Last night in my seminar on creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship, we were discussing Jane Jacobs and Robert Park who invented the field of urban sociology a century or so ago at the University of Chicago. One of my students who happens to be Chinese mentioned Park’s construct of the city as a place for the gifted and the “marginal.” That led us to a discussion of China’s Creative Class and its major creative urban centers. So I was pleased to come across this post by Alain Truong:
“Working over the last several years from the ‘‘Alternative Archive,’’ a
townhouse in their native Guangzhou, Ou Ning emerged as the éminence
grise of China’s burgeoning graphic-design and alternative-media scene
and Cao Fei became a globe-trotting young artist (she is 28) on the
biennial circuit. … Together they have
documented China’s rapidly regenerating cities in strangely lyrical
urban research projects about Sanyuanli (a migrant neighborhood in
Guangzhou) and Dazhalan (a poor enclave in Beijing’s old city). Last
summer, this one true power couple of the Chinese art world made a
surprise move from Guangzhou to Beijing, trading local prominence for a
perch in the capital.”
