Journal of Geographical Research | Volume 02 | Issue 01 | January 2019 Journal of Geographical Research http://ojs.bilpublishing.com/index.php/jgr ARTICLE A mega-event approach to glurbanization: Insights from Expo 2010, Shanghai Lingyue Li* Department of Urban Planning, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, P. R. China ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history This paper contributes to an in-depth understanding of how the me- Received: 25 October 2018 ga-event contributes glurbanization of entrepreneurial city through a case study of Expo 2010 in Shanghai. It argues that spatial-related transfor- Accepted: 7 November 2018 mation is central to mega-event approach to glurbanization yet the soft Published: 5 March 2019 power building is uncertain. It implies that the domestic impacts of me- ga-events are likely to be more profound than their global influences. This Keywords: corresponds to the capitalist transformation from Fordist-Keynesianism to Mega-events neoliberalism, in which mega-events such as Olympic Games and World Exposition have increasingly been incorporated into urban development glurbanization plan to boost urban agenda. Although the profile of world fairs is reduced Expo 2010 and does not have the international impacts that they used to have, Shang- Shanghai hai Expo 2010, the first Expo ever held in a developing country, is pinned hope on as the “Turn to Save the World Expo” and is unusually ambitious to bring opportunities in urban transformation. With a well-developed framework of glurbanization entailed by entrepreneurial city, this research enriches glurbanization theory by a thorough examination of Shanghai Expo. It finds that Expo-led landscape reconfiguration, spatial restructur- ing, and new sources provision effectively transformed Shanghai, propel- ling glurbanization in diminutive spatial scale. Yet, it remains powerless to impress the world as the voice of domestic propaganda is limited in the Western mainstream media. In all, the Expo case well exemplifies the power of mega-event approach to advancing local agenda, especially in spatial transformation per se, as well as its constraints in (re)shaping a global discourse. 1. Introduction ing of ascending economies. A striking feature of world neoliberalization is that competing cities are active to ince 1970s, neoliberalism has ingrained itself rhe- articulate the globe to secure its most advantageous in- [1, 2] torically into the hosting of mega-events . In sertion into the changing interscalar division of labour in Sother words, mega-events have become vanguards world economy, viz., glurbanization. To scholars, in-depth of the global spread of neoliberalism and appeared as a understanding of neoliberalization should at best go be- significant impetus in the reconstruction and reposition- yond the extrinsically economic tsunami and conceive it a *Corresponding Author: Lingyue Li*, Department of Urban Planning, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, P. R. China [email protected] Distributed under creative commons license 4.0 DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.30564/jgr.v2i1.188 1 Journal of Geographical Research | Volume 02 | Issue 01 | January 2019 path-dependent process molded by particularities of local of urban entrepreneurialism, Harvey’s work [12] generates history and institutions [3]. In such sense, mega-events significant insights into this study; first, urban entrepre- unavoidably involves participation of multiple levels of neurialism should be examined at varied scales, from mi- governments, often in the form of entrepreneurialist ap- cro neighbourhoods, communities, to macro metropolis, proach, and neopatrimonial forms of resource allocation nation state, and the like. Second, stance of central gov- [4]. Different from post-industrial cities in North America ernments and the position of local government in urban and Western Europe, the ongoing urban transformation of hierarchy remain of tremendous importance to city com- Shanghai did not inherit the regulatory landscape or the petitive edge [19]. Third, urban "governance", involving spatial organization of the Fordist city. As an advanced extensive public-private partnership, means much more city in socialist market economy, Shanghai’s urban land- than urban "government". Indeed, under the entrepreneur- scape imprinted hybridity of planned and market econ- ial “governance” discourse, a defining feature for public omy. Shanghai Expo thus involves complex regime that government is its adventurous, outward-oriented posture, combines rigid planned economic system and neoliberal- which substitutes its traditional gatekeeper stance, to ized socialist market economy. This echoes the worldwide foster local growth [20]. Such a