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Whose Old City? Spatial Politics and Gendering in the Gentrification of Chengdu's Yulin and Taikoo Li

Author(s)

Xiang Li*

Affiliation(s)

School of Ethnology and Sociology Southwest Minzu Institute, Southwest Minzu University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China *Corresponding Author

Abstract

Ruth Glass first put forward the concept of gentrification in 1964, and since then, it has been applied to cities around the world. Neil Smith, through the "rent gap theory", was one of the first to explain gentrification in terms of political economy. In his book *The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City*, he said that it is "a back-to-the-city movement driven by capital, not by people". However, during my reading, I noticed that the influencing factors of gentrification may include not only capital and rent gaps but also the influence of middle-class sexual minorities and female groups. Additionally, the locations where gentrification occurs require basic conditions such as transportation infrastructure and cultural heritage. I observed the gentrification phenomena in Yulin Street and the Sino-Ocean Taikoo Li in Chengdu. Through research, I found that the gentrification of Taikoo Li represents a "top-down" production of consumption space jointly decided by the government and capital, characterized by exclusivity and an international orientation. In contrast, Yulin Road exhibits a "bottom-up" gradual renewal process, attempting to find a balance between capital discourse and community daily life. However, neither path has completely escaped the predicament of gentrification; both are undergoing gentrification under the influence of rent and capital, shaping the class and gender order of urban space in different ways. In my view, gentrification also constructs the identity of individuals or groups, while differentially affecting different classes within these groups. Women of different classes also bear the differentiated spatial consequences brought about by gentrification.

Keywords

Gentrification; Spatial Politics; Gendered Subjectivity; Chengdu; Urban Anthropology

References

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