Gentrifying heritage: how historic preservation drives gentrification in urban Shanghai

Abstract

In Shanghai, one can not only see, but live in the remnants of the city’s semi-colonial legacy. These are the remaining lane houses known as lilong that are scattered throughout the city. Urbanites living in foreign settlements built them and resided there between the late nineteenth century to the mid 1940s. Confiscated by the Communist government upon its takeover in 1949, these buildings were redistributed to socialist workers and later on heavily altered to accommodate the massive influx of migrants during the first two decades of the opening up and reform era. The lilong houses are an important part of the memories of local Shanghainese residents. In this paper, I look primarily at the original residents’ savviness in capitalising on heritage as a source of income and thereby using it as a defence against economic precariousness. I argue that the high level of flexibility of the notion of heritage enables a form of gentrification that differs from classic gentrification whereby middle-class residents push the working class out of a neighbourhood. The original working-class residents who understand the value system of the middle class are those profiting thanks to their ability to ‘sell’ the old lilong buildings as historically important and ultimately as middle-class heritage. This process, however, eventually produces a middle-class enclave similar to that of a classic gentrified neighbourhood. The remnants of the past such as those found in these traditional-looking neighbourhoods facilitate original residents’ navigation of the abrupt social changes wrought by the market-driven urban Chinese economy of the past three decades.

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