Chinatowns

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between culture-based tourism development and cultural sustainability in the established tourism destination of Gold Coast, Australia. It
seeks to contribute to the debate on local development and tourism through evaluating the development of the newly-born Gold Coast Chinatown.

Taken together, New York City’s “Chinatowns” are becoming increasingly inhospitable to both long-term residents and recent immigrants from working class backgrounds. Such immense changes in the landscape and intensive re-routings of both people and money can often be traced back to certain types of surpluses and crises. In this particular case, the transition was punctuated and propelled by a political crisis—the attacks of September 11, 2001—and an economic crisis—the financial meltdown that peaked in Fall 2008. Though international in scope, the nexus of both events was Lower Manhattan (specifically the World Trade Center and Wall Street), just blocks away from Chinatown. While 9/11 provided opportunities for new rounds of planning and spatial disciplining, the 2008 financial crisis ushered a dramatic and rapid influx of Chinese transnational capital in the form of real estate investment, acquisition, and new development.
These recent events and forces represent a significant shift in the overall function of multi-ethnic Chinese neighborhoods in New York City, and their relationship to both the broader U.S. and Chinese economies. Whereas historically U.S. Chinatowns were developed as strategies to absorb Chinese surplus workers and provide for their social reproduction in a manner that generally benefited U.S. manufacturing capital, today these neighborhoods are being reshaped as strategies to absorb Chinese surplus capital and provide lucrative investment opportunities for transnational capitalists in a manner that largely benefits U.S. real estate capital, including locally based immigrant growth coalitions.
This shift represents an attack on Chinese workers—both those who have already immigrated, and those seeking to immigrate—who are forced to either find other, more disparate spaces to live and work, or pay an impossibly high proportion of their wages towards rent and living expenses. Though it is felt at the scales of the body, the home, the workplace, the neighborhood and the city, the gentrification of New York’s multi-ethnic Chinese neighborhoods is a reflection of global changes, where people and money are shifting positions and remaking spaces to suit the fickle demands of “vagabond capitalism.” While New York City’s “Chinatowns” are typically viewed as peripheral to urban processes because they are largely immigrant neighborhoods of color, these neighborhoods can, in fact, provide important insights on the interconnectedness between finance capitalism and post-2008 urbanization marked, in part, by the significant
influx of Chinese foreign direct investment in the property markets of global cities.
This essay utilizes employment data from the New York State Department of Labor (DOL) to document
fundamental shifts in Chinatown, Flushing and Sunset Park’s local economies, and examines the
transition of New York City’s “Chinatowns” from sites of surplus labor to sites of surplus capital.17 The
Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW ) provides an enumeration of private sector businesses,
the number of employees, and total wages for employers covered by New York State Unemployment
Insurance (UI) laws. QCEW is available by zip code, but the data may be subject to an undercount since
it represents employers that pay contributions to fund the State’s UI. Even so, QCEW provides a comprehensive
profile of the types of private sector firms that make up a local economy by industry sectors, the
size of the local labor force, and average wages. Using this data, we compared the neighborhood economies
of New York City’s “Chinatowns” during two periods, in 2000 (pre-9/11 crisis), and in 2015 (post-2008
“Great Recession”).

Th e dominant imagination regarding heritage conservation conventionally validates a state produced idealisation of the past which oft en obscures the question of whose past is being represented (or not) through the state sanctioned discourse. To fi nd the answer of why this erasure of a certain section of the past takes place, this paper has looked into the question of violence and diff erent forms in which it reshapes the discourse of representation.
Engaging with the population of the Indo-Chinese community in Kolkata, this paper will see how violence has been produced and constituted, spatially and socially by the state which has forced them to leave the country. Th e focus of this study is the oldest Chinese neighbourhood in Kolkata, popularly known as Chinepada near Tirettia Bazar of central Kolkata. Chinese population who have migrated to India more than 200 years back have considered the city as home and contributed immensely to the cultural landscape of the city. At present, the once vibrant China Town, with its schools, temples, clubs and restaurants has degraded into a dilapidated shanty town with residents fi ghting hard to claim the right to the city. By connecting violence and injustice with the notion of politics of heritage conservation, this paper seeks to ask two questions. It questions how uneven geographies of power dictate the fates of communities and how state-produced violence reshapes public imagination regarding the constituents of heritage.

