In massive development projects that often directly affect “traditional” Shanghai neighbourhoods, the city’s local government has drawn urban planning inspiration from cities such as New York, London, and Tokyo, which have achieved architectural distinction as “global cities” by combining modern high-rise and heritage buildings. City branding is a major part of Shanghai’s urban development program, and the preservation of historic buildings is seen as integral to this emerging brand. The underlying rationale is to protect “architectural artifacts” that the local government considers appropriate for a city with global ambitions. The central question, however, is: how does the image of urban globalisation affect the citizenry whose lives the city government is claiming to improve? More broadly, the politically charged context of “traditional” neighbourhood preservation situates contested forms of expertise mobilised by local government actors, neighbourhood residents, and architects and planners. 

As a result, old neighbourhoods have been removed to make way for modern high-rises, condominiums, office and commercial buildings, and so on. In the process, not only are people forced from their homes, but their displacement also raises the critical question: what Shanghai should be as a city, whom it should serve – whether that should be the local population or global commerce. Exemplifying this issue are contestations surrounding the traditional alleyway houses of Shanghai known as lilong. Literally meaning "neighbourhood lane," the lilong (里弄) are the legacies of Shanghai's Treaty Port era (1842-1946), representing the Chinese take on the British row house aesthetic. The lilong also constituted the primary housing stock found in Shanghai up until the early 1980s, with multiple generations having occupied the same dwellings for 100 years or more.  Historians, journalists, and architects often share the opinion that lilong neighbourhoods are historically important and, therefore, must be preserved.  In many ways the attitude underlying this opinion – based as it is on a Eurocentric notion of the global city – encourages the local government’s romanticisation of Shanghai’s neighbourhood life, similar to the gradually disappearing courtyard houses in Beijing ("hutong," 胡同). In this presentation, I will present my ongoing doctoral research regarding the sociopolitical conflicts over the intertwined issues of heritage, urban space, and human rights – in which the lilong is at the centre. 

Trained as an architect, urban designer, historian and ethnographic filmmaker, Non Arkaraprasertkul is currently a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Harvard University. He has published widely in the fields of urban studies, architectural history, and urban anthropology. His research interest lies in the crossroad of transdiscliplinary research between architecture and the social sciences. In the spring of 2013, he served as Distinguished (Visiting) Gibbons Professor of Architecture at the University of South Florida (USF). Previously, he was a visiting lecturer in Architecture and Urban Design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2007–2008, and an adjunct professor in Modern Chinese History at Lesley University from 2012 to present. 

He has master's degrees in history, theory, criticism of architecture, and architecture and urban design from MIT, and Modern Chinese Studies from the University of Oxford. From September 2013, he will be based at Fudan University as Harvard-China Council Exchange Scholar and at Harvard Shanghai Center as Harvard Asian Center Affiliate conducting his doctoral research "Locating Shanghai: Globalization, Heritage Industry, and the Political Economy of Urban Space." He can be reached at non@mit.edu .

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