (1) Illustrate how urban sculptures are produced through an urban planning system in the context of China; (2) explain what kind of influencing factors in relation to sustainability exist, mainly within the framework of planning strategies and cultural policies; and (3) put forward sustainable planning strategies to produce urban sculptures. To answer the above inquiries, we reviewed more than 100 articles, plans, and government documents, and we conducted several semi-structured interviews. The article argues that urban planning strategies and policies have been conceived as strategic instruments by the Chinese municipal governments to realize sustainable development of urban sculptures. Our findings would enrich knowledge on geographic studies of public art planning through the contextualized analysis of a Chinese urban sculpture planning system. It also fills the gap in the literature on the sustainability of urban sculptures by approaching the perspectives of planning strategies and cultural policies.

Keywords: Urban sculpture planning system; public art; sustainable urban sculpture development; cultural policy; management; heritage; public participation; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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