Chinese con-temporary cities. Shaping spaces through narratives.

The relationship between contemporary cities and culture is a complex one. While during the latest decades the post-modern city’s image has been mainly shaped through the juxtaposition of single iconic projects, in recent years new inflections of city-making are emerging – in between physical transformations and narrative construction, presenting several facets – often becoming more visible in realities under fast transformation such as China: considering the urban system as a structure of spatial, political, and economic layers, we identify the cultural event as one of the main tools moving around temporalities and narratives, becoming a propelling engine in the mechanisms of city-branding and cultural consumption, even beyond real spatial transformations. Considering the relation between the representation of the city as a performative act and the real physical space, we look at the transformations brought about in the context of two temporary events, one held in Dashilar in the context of the BJDW (Beijing Design Week), and one in Nantou Old Town in Shenzhen, in the context of the 2017 UABB (Shenzhen Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture). Between urban regeneration strategies and cultural tourism operations, the BJDW and UABB are observed through the lens of representation, in order to question their spatial action and their role in re-shaping architectural/urban heritage and city dynamics. We thus aim at investigating the role of narrative construction in these two similar but still different processes, comparing the spatial traces left by the events with their impact on the national and international cultural scenarios.