speculative posture charac- evidence that mega-events herald a mixed neoliberal turn terizes profit-making business firms and cities alike, viz. in political-economic practice [5]. This paper proposes that entrepreneurial firm and entrepreneurial city. The analogy the mega-events-led transformations in Shanghai Expo entails the concept of city-level “glurbanisation” as one should be understood as part of a neoliberal spatial pro- form of the more general phenomenon of firm-level “glo- cess committed to and an active ascending of locality to calisation” [21]. the global arena, configured by a global-local, social-spa- Initially, “glocalisation” refers to the global localisation tial dynamism. strategy pursued by Japanese firms in comparison with the globalisation strategies adopted by U.S. multinationals [22]. 2. The conceptual Framework Then, it has been indiscriminately used to limn the polit- ically mediated deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation 2.1 Glurbanization under Entrepreneurial City [23-25]. Jessop and Sum problematise the usage of this term and coined “glurbanisation” to refer to entrepreneurial Glurbanization rests upon the premise that urban restruc- strategies. To them, the “glocalisation” concept, which turing led by state rescaling and its concomitant intersca- simply refers to any form of global-local interaction, has lar strategies represents an advantageous process to rein- lost its original accuracy, whereas “glurbanisation” can force city-region status and their global competitiveness more precisely capture the multiscalar articulation; first, building [6,7]. Glurbanization originated from the literature studies of glurbanisation should replace the crude glob- of urban entrepreneurialism. Urban entrepreneurialism al-local dichotomy with multiplicity of scales. Second, has been prevailing since 1970s when the active, innova- glurbanisation highlights chronotropic governance that was tive role of local governments were well documented by neglected in glocalisation. Third, extra-economic issues a number of researchers in North America and Western should be incorporated in the analysis of entrepreneurial Europe [8, 9-11]. The purpose of this entrepreneurial shift of competition. Fourth, glurbanization concerns more with local governance, as proclaimed by David Harvey [12], was the problems raised by entrepreneurial activities, rather to address the widespread erosion of economic and fiscal than the advantages. Thereafter, glurbanization under en- base of large cities in the advanced capitalist economy. trepreneurial city has been empirically researched world- Unlike the earlier practices of managerialism that primar- wide such as in London, Guangzhou, and Australasian ily concerned welfare provision to urban population, such [26-28] Cities . Glurbanization can be understood as a process, an entrepreneurial stance strategically brought competi- a strategy, and an objective entrepreneurial city endeavors tiveness building to the heartland of local governments’ to achieve. It collapses the global and the local, opposes to agenda and fundamentally transformed the trajectory of the hierarchical design whereby the nation-state dictates urban process. In a broad sense, the shift from urban man- how things work, and makes transformation possible both agerialism to entrepreneurialism was associated with the [7] from below and above . In this research, the entrepre- recession-induced transformation of capitalist dynamics: neurship qualities proposed by Jessop are citied to help dynamics transits from a Fordist-Keynesian regime to a identify approaches to glurbanization (see Table 1 for a regime of "flexible accumulation" [13-17] that revived local- simplified version), including the reconfiguration of urban ism [18] under technology innovation and new international landscape, restructuring of urban space, provision of new division of larbor. Though without an explicit definition sources, and reposition of urban hierarchy. 2 Distributed under creative commons license 4.0 DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.30564/jgr.v2i1.188 Journal of Geographical Research | Volume 02 | Issue 01 | January 2019 Table 1. Entrepreneurship at the firm and city levels and as landscape reconfiguration and urban space restructur- approaches to glurbanization ing, is central to mega-event approach to glurbanization whereas soft power building such as repositioning global Schumpeter’s entrepre- Jessop and Sum’s entre- Approaches to glurban- neurial firm preneurial city ization hierarchy of host cities is uncertain. This implies that the New types of urban Landscape reconfigu- domestic impacts of mega-events are likely to be more New good space ration profound than their global influences. New methods of New methods