'Past and future meets at present'- tradition at play in urban renewal: a case study of Xintiandi, Shanghai

Tradition and modernisation are often seen as a binary opposition. In urban development, traditional built form is often seen as incompatible to modern way of life. However, in a globalized era, the idea that tradition is a... [ view full abstract ]

Tradition and modernisation are often seen as a binary opposition. In urban development, traditional built form is often seen as incompatible to modern way of life. However, in a globalized era, the idea that tradition is a repository of the past is shifting, and traditional townscape is not necessarily an obstacle to progress and modernisation. This paper aims to add a perspective to the literature on urban development in China, by exploring how the role of traditional elements is played in China’s urban development. The paper provides a case study of Xintiandi, Shanghai, which reveals how traditional townscape is used to fulfil modernisation ambitions of the public. Xintiandi is a city renewal project that features Shanghai’s traditional housing form Shikumen. Now the place is labelled as a meeting point of the city’s past, present and future. It is a controversial project, judged by critics as being jeopardizing the city’s traditional townscape because it put the traditional housing into commercial use. Research on Xintiandi has been focusing on political-economic dynamics behind development, place promotion models for tourism, as well as nostalgic sentiments in the course of modernisation in recent decades. In contrast, research on the understanding, as well as the role of tradition remains inadequate. The paper aims to explore what Old Shanghai tradition means to this city today, and how traditional elements are adapted and used in the course of urban renewal. The paper focuses on the adaptive use of tradition, is developed in light of works on tradition by Shils, Hobsbawm and Giddens. It argues that in the globalised era, ideas of tradition become more diverse and unsettled and, as Xintiandi case study has shown, tradition is not necessarily in dichotomy with, or opposite to modernization, rather, tradition justifies the needs of modernization and supplements its outcomes.

Key words: tradition, modernisation, heritage, urban, Shanghai, China