The spatial production of simulacrascape in urban China: Economic function, local identity and cultural authenticity

Simulacrascapes, namely “shanzhai architectures” or “copycat architectures”, ubiquitous in many Chinese cities are reshaping urban spaces culturally, politically and economically. However, previous studies tend to overlook the intricate power relations behind them. To analyze the phenomenon of simulacrascape in the Chinese context, a theoretical framework of post-socialist narrative comprised of economic function, local identity and cultural authenticity is introduced to bridge political-economic and cultural-political approaches. Following the paradigm of architectural anthropology, abundant qualitative data have been collected to unravel the spatial dynamics of simulacrascapes through deconstructing and comparing two typical cases in Shijiazhuang, one of hotspots of simulacrascape in China. It is found that landscape entrepreneurs, local governments (urban policy makers), consumers, media and the public have formed a “simulacra coalition” that drives the spatial production of simulacrascapes. Economic functions embedded in simulacrascapes work as neoliberal urbanism, which determines how local people perceive cultural authenticity; meanwhile, the cultural authenticity becomes an experience-centered cognition reshaped by local identity socially and culturally. This paper argues that the spatial production of simulacrascapes is not merely a kind of neoliberal urbanism but also a process of cultural indigenization in post-socialist China.