Abstract
Culture sustainability is one of the indispensable components of sustainability. Culture has likely always been an important element for promoting urban and rural sustainable development. It is now playing an increasingly significant role in sparking and incubating innovation, which is becoming the main driver of economic growth and competitiveness. Unfortunately, little research has been conducted on how much culture matters to economic performance in a quantitative way. Therefore, in this paper, which is based on an intensive literature review, we try to specifically quantify the importance of culture to urban development in general and urban economic performance in particular, by proposing an index system dubbed as the Culture Quotient (CQ). Following this, an integrated database of 297 prefectural-level cities in China is accordingly established. By manipulating the database, the CQ value for each city is then calculated by using principal component analysis with SPSS (19.0). Afterwards, spatial pattern by CQ value tier is presented and illustrates urban China’s “winner-take-all” phenomenon, with the predominance by the three giant urban clusters in the coastal area, i.e., the Jing (Beijing)-Jin (Tianjin)-Ji (Hebei province)-based Bohai rim region, Yangtze River delta, Pearl River delta, as well as some mega-cities such as Chengdu and Wuhan in other parts of China. More precisely, the regression analysis shows that there is a strong positive relationship between CQ and gross domestic product (GDP), with the striking result that every increase of one percentage point in CQ will induce a five percentage point increment in GDP. Although the finding makes an impressive and convincing case that culture does exert a great impact on urban economic development, and can also be measured in a quantitative way in Chinese cases, more cases from other countries need to be included for further verification and confirmation. We therefore urgently call for more in-depth international comparative studies both in theoretical and practical regards.
Highlights
The importance of culture to socio-economic development seems indisputable, and has long been recognized by politicians, philosophers, artists and scholars, and ordinary people
Given that factors one to five have already accounted for nearly 92% of the total explanation accumulatively, these factors are identified for calculating the Culture Quotient (CQ) value
Based on the literature review, no consensus is reached on the definition of culture, the core components towards the essence of culture can be summarized as follows: (1) permeated ambience, which cannot be seen or touched, yet able to be sensed, felt and experienced; (2) accumulated heritages both in tangible and intangible forms; (3) intrinsic norms adopted and widely recognized individually and collectively by the whole society, including value system, religions, ethics, art, ritual, customs, architecture, lifestyle, management, governance, institution, etc.; (4) perception and organic reactions towards external environs; (5) long-term relationship, including the relationship between humans and society, and the relationship between humans and nature
Summary
The importance of culture to socio-economic development seems indisputable, and has long been recognized by politicians, philosophers, artists and scholars, and ordinary people. The research done by Gábor Hajdu and Tamás Hajdu reinforced the theory that, besides economic and social variables, institutions and personal characteristics, cultural factors play an even more important role in life satisfaction and well-being [3]. Jiddu Krishnamurti, a renowned Indian philosopher in the late 20th century, explored the relationship between culture and people in such a way, “Look what is happening in the world—we are being conditioned by society, by the culture we live in, and that culture is the product of man” [7], reinforcing the synergy effect of culture and mankind in social progressive development
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