Chapter 3 presents empirically informed analyses of a number of new public
space projects initiated first as counter-projects and counter-spaces
by a variety of community and historic preservation society interests.
It demonstrates further that, Vancouver City Council (VCC) proved
receptive to the counter-projects and provided an overarching strategic
spatial framework within which the projects on the ground were
devised and implemented. This chapter also introduces the importance
of the social animation of public space, whether through politicised
collective action or ludic enjoyment. Changing representations of space
through time are shown to have implications for spatial practice on the ground, based on differences in the way social behaviour in public
space is understood and interpreted.

"This paper examines the reciprocity of identity and spatial politics in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District. The paper argues that the issue of cultural identity is critical to the continued social, cultural and political construction of this multiethnic neighborhood. It further argues that the ongoing urban design
and planning process presents an important opportunity for ethnic communities to continuously articulate their identities and build social ties and political capacity in the face of external and internal challenges. By enabling social mobilization and renegotiating identities and representation, urban design can play a critical role in the transformation of urban ethnic communities."

Migration is predominantly directed towards cities that have been facing a highly competitive global environment within
the last 30 years of globalisation. Against the background of economic restructuring, cities are looking for new forms
of city branding. In this process, ethno-cultural diversity is increasingly regarded as an asset, leading to the branding
of migrant neighbourhoods, especially those characterised by migrant economies. These agglomerations of shops,
cafés and restaurants provide places of leisure and consumption for cosmopolitan urbanites. This paper shows how
Berlin’s municipal politicians failed in staging ‘Chinatowns’ and ‘Asiatowns’ as ethnically branded commercial districts
and argues that the Vietnamese migrants who are primarily addressed by these projects are not readily marketable by
a city-branding approach. The assumed common identity of Asian migrants in Berlin and the city’s top-down municipal
approach contradict the structures of the heterogeneous group of Vietnamese residents. This paper traces Berlin’s
transition from a reactive to a proactive approach in the marketing of ethno-cultural diversity. My approach is to embed
the Dong Xuan Centre in Berlin-Lichtenberg, a Vietnamese-run wholesale centre that was founded through Vietnamese
agency, in the local discourse on Asia- and Chinatowns. The study shows that the centre’s management appears to be
an active agent in the branding process of the project, modelling itself after the global brand of ‘Chinatown’. However,
the centre’s vision of a place of cultural life and trade contradicts German planning laws, a conflict that has led to
ongoing negotiations between the centre’s management and the district government, thereby hindering its branding.

sous la direction de Thierry SANJUAN

Collection Grafigéo n° 36 - 2017

La production de quartiers chinois dans les grandes villes mondiales est un phénomène très ancien, qui a historiquement touché les villes d’Asie du Sud-Est, puis les grandes villes occidentales aux xixe et xxe siècles. Il concerne aujourd’hui tous les continents et va de pair avec la réussite économique de la République populaire, les liens renoués entre Pékin et sa diaspora, et la revalorisation mondiale de la sinité. La majorité des Chinois outre-mer est aujourd’hui de nationalité continentale et vient, outre les foyers historiques de la Chine du Sud, du Nord-Est chinois, de la Chine intérieure et de ses périphéries. Revendiqué sous le terme de chinatowns, ces quartiers chinois font souvent l’objet d’une forte promotion de la part des villes qui les accueillent. Ils ne se réduisent plus à des quartiers d’immigration, de travail et d’habitation pour des populations d’origine chinoise, au point même de perdre jusqu’à leurs caractéristiques démographiques premières. Les chinatowns déclinent désormais une identité « ethnique » revendiquée dans leurs décorations et leurs fonctions pour devenir des hauts lieux touristiques, participant pleinement à la construction des villes globales. Cet ouvrage collectif explore les trajectoires de différents avatars du chinatown, du foyer originel sud-est asiatique, jusqu’aux villes d’Europe et des États-Unis en passant par l’Asie du Sud et de l’Est.

