Place promotion and iconography in Shanghaiʹs Xintiandi

This paper examines the intersections of the past and present in the contemporary urban landscape of Shanghai. In particular, it examines on the glamorous history prior to communist liberation in 1949, which is museumized in the contemporary Shanghai landscape. The focus on urban regeneration efforts has seen the renovation of Shikumen Houses in Xintiandi, which demonstrates how contemporary spaces are imagined in ways that conjure up “Old Shanghai”. Through this process of creating trans-historical spaces, the original place meanings of Xintiandi are re-cast by its present stakeholders. By deploying iconography as a particular device of place promotion, the paper illuminates the fragments of history that have been fore grounded and muted by these strategies. Xintiandi is broadly conceived as a site of consumption that is reflective of emerging new spaces of consumption in Shanghai; as spaces that are set within the context of unequal power relations in urban planