1167 | 149 | A new version of flagship museum cluster in China’s rural regeneration: the case of “Liangzhu Culture Corridor” complexity

Heritage and museums are the key cultural imperatives that embody the tourism development required to boost the city’s economic growth and modernization. In planning for cultural heritage tourism, the concern for local cultural sustainability is putting a twist on the traditional role of flagship museums as cultural architectural landmarks. In China, massive urban growth and the influx of rural labor forces urge new policymaking on urban gentrification and new urbanization that gravitate towards original rural areas. “Revitalizing rural cultural tourism” becomes the primary task for local economic growth. Under such a context, this paper is conceptualized in response to the complexity of cultural heritage tourism planning in China’s rural areas, arguing that the new pattern employed between flagship museum clusters and cultural heritage sites is interwoven in China’s unique global-local dialectic. A case study of the flagship museum cluster under the umbrella of “Liangzhu culture” in Yuhang District, Zhejiang Province, China, provides the context for the investigation. It argues that, marked by the successful registration of “Archaeological Ruins of Liangzhu City” in UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 2019, the belt of flagship museum cluster in Yuhang’s west and north fulfilled three progressive periods of (re)valuing in the circuit of development, economy, and culture, activating the six underdeveloped satellite towns. It also seeks to illuminate the mechanism of urban-rural branding in contemporary China’s new urban trends, which plays itself out in distinct ways in global-local relations.

Sifan LIU
Departament d’Antropologia Social, Facultat de Geografia i Història, Universitat de Barcelona

ID Abstract: 149

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