This article is a proposal to address visual mapping as a means to reveal the inter- relationships between a place represented, a place lived and a place perceived. A form of critical cartography called hybrid-mapping is used to interrogate the combined sociocultural and biophysical legacies of the continually changing land- scape. This approach expressly facilitates a focused interpretation of the everyday lives of urban dwellers and the nuanced connections between landscape, history and culture. Offering to a larger conversation about landscape representation, this arti- cle introduces, situates and analyses the application of hybrid-mapping in a crea- tive research project entitled Chinatown Invisible about Manhattan’s Chinatown. The Chinatown Invisible project uses hybrid-mapping to interrogate the quotidian practice of ‘making-do’ to adapt existing urban structures to fulfil everyday needs. Capturing and understanding making-do is vital because it sheds light on the ways in which residents informally claim space and how they shape the ongoing physical evolution of their neighbourhood, establishing their ‘right to the city’. Chinatown Invisible shows how hybrid-mapping unveils the dynamics between culture and landscape in an urban setting, bridging critical geography and landscape representa- tion to examine multiple ways in which we can interact with the processes of real, imagined and perceived space.

Discutere criticamente la gentrificazione della Chinatown di Milano a otto anni dalla rivolta cinese di via Sarpi significa affrontarne longitudinalmente la progressiva trasformazione fisica, economica e sociale. Le considerazioni finali sul fallimento della gestione pubblica e sugli interessi speculativi di mercato indagano il “perverso” impatto dell’estetizzazione della diversità nella valorizzazione di quar- tieri multietnici a predominanza cinese.
Parole chiave: gentrificazione; valorizzazione; diversità; Chinatown; Milano


A critical discussion of Milan Chinatown’s gentrification eight years after the Chinese riot in Paolo Sarpi Street means engaging with a longitudinal analysis of its physical, economic, and social change. The final remarks on the failure of the local governance and the speculative market interests examine the “perverse” impact of the aestheticization of diversity in valorization processes of predominantly Chinese multiethnic neighborhoods.

Chinatown gangs of the U.S. have a varied and sensationalized history within the American discourse. From sinister portrayals as the Chinese ‘Yellow Peril,’ to hyper-violent refugees from Southeast Asia, Chinatown gangs have been popularly featured in literature, television, film, and newsprint for more than half a century. Reflective of demographics in Chinatowns across the country, Chinatown gangs appear to continually grow in their diversity beyond Southern Chinese immigrants, also including those that are U.S.-born, from Taiwan, and from Southeast Asia. Robust understandings of the gangs continue to be elusive and what is known often focuses on longstanding Southern Chinese communities in San Francisco and New York. Studies and documentation of Chinatown gangs vary, from small youth street ‘crews’ to transnational crime syndicates with origins in the revolutionary Triad organizations during the Qing Dynasty.

Los Angeles Chinatown is one of the oldest North American urban Chinatowns and experiencing changes that are redefining the neighborhood. Yet, not all community leaders label these changes as gentrification that directly displaces the community. This article examines how community leaders representing business, residential, and cultural interests engage in the politics of placemaking through their narratives of a new development, Blossom Plaza. Community leaders do not always view gentrification as a primary direct displacement, and instead emphasize how a secondary and symbolic displacement is happening historically, physically, economically, and politically in Chinatown. However, they also vary in whether they see these changes as ultimately reshaping the neighborhood to maintain its unique identity, which is linked to how they envision Chinatown as an ethnic space. The findings highlight the importance of considering symbolic displacement in gentrification studies about historic ethnic enclaves.

