Unfolding China’s urban development: the implementation of public art in Beijing and Shanghai

During China’s speeding urbanization, creating a unique city image to achieve economic growth draws the attention of property developers, urban planners, and city administrations. Through activating urban spaces and creating dynamic urban culture, public art plays an effective role in leading modern urban creative capital investment into China’s urban development. In order to understand the implementation of public art in Beijing and Shanghai, this research aims to analyze the resonance between public art and urbanization in Chinese megacities through selected case studies. The study reveals public art guided by urbanization policy and strategy in metropolitan China, which further unfolds the discontinuous and fragmented relationship between public art, public sphere, and urbanization policies. Through discovering the imbalances between public art investment, implementation, and postimplementation management frameworks, the study provides several approaches to boost China’s urban development for achieving the resonance between public art and urbanization.