Chinatown and Urban Redevelopment: a Spatial Narrative of Race, Identity, and Urban Politics 1950 – 2000

CHINATOWN AND URBAN REDEVELOPMENT: A SPATIAL NARRATIVE OF RACE, IDENTITY, AND URBAN POLITICS 1950 – 2000 BY CHUO LI DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Landscape Architecture in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2011 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor D. Fairchild Ruggles, Chair Professor Dianne Harris Associate Professor Martin Manalansan Associate Professor Faranak Miraftab Abstract The dissertation explores the intricate relations between landscape, race/ethnicity, and urban economy and politics in American Chinatowns. It focuses on the landscape changes and spatial struggles in the Chinatowns under the forces of urban redevelopment after WWII. As the world has entered into a global era in the second half of the twentieth century, the conditions of Chinatown have significantly changed due to the explosion of information and the blurring of racial and cultural boundaries. One major change has been the new agenda of urban land planning which increasingly prioritizes the rationality of capital accumulation. The different stages of urban redevelopment have in common the deliberate efforts to manipulate the land uses and spatial representations of Chinatown as part of the socio-cultural strategies of urban development. A central thread linking the dissertation’s chapters is the attempt to examine the contingent and often contradictory production and reproduction of socio-spatial forms in Chinatowns when the world is increasingly structured around the dynamics of economic and technological changes with the new forms of global and local activities. Late capitalism has dramatically altered city forms such that a new understanding of the role of ethnicity and race in the making of urban space is required. Using a methodology that combines field observation, personal interviews, and archive research, the research uses the case studies of three Chinatowns located in the metropolitan cities San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. The regional differences of the three Chinatowns reveal that there is no single Chinatown model but rather multiple Chinese American communities with difference experiences of urban redevelopment and spatial evolution. The comparison of these Chinatowns contributes both theoretically and empirically to our understanding of regionally- specific variations to the widespread processes of urban redevelopment and spatial apparatus ii based on ethnic/racial differentiations. It also reveals varying modes of landscape in staging and performing racial/ethnic identity and social activism. iii Acknowledgements When I was a master student at the department of Landscape Architecture in the University of Wisconsin – Madison, I made a decision to study the Chinatowns in the United States. Coming from China, I thought this research topic is closely related to my own cultural experiences and social backgrounds. However, when I started to conduct the research in Chicago’s Chinatown, I realized the Chinatown is a foreign land to me. The exotic architecture, the odd social institutions, the languages people speak, and even the goods sold in the stores appeared to be unfamiliar and strange. But at the same time I share a strong ethnic tie to the people who live and work in the Chinatown, as the bitter life experiences they have suffered in the past century were concurrently occurred with the wars, poverty, colonization, and the Communist movements such as the Cultural Revolution in our homeland China. Thus, in this research, the positioning of myself both as an outsider and insider provides me complicated feelings and unique perspectives towards the project. Working in the three Chinatowns located in the west coast, the midwest, and the east coast also turned out to be challenging and rewarding experiences. One of the challenges is the time and money to do fieldwork at these very far apart Chinatowns and another one would be how to understand the nuances of the differences in terms of demographic, economic, and political constituencies of the three Chinatowns. During my tenure as a Ph.D student in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I received tremendous support from the department professor and colleagues. My advisor Professor D. Fairchild Ruggles owns my deepest respect and gratitude for her patience, guidance, and encouragement. It is my sincere hope that this work will reward in some small measure the faith she has always placed in me over the past seven years. I would also like to thank Professor Dianne Harris who inspired and guided me in the iv study of race and space and always gave me thoughtful comments on the dissertation work, Professor Martin Manalansan who is extensively