From arts desert to global cultural metropolis

Since the late 1990s, an urban policy model of culture-led development has become increasingly “fashionable” (Kong 2009) and an influential trend in many cities around the world. A vast number of rapidly developing East Asian cities, irrespective of their political systems, sizes or locations, have also suddenly rediscovered their cultural resources and one after another started to pursue the titles of ‘creative city’, ‘cultural capital’, or ‘cultural and creative metropolis’ (Yeoh 2005; Kong et al. 2006; Pang 2012).