Seeking a Future for the Past: Space, Power, and Heritage in a Chinese City (China Understandings Today)

Seeking a Future for the Past: Space, Power, and Heritage in a Chinese City examines the complexities and changing sociopolitical dynamics of urban renewal in contemporary China.Drawing on ten years of ethnographic fieldwork in the northeastern Chinese city of Qingdao, the book tells the story of the slow, fragmented, and contentious transformation of Dabaodao-an area in the city’s former colonial center-from a place of common homes occupied by the urban poor into a showcase of architectural heritage and site for tourism and consumption.The ethnography provides a nuanced account of the diverse experiences and views of a range of groups involved in shaping, and being shaped, by the urban renewal process-local residents, migrant workers, preservationists, planners, and government officials-foregrounding the voices and experiences of marginal groups, such as migrants in the city.Unpacking structural reasons for urban developmental impasses, it paints a nuanced local picture of urban gover