This paper examines the large scale of displacement of Shikumen residents in Shanghai in the last twenty years in relation to the challenges of maintaining and reconstructing the people and place identity.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the large scale of displacement of Shikumen residents in Shanghai in the last twenty years in relation to the challenges of maintaining and reconstructing the people and place identity. Shikumen is one of the kind housing style that hybridizes the Western influence and Chinese traditions. Eighty-eight percent of the Shanghainese lived in it in the 1950s, half of the municipal population still do so in 1990s. However, in the course of Shanghai "re"-development after China adopted an open door policy in the 1980s, Shikumen neighborhoods have been destroyed to yield spaces for gentrification and green space. Studying the complexity of the people and place identity through this emerging heritage industry will yield excellent theoretical debate on place-based identity of the people and the place.