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This book explores the practices and policies of making cultural/creative cities in Asia. Such practices and policies have become widespread, from international film festivals in places like Busan, South Korea, and an urban renaissance driven by the nostalgic invention of imperial culture in Xi’an, China, to the urban promotion of national culture in Malaysia and the competing aspirations of Singapore and Hong Kong to be Asia’s cultural hubs. Urban cultural policies in Asia have, in other words, gone far beyond the objective of promoting local culture industries. Culture and creativity are now instruments serving the ‘global city’ambitions of Asia. The wave of cultural city-making has become one of the most influential urban developmental strategies worldwide, as cities search for new directions to counteract their decaying Fordist production systems (Castells, 2000; Scott, 2006, 2007). More importantly, these strategies …