A distinct rise of global interest in the role of cultural and creative industries in post-industrial urban development calls for the transformation of our industrial heritage into creative clusters. Despite many factories being removed in deindustrialization, some enterprises still preserve and reuse the former industrial lands. However, the inconclusive judgments on the performances of creative clusters call for an in-depth examination of the underlying mechanism of transforming dilapidated urban industrial spaces. In addition, few empirical studies have revealed the commonalities and differences of market entities employing both the top-down and bottom-up approaches during the redevelopment.

Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is deeply embedded in everyday social life, yet its officially recognized spatial distribution reflects both the independent influences of cultural traditions, development trajectories, and governance practices, and the complex interactions among them. Focusing on 494 national-level ICH items across ten categories in Jiangsu(J), Zhejiang(Z), and Shanghai(H), this study adopts a social-geographical perspective to examine both the spatio-temporal evolution and the driving mechanisms of ICH recognition in one of China’s most developed regions. After rigorous verification of point-based ICH locations, we combine kernel density estimation and the average nearest neighbor index to trace changes across five batches of national designation, and then employ the univariate and interaction detectors of the Geodetector model to assess the effects of 28 natural, socioeconomic, and cultural-institutional variables. The results show, first, that ICH exhibits significant clustering along river corridors and historical cultural belts, with a persistent high-density core in the Shanghai–southern Jiangsu–northern Zhejiang zone and a clear shift over time from highly concentrated to more dispersed and territorially balanced recognition. Second, human-environment factors—especially factors such as urban and rural income and consumption; residents’ education and cultural expenditures; and public education and cultural facilities—have far greater explanatory power than natural conditions, while different ICH categories embed distinctively in urban and rural socio-economic contexts. Third, bivariate interactions reveal that natural and macroeconomic “background” variables are strongly amplified when combined with demographic and cultural factors, whereas interactions among strong human variables show bivariate enhancement with diminishing marginal returns. In summary, these findings enrich international debates on the geography of ICH by clarifying how recognition processes align with regional development and social equity agendas, and they provide a quantitative basis for category-sensitive, place-based strategies that coordinate income policies, public cultural services, and the joint safeguarding of tangible and intangible heritage in both urban renewal and rural revitalization planning.

Background: The UNESCO has defined the concept of intangible cultural heritage (ICH). Additionally, China joined the related convention in 2004, incorporating the protection of intangible heritage into its national strategy. By conducting a detailed analysis of the spatial distribution of national and provincial ICHs in Fujian Province, this study aims to explore the characteristics of their spatio-temporal evolution and the related influencing mechanisms, thereby offering theoretical references for the protection of intangible heritage. Utilizing five batches of national-level and seven batches of provincial-level ICH projects in Fujian as samples, this study employs ArcGIS for data organization and applies geographical concentration indices, average nearest neighbor indices, kernel density, and GeoDetector to explore the spatiotemporal distribution characteristics and influencing mechanisms of intangible heritage. There are at least three key findings in our research: First, ICH resources in Fujian exhibit a coastal concentration and inland dispersion pattern, with notable regional and hierarchical disparities. Second, univariate analysis reveals that socio-economic variables (e.g., GDP, population density) exert stronger explanatory power on overall ICH distribution, whereas cultural factors demonstrate more localized effects in less-developed or peripheral areas. Third, bivariate interaction results indicate that the combined influence between some specific socio economic/cultural variables and the other 20 variables generates enhanced synergistic effects, especially in shaping the distribution of selected ICH in national and provincial levels with distinct performances, highlighting the importance of multi-factor coordination in heritage recognition and protection.