knowledgeable in Asian American studies helped me to engage in the critical theories in Chinese American history, and Professor Faranak Miraftab who helped me to create the intellectual foundation for Transnational Urban Studies. Without their passionate encouragement, selfless sharing of their knowledge, and diligent guidance, this dissertation would not have been possible. Special thanks are due to those who have assisted me at the libraries and archives I have patronized during the course of this project, including the staffs of the San Francisco Public Library, the Society of California Pioneers, the Foundation for San Francisco Architectural Heritage, the Ethnic Studies Library at the University of California – Berkeley, Chicago History Society, and the Chatham Square Branch of New York Public Library. I am also grateful to those who kindly share their time with my interviews and assisted me to get information in my field works including Howard Wong, Enid Lim, Sue Lee, Amy Tran, Jason Bley, only name a few. I own a considerable debt of gratitude to my parents for their unconditional love as encouraging me to pursue my academic dream in America. Thanks, finally, to my husband, Long Wan Tan, who has been a loving and faithful companion in my life and my daughter, Angelina Tan, for making my life full of joy. v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………...1 PART I: LAND-USE CHANGES AND THE POLITICS OF EXCLUSION…………………..28 CHAPTER 1: HOUSING AND SPATIAL STRUGGLES IN SAN FRANCISCO’S CHINATOWN………………………………………………………………... 29 CHAPTER 2: “URBAN RENEWAL COMES TO CHINATOWN WITH EASE?”—THE CASE OF CHICAGO’S CHINATOWN………………………………………………………...76 CHAPTER 3: RESTRUCTURING THE SPACE OF PRODUCTION IN NEW YORK’S CHINATOWN……………………………………………………………………….117 PART II: REINVENTING NEIGHBORHOOD: CULTURAL IDENTITY AND LANDSCAPE CHANGES……………………………………………………………………..162 CHAPTER 4: HISTORIC PRESERVATION AND THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY IN SAN FRANCISCO’S CHINATOWN………………………………………………………….163 CHAPTER 5: LANDSCAPE IMAGERY AND COMMUNITY BUILDING IN CHICAGO’S CHINATOWN…………………………………………………………………..202 CHAPTER 6: DEMYSTIFICATION AND THE SPATIAL DIVISION OF NEW YORK’S CHINATOWN……………………………………………………………………….239 CONCLUSIONS……………………………………………………………………………….275 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………282 vi Introduction Chinatowns, as ports-of-entry for immigrant Chinese in the United States, have played a significant role in Chinese immigration history in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Chinatowns have endured a century of hostile immigration laws and racism. In response, the communities that lived there relied on their internal institutions and informal ethnic economy to actively organize and provide job opportunities and housing to the Chinese immigrants, protecting them from racial exclusionism and job discrimination. This protective role developed from a specific set of social conditions. But as the world enters into a global era in the twenty-first century, those conditions have changed: with the explosion of information, fast communication networks, and the blurring of racial and cultural boundaries, will the classic Chinatown turn into an anachronism that is destined to wither away like so many other ethnic enclaves in the last century? How will Chinatown evolve to situate itself in a world that is now increasingly structured around the dynamics of economic and technological changes with the new forms of global and local activity? Many important studies have contributed to the contemporary conceptualization of Chinatown as a metaphor of the racialization processes or the unequal economic and labor relations in Western countries.1 This dissertation contributes to that body of scholarship by exploring empirically the spatial evolution of Chinatown from a constellation of social relations both outside and inside the community, and a conscious linkage to the wider world that integrates the global and the local.2 More specifically, using the case studies of three Chinatowns located in metropolitan cities – San Francisco, Chicago, and New York – the study examines the various ways that city and land formation in Chinatown has responded to the forces of urban redevelopment, ideological changes, and highly differentiated local economic and political dynamics in the second half of the twentieth century.3 As sites of explicit difference, Chinatowns rupture the urban fabric of global cities. The ruptures are made visible through the exotica of the built landscape and the noticeably distinct social and cultural practices of the community (figure 1). Perhaps because Chinatown has reterritorialized the city with 1 special identities, cultures, and practices that disrupt the established histories

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