*Please note: Portions of this presentation have been published in the following papers available on this site -
[ 1 ] Chang, B., & Martínez, R. A. (2009). In the majority: Challenges, resources, and strategies for educating immigrant students and students of color in LAUSD. University of California, Los Angeles, Center for Campus-Community Partnerships; 
[ 2 ] Chang, B. (2013). Voice of the voiceless? Multiethnic student voices in critical approaches to race, pedagogy, literacy and agency. Linguistics and Education, 24(3), 348–360. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2013.03.005; 
[ 3 ] Chang, B. (2014). “Upset the Set-Up” A path towards self-determination rooted in conscious hip-hop, Pilipina/o, and panethnic communities. In M. R. Villegas, K. Kandi, & R. N. Labrador (Eds.), Empire of funk: Hip-Hop and representation in Filipina/o America (pp. 55-62). San Diego: Cognella; 
[ 4 ] Chang, B. (2015). In the service of self-determination: teacher education, service-learning, and community reorganizing. Theory Into Practice, 54(1), 29-38. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2015.977659; 

(*Please note actual session time is 4:30-6pm)

{Paddy Qiu, University of Kansas} I. Supplication. Our first bus ride took us to Chinatown in Flushing, Queens. As we rode closer to the epicenter, the white ghosts, bai gui, dissipate. Their slick-shined shoes shuffling off one by one, my eyes darting towards the exit. Patiently waiting for supplication, I questioned whether I should have left with them. When my father and I got to our stop, I stomped on the foot of a Chinese grandmother.

La “doppia faccia” di Chinatown analizzata in questo elaborato si riferisce a due modi, in contrasto tra loro, con i quali si approccia a questa enclave: uno è il punto di vista interno della popolazione cinese, l’altro è quello esterno all’enclave, cioè quello della popolazione più ampia con cui questa realtà etnicamente connotata si incontra e scontra quotidianamente. Da un lato vi è la comunità cinese con la propria leggibilità, il proprio orgoglio e tradizione, difficile da lasciarsi indietro una volta lasciata la patria; dall’altra parte vi sono le rappresentazioni e le percezioni degli individui che ritengono il proprio territorio “invaso” dai cinesi, tanto da sfociare spesso in atteggiamenti razzisti e in allarme per un presunto “pericolo giallo”

This article explores the potential of the LL to evaluate ethnically defined spaces. Focusing on the area referred to as ‘Chinatown’ in central Liverpool, it examines the relationships between space, representation, and identity. Interviews with actors and passers-by indicate that the location and definition of Chinatown are interpreted inconsistently. As the article argues, however, the LL contains useful information for locating and qualifying the ethnic space. Scrutinizing both interview data and an empirical corpus of all the texts visible in the space, the article aims to define the borders of Chinatown, and the expression of ethnic identity therein. Whilst testifying to the commodification of aesthetic ideals and symbolic imagery, the LL simultaneously reveals an in-group community representative of authentic Chineseness. Exploring the dynamics of linguistic exclusion and accommodation, the data indicate not only that the identity of Chinatown is multi-layered, but also that its borders are subjective and not definable spatially.

Melaka and Singapore, situated astride the international maritime crossroads that is the Straits of Melaka, present an interesting juxtaposition of heritage narratives constructed around stereotypes of two diasporic groups, “Malay” and “Chinese,” whose architectural and cultural (mis)representation reflects various colonial prejudices and postcolonial/ national racial policies. “Kampung houses” and “shophouses” are two ubiquitous building types in the straits region that proliferated with urban and suburban expansion during the colonial period, and which present distinct architectural developments. as i will demonstrate, they are respectively derived, in typological terms, from Malay and Chinese architectural antecedents. Yet both forms early on developed syntheses that problematize purely “Malay” or “Chinese” categorization, and that bear out multiethnic involvement in their production and use and reflect the complex history of both groups in the region.

