Unintended Consequences: A Study On Spatial Distinction Of Urban Culture Space

As a representative form of urban cultural space,urban physical bookstore has been providing social and cultural services to citizens in an inclusive and open way.However,in the new millennium,the rise of online cultural consumption,the sudden increase in urban rents,the change of citizens' cultural consumption habits and other changing factors interwoven,led physical bookstores into the "cold winter".After several years of "cold winter","nationwide reading project" and all levels of government's supporting for the physical bookstore have brought new vitality.At the policy level,exemption from VAT(Value Added Tax)on publications,rent-free for bookstore,cash subsidy to physical bookstores are providing direct help to physical bookstore.Meanwhile,the incorporation of physical bookstores into the urban planning of Shanghai seems to be a new way for physical bookstores to develop in a diversified way and jointly provide cultural services for citizens.However,in practice,the capitalization of cultural industry enables multi-level and multi-category social capital to enter the production of physical bookstore space,giving birth to a group of new experiential bookstores that focus on cultural consumption experience in Shanghai.In Y experiential bookstore as a case in this paper,the founder said it received a support from policies above and wanted to create the shared space of urban culture.However,symbolic consumption and hidden exclusion exist in this bookstore.Meanwhile,whether citizens can integrate into Y experiential bookstore is related to their economic capital and cultural capital.As a result,the entity bookstore has the unintended consequences of the policy and operation.It meanings Y experiential bookstore has become a space of “distinction”.In the inquiry section,based on Lefebvre's “the production of space” theory and Bourdieu's " distinction" theory,through the analysis of policy text,news and statistical yearbook and the interview of shop assistants and customers,first of all,this study want to explore how multi-party spatial production is accomplished.Secondly,under the contradiction between the policy conception and the capital practice,the paper explores what kind of distinction phenomenon has occurred in the physical bookstore.Finally,this study gives a three-dimensional perspective on the causes of the distinction from the institutional,social and personal levels.In the conclusion section,this study holds that after receiving government's support and combining with social capital,Y bookstore moved to high-end commercial plaza from the edge of urban.At the same time,with spectacle and art as the core features of the spatial structure,Y bookstore takes "Xiaozi" as the core target customers to create a space of cultural and artistic experience.As a consequence,the new bookstore concept brings about the transformation of citizens' imagination of Y bookstore.Y bookstore also constructs the economic and cultural threshold of space by paying for space,paying for knowledge,membership,selling identity and so on.At the institutional level,the reason is that the capitalization of the cultural industry has freed up the capital in the cultural field.At the social level,capital has launched a new round of control over the cultural space,to achieve the legal conquest of the space through consumerism,and to cater to the consumption taste of the new middle stratum generated during the social transformation.On the individual level,there are the different "voting by payment capacity " brought by the different consumption views of different stratums and the cognitive changes of the new era of physical bookstores that jointly promote the phenomenon of distinction.In the end,this paper tries to discuss the positive function of urban cultural space renewal and the inescapable contradiction between spatial distinction and spatial justice in urban construction and renewal.