Julie Ren investigates the motivations and practices of making art spaces in Beijing and Berlin to engage with comparative urbanism as a framework for doing research, beyond its significance as a critical intervention.

Across vastly different contexts, where universal theories of modernity or development seem increasingly misplaced, she innovatively explores the ways that art spaces employ creative capital to sustain themselves in a competitive urban landscape.

She shows how these art spaces are embedded within a politics of aspiration and demonstrates that aspiration is an important lens through which to understand the nature of, and possibilities for, urban change.