Despite this complexity of origins, the architectural and socio-cultural narratives constructed for kampung houses and shophouses have tended toward entanglement with colonial assumptions on race that have enjoyed continued currency in national-heritage projects. such racialized narratives gloss over the complex and nuanced social and architectural histories these building types embody, and instead assume direct correlations between race and built environments that are consequently imputed with binary stereotypical associations. more importantly, these colonial stereotypes stem from conditions that arose precisely from the very different effects that European imperialism and colonization had on Malays and Chinese, and on the differential treatment and separation of the two communities. today the tendency toward racial stereotypes in urban and architectural heritage representation can be traced not just to colonial discourses on race but also to specific urban historical processes embodying the links between Chinese economic and demographic dominance, Malay economic decline, and European economic imperialism and conquest.

In this chapter I first provide a descriptive overview of actual examples of kampung houses and shophouses in Melaka and Singapore and the histories of the heterogeneous urban environments in which they were built—socio-spatial units called kampung wards. i then examine texts on architectural and urban history that present stereotypical equations between race and habitation, and i retrace the histories of the two main diaspora groups involved in the construction and use of kampung houses and shophouses in relation to socioeconomic transformations set in motion by Dutch and British colonization. Following this, I examine the urban heritage projects begun since the 1980s, in which kampung wards and houses have been presented as rural tableaux, and in which formerly more heterogeneous shophouse districts have undergone processes that i term “Chinatownification.”

Moving from exposition to analysis, I discuss the utility of racialized discourses of kampung houses and shophouses for the state and for community actors in Singapore and Melaka, which bolster claims that resonate with racial biases in Singaporean and Malaysian national ideology. I further relate the exacerbation of these biases to a racial turn in national policies by the Prime ministers of both Singapore and Malaysia, which incidentally also occurred in the 1980s. I conclude that the representations in heritage projects that present racialized stereotypes of kampung houses and shophouses are today based not on any actual conditions from the colonial or even precolonial periods, but on imagined pasts that reflect national ideological anxieties. as such, they justify affirmative action for Malays in Malaysia, and legitimize the dominance of Chinese in Singapore, while naturalizing the predominance of Chinese in key historic urban areas of both Melaka and Singapore. interestingly, the same binary identification—kampung house as exclusively Malay and therefore rural, and shophouse as urban and thereby naturally Chinese—resonates with what are ostensibly very different political setups. i review the reasons for this curious situation. Finally, i discuss the premises for reimagining race and nation through the recuperation of histories that highlight multiethnic involvement in historic built environments.

"With the growing global importance of China, Chinese organised crime has become a growing non-military threat to national and international security. Peng Wang focuses on the three dimensions of Chinese organised crime: the resurgence of the criminal underworld and rampant police corruption in mainland China; cross-border crime in Greater China; and Chinese organised crime overseas, including in the UK. The national, regional and international threats posed by ethnic-Chinese criminal groups require the law-enforcement agencies of both China and those countries hosting Chinese communities to improve their response strategies as a matter of urgency.

The Lunar New Year festivities in Manhattan’s Chinatown are among New York City’s best-known ethnic tourist attractions, drawing thousands of spectators who come primarily to see the lion dance performances. Each year, more than 20 lion dance groups perform for hours at a time, bringing to life huge, colorful creatures thrashing through the streets to clamorous drums and cymbals. Who are these groups, and why are they there? Are they an authentic manifestation of Chinese culture, a programmed ethnic spectacle for the benefit of tourists, or something else entirely?
For centuries, lion dancers have appeared wherever the Lunar Year is celebrated around the world. In a Chinatown that has struggled to revitalize its identity and economic health in the years after 9/11, how are these groups connected with this urban ethnic enclave’s economic and cultural transformation?
Adopting an urban culturalist approach, this research focuses on the intersection of culture, place and community that unfolds in this festival. Video and digital photography yield data on its spatial and experiential aspects, which I analyze using the Situationist International’s vision of unitary urbanism as a starting point. Through interviews and participant observation I synthesize these findings with an ethnography of the Chinatown lion dance groups to show how this familiar but little-understood spectacle arises from urgent community needs and narratives.

