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 economicgrowth draws the attention of property developers, urban planners, and city administrations.Through activating urban spaces and creating dynamic urban culture, public art plays aneffective role in leading modern urban creative capital investment into China’s urbandevelopment. 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 Chinesemegacities through selected case studies. The study reveals public art guided by urbanizationpolicy and strategy in metropolitan China, which further unfolds the discontinuous andfragmented relationship between public art, public sphere, and urbanization policies. Throughdiscovering the imbalances between public art investment, implementation, and postimplementation management frameworks, the study provides several approaches to boostChina’s urban development for achieving the resonance between public art and urbanization