Speakers:   Philipp Demgenski, Institute of Anthropology, Department of Sociology, Zhejiang University

Under current Chinese leadership, inner-city redevelopment has shifted from a “demolish and rebuild” (da chai da jian) model to prioritizing heritage preservation (baohu) and “subtle redevelopment” (wei gaizao), with policies prohibiting violent evictions, requiring public interest justification, and promoting transparency in housing expropriation. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, in this presentation, I explore how these changes have played out at the micro level of urban society in the concrete negotiations over housing expropriation and compensation in the old, former colonial town centre of Qingdao. I show that while these policies aim to enhance the “quality” of redevelopment and bolster government legitimacy, they often fall short. Launching a housing expropriation and renewal scheme has, I argue, been much like opening a Pandora’s box in unleashing unresolved legacies and burdens of the past. Redevelopment announcements created expectations and triggered actions relative to compensation that the local government was unable to effectively address. This hints at the multifaceted challenges that China faces in reforming its redevelopment practices.

Philipp Demgenski is an Assistant Professor in Anthropology in the Department of Sociology at Zhejiang University. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research has been focusing on urban redevelopment and heritage politics in China as well as global heritage governance. His book “Seeking a Future for the Past: Space, power, and heritage in a Chinese city” was published in 2024 with Michigan University Press. He was previously a member of the “UNESCO Frictions” project at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, researching the implementation of the UNESCO 2003 Convention in China, Brazil and Greece.

This event series is sponsored by the MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab, the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning, and the Harvard University Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

Presented via Zoom Meeting.
Meeting link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/93343229272