relation: https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/4354/
title: Infrastructuralizing Heritage: Regenerating Historical Quarters in Qingdao, China
creator: Zhu, Ge
description: This research examines the socio-material process of infrastructuralizing heritage buildings called Liyuan in the context of regenerating historical quarters in Qingdao, China. Based on qualitative methods including in-depth interviews, on-site observation, and discourse analysis, it contends that the heritage buildings and other material entities have been utilized purposefully by the government and other actors as infrastructures, while they also show material agencies and serve as infrastructures themselves during the implementation of regeneration projects. This infrastructuralizing process unfolds through selective material practices, including the utilization of dilapidated material state to facilitate displacement of homeowners and tenants as well as the renovation and authentication of buildings that emphasizes certain “valuable elements”. The material process goes along with the immaterial discursive framing, including the construction of historical genuineness and future developmental vision, in which the Liyuan building also plays a vital role. Consequently, this process, bolstered by the active involvement of the state, reinforced existing power disparities within an entrepreneurial and authoritarian urban regime. By employing the concept of infrastructuralizing to analyze the socio-material process of urban redevelopment, this research contributes to the literature on urban redevelopment and gentrification by responding to its relative oversight of material agencies and socio-material process.
date: 2023
type: Thesis
type: NonPeerReviewed
format: text
language: en
identifier: https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/4354/1/Thesis%20final%20version_Ge%20Zhu_17%20August.pdf
identifier:   Zhu, Ge  (2023) Infrastructuralizing Heritage: Regenerating Historical Quarters in Qingdao, China.  Master thesis.