ABSTRACT
Whether the glowing skylines, the iconic cultural infrastructures, or the adaptive reuse of heritage architectures, the astounding urban developments of the Global East seem to be not only rapidly absorbing global flows but exceeding expectations for their aspirations. While their outward appearances resemble those of international hubs, the ways they are produced and their spatial products betray conceptual, functional and institutional differences. The theoretical framework of the ‘urban alibi’ is proposed as the veneer of global equivalency that camouflages differences, and as the means to reveal them. This chapter goes behind the scenes of three cases of urban alibis from Shanghai: the financial district, the art factories and the cultural district. It examines the terms of their concealments as urban exemplaries of China’s rapid economic transition from a planned to market economy and its simultaneous rise and re-globalization. The spatial cases span from the first decade of economic liberalization to the more recent decade, which sees a maturing of institutions. The cases reveal how the urban alibis helped to bypass constraints of landownership as legacy from the era of planned economy, as well as produced spectacular image projects for facilitating China’s re-globalization, while growing in time to inflect its flows.
