Kay Anderson - Chinatown Unbound: Trans-Asian Urbanism in the Age of China

Trans-Asian Urbanism in the Age of China

Kay Anderson, Ien Ang, Andrea Del Bono, Donald McNeill and Alexandra Wong

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

London New York

Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd
6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom
www.rowmaninternational.com
Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd. is an affiliate of Rowman & Littlefield
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA
With additional offices in Boulder, New York, Toronto (Canada), and Plymouth (UK)
www.rowman.com

Copyright 2019 by Kay Anderson, Ien Ang, Andrea Del Bono, Donald McNeill and Alexandra Wong

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: HB 978-1-78660-898-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Anderson, Kay, 1958- author. | Ang, Ien, 1954- author. | Del Bono, Andrea, 1986- author. | McNeill, Donald, 1969- author. | Wong, Alexandra, 1973- author.

Title: Chinatown Unbound : Trans-Asian Urbanism in the Age of China / Kay Anderson, Ien Ang, Andrea Del Bono, Donald McNeill, and Alexandra Wong.

Description: London ; New York : Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd., 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018047272 (print) | LCCN 2018049493 (ebook) | ISBN 9781786608994 (electronic) | ISBN 9781786608987 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Chinatown (Sydney, N.S.W.)Social conditions21st century. | ChineseAustraliaSydney (N.S.W.)History21st century. | ChinatownsSocial aspectsHistory21st centuryCase studies. | Sociology, UrbanAustraliaSydney (N.S.W.) | Sydney (N.S.W.)Social conditions21st century.

Classification: LCC DU178 (ebook) | LCC DU178 .A63 2019 (print) | DDC 305.895/109441dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018047272

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.481992.

Printed in the United States of America

The collaborations that support and themselves evolve throughout the making of academic books deserve more rigorous consideration than the usual pro forma acknowledgments typically granted them in the prefaces of publications. The creative engagements behind this book are no exception. For in this case, there have been productive exchanges across a range of interfaces: academic disciplines, career stages, intellectual paradigms, sectors and funding bodies, identity and linguistic positionings both Asian and non-Asian, domains of theory and empirics, skills including the scholarly and the technical, perspectives of interviewer and interviewee, (constant) conversation both face-to-face and digital and even across the sometimes-delicate dynamics of academic collegiality and friendship. These are just some of the junctions at which this books material was assembled.

Teamwork across disciplines, sectors, skill sets and intellectual sensibilities is a fragile achievement: a creative act of daily coordination and improvisation. More foundational is the funding that enables it. The research for this book would not have been possible without the generous support of a grant from the Australian Research Council Linkage scheme (ARCLP 120200311), together with a financial commitment from the City of Sydney. We hope the contribution this work makes to stimulating public interest in Australias changing place within its region, from the position of a tiny but telling Sydney setting, affirms the decision to fund it. We would also like to thank the City of Sydney not only for its material input but also for its active intellectual engagement with the projects content and concerns: especially Phil Raskall and Steve Hillier, from the Research, Strategy and Corporate Planning Unit; Robyn Simon, from the City Business and Safety Unit; and the many City of Sydney councillors and officers who participated in interviews (and the occasional field excursion) for their time, interest and expertise. Acknowledged here, too, is the assistance of the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, where a public symposium was held in March 2015 with many project stakeholders across sectors; the Haymarket Chamber of Commerce, which convened a number of valuable events relevant to the project; and the anonymous comments of the manuscripts reviewer.

This research would not have been possible without the help of a large number of informants who took part in interviews, focus groups and the survey we conducted. We express gratitude for these participants time, openness and insightful responses to our questions. A number of the interviews evolved into more open-ended conversations and were all the more useful as a result. On a more technical front, we thank Urszula Dawkins for her careful and comprehensive copy-editing work; also Dr Alexandra Wong, a member of the research team and highly competent assistant to the project, for her multilingual expertise in transcribing some of the interview data. Finally, here, we thank Western Sydney University for its support of the Institute for Culture and Society, which afforded the employment or funding base as well as a rich and congenial scholarly environment for us throughout the duration of the project (and beyond, in most cases).

Some of the chapters of this book draw on material previously published elsewhere, although this has been revised in the form in which it appears here. Chapter 1, and our books title, draws on a few excerpts first published as Kay Anderson in the chapter of an edited volume. Reprinting of this material is with the permission of the publisher from Trans-Pacific Mobilities edited by Lloyd Wong, University of British Columbia Press, 2017. All rights are reserved by the publisher. Further excerpts of chapter 1 were first published as Kay Anderson, Chinatown Disoriented: Shifting Standpoints in the Age of China, in Australian Geographer 49 (1), 13348 (2018), the following link to which is provided at the publishers request: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00049182.2017.1327791. Other material in our books introduction first appeared as Ien Ang, At Home in Asia? Sydneys Chinatown and Australias Asian Century, in International Journal of Cultural Studies 19 (3), 25769 (2016). Chapter 3 draws on material published as Donald McNeill, Sydneys Chinatown/Chinese Cities, in Journal of Urban Cultural Studies 1 (3), 48996 (2014). Chapter 4 includes materials first published as Alexandra Wong, Transnational Real Estate in Australia: New Chinese Diaspora, Media Representation and Urban Transformation of Sydneys Chinatown, in International Journal of Housing Policy 17 (1), 97119 (2017); and as Alexandra Wong and Ien Ang in a book chapter titled From Chinatown to Chinas Town? The Newest Diaspora and the Transformation of Sydneys Chinatown, in New Chinese Migration: Mobility, Home, Inspirations , edited by Y. -W. Chan and S. -Y. Koh (2018). Chapter 9 includes material first published as Kay Anderson (see chapter 1) and Ien Ang, Claiming Chinatown: Asian Australians, Public Art and the Making of Urban Culture, in Journal of Australian Studies 41 (3): 33650 (2017). Finally, several chapters in this book, but particularly chapter 7, draw on material from Andrea Del Bonos PhD thesis, Chinese and Italian Place Brands in Contemporary Sydney: Assembling Ethnicity and/in the City (Western Sydney University, 2016).