The article sketches how commissioned public art contributes to making space for historically marginalized communities such as the Chinese-Canadian community in Vancouver. It discusses the political implications of public art commissions in Vancouver within a two-dimensional
conceptual trope: first, by examining the contours of institutionalized ‘politics’ of public art, manifest in creative city strategies, cultural planning and policy documents, and second, by unpacking the multiple-layered, socio-spatial, affective and aesthetic dimensions of ‘the political’ in and
of public art.

In the early twentieth century, Chinatowns in the West were ghettoes for Chinese immigrants who were marginalized and considered 'other' by the dominant society. In Western eyes, these areas were the no-go zones of the Oriental 'other'. Now, more than a hundred years later, traditional Chinatowns still exist in some cities but their meaning and role has been transformed, while in other cities entirely new Chinatowns have emerged. This article discusses how Chinatowns today are increasingly contested sites where older diasporic understandings of Chineseness are unsettled by newer, neoliberal interpretations, dominated by the pull of China's new-found economic might. In particular, the so-called 'rise of China' has spawned a globalization of the idea of 'Chinatown' itself, with its actual uptake in urban development projects the world over, or a backlash against it, determined by varying perceptions of China's global ascendancy as an amalgam of threat and opportunity.

Introduction:

The early twentieth century was a time of change: both World War I and World War II happened before the twentieth century was even halfway through, and both wars brought about plenty of changes for people of all different sorts, from race to gender. The Chinese population in North America would find positive change coming their way a couple years after the end of the Second World War, however they were facing far more negative changes within the years after the First World War. The Chinese population in North America had never quite received ideal treatment, however following the First World War, the Chinese would face worse treatment than they had seen yet: an example of this would be the ‘Exclusion Era’ of 1923 to 1947, in which Chinese emigration was suspended in Canada. Despite the oppression and neglect that the Chinese population faced during this period, recent research has shown that Vancouver’s Chinatown (in addition to Chinatowns all over Canada and the United States) retained part of their Chinese culture, and not only did they retain this culture, but they celebrated it as well. The Chinese population of Vancouver thrived as a culture in an era where the caucasian population attempted to shun and essentially exile them, and it was this thriving life during this period that helped to bring in an even greater life when the Exclusion Era came to an end.

This paper explores how multicultural politics and the geography of immigration presents challenges for the consideration of place identity in community planning and design in older “ethnic” neighborhoods. Seattle’s historic Chinatown-International District (C-ID), a prime example of an urban space shaped by changing multi-ethnic immigration patterns, provides the case through which these issues are examined. Through this case study, the authors find that successful planning in multi-ethnic communities explicitly recognizes their various cultural identities; accounts for differences between resident and non-resident stakeholders; and focuses design attention on accentuating community “cores” rather than on defining boundaries of territories. This allows for multiple cultural identities to be acknowledged and represented without any one group’s history or identity being undermined or sacrificed.

In the interest of providing historical context for recent studies of Chinese evangelical youth, this paper examines Christianity’s impact on identity, generational consciousness, and socio-political engagement among Chinese youth in early-20th-century North America. Bringing historical sources into conversation with current research reveals striking continuities in how Chinese youth – then and now – have used Christian identities and institutions to mediate between the cultural, social, and moral space of home and that of the Western society around them.

Seit geraumer Zeit lässt sich eine Neuorientierung in den kultur- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Debatten um Migration, Kulturkontakt, Imperialismus und Globalisierung feststellen, in denen der Begriff der Diaspora eine zentrale Rolle spielt. Die diasporische Situation – das (Über-)Leben als ethnische oder kulturelle Gemeinschaft in der Fremde – erweist sich als Paradigma der globalisierten Welt. Der Begriff der Diaspora gestattet, sich globalen Phänomenen in Gesellschaft, Kultur und Literatur zuzuwenden, die sich einer nationalstaatlichen Zuordnung entziehen, obwohl sie durch das Vokabular und die Denkmodelle, die für die Beschreibung des Nationalstaats entwickelt wurden, mitgeprägt sind. Die Diaspora situiert sich im Spannungsfeld zwischen kosmopolitischer Losgelöstheit und einem radikalen Nationalismus, der sich nicht länger territorial definiert.
In diesem Band soll der Begriff in seinen unterschiedlichen Dimensionen und in seiner Bedeutung für die aktuelle kultur- und sozialwissenschaftliche Debatte vorgestellt und diskutiert werden.

In recent years, wholesale centers that sell Chinese goods and which, most often, are owned by Chinese nationals or ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs, have proliferated across South Africa at the same time as the increase in migration of individuals and capital from China. Because these centers also provide for retail sales, they are referred to as malls. While many of these malls have names that suggest their possible connection to China, the few that are named “China Town” stand out. The latter, it is argued and demonstrated here, make claims to China’s global ascendance and shed light on a conflicting relationship between Chinese diasporic communities and Chinese state politics. China Town-named malls are more than merely spaces of commerce; they also present an analytical space to think about how diverse types of Chinese actors become implicated in and negotiate their identity and relationship to China’s shifting global image and politics.

This volume brings together scholars from various disciplines who explore the many facets of past and present Chinatowns in a comparative and historical perspective. It is concerned with patterns of transnational interaction in American and European Chinatowns, it traces the many indications of travel and traffic between China, South East Asia, Europe, and the United States which registered already in the nineteenth century. This concatenation was fostered and shaped by immigration, economic interests, and by the American and European missionary engagement in China. Invariably, contact scenarios cut both ways, as immigrants did not sever their ties to China: Political and economic commitments stretched across the Pacific and the Atlantic, and the missionary engagement in China affected the Western Chinatowns in the form of 'home missions.' Despite many structural or architectural similarities and overlaps, however, Chinatowns also differ markedly depending on their location. While historical Chinatowns in European cities such as London, Hamburg, or Rotterdam call to mind patterns of the American experience (as based on conditions of trade, labor restrictions, commercial interests, strategies of exoticization, etc.), these communities can by no means be considered mere replications of an American model. The differences are owed to divergent immigration policies, international relations, colonial histories, demographic developments, and many other political, economical, and cultural factors. Paying close attention to regional specificities and overarching similarities, the volume investigates the phenomenon of the Chinatown in the United States and Europe comparatively and contrastively, and it reflects on the reality and fantasy of the Chinatown from various disciplinary angles.
The book discloses the important European backdrop to a phenomenon commonly associated with North America. Also, its objective is to introduce the work of well-established European scholars in the field, some of whom have published important studies in languages other than English, to an English-speaking audience. Most of the contributors to the volume have multidisciplinary and multilingual backgrounds and are familiar with several different instances of the Chinese diasporic experience. As a consequence, our volume consists of numerous contributions which proceed comparatively, interrelating different locations or breaching timeframes and thus disclosing the numerous analogies, but also the fascinating differences which characterize the myths and realities of Chinatowns in Europe and the United States. With its triangular approach to the developments between China and the urban Chinese diasporas of North America and Europe, the volume discloses connections and interlinkages which have not been addressed before.

This paper focuses specifically on two organizations, Asian Americans United and Asian Arts Initiative to contrast ways that organizations use and adapt their organization’s Asian American identity for mobilization, activism, and place-making in Chinatown North/Callowhill
and more broadly in Philadelphia. AAI and AAU’s identity, purpose, goals, and neighborhood vision inform how they interact with the space around them. In the process of place-making in/on the edge of Chinatown, these organizations inevitably influence both neighborhoods. The threat of gentrification is still real and increasing but also fundamentally happening independently from
the actions of both organizations. I first explore the historical roots of the complexities and racialization of such a broad Asian American population, and connect the topic of Asian American organizations their place in the larger narrative of Chinatown and Chinatown North/Callowhill. I then analyze the organizations’ programming and interviews with the executive directors and place them in the context of their impact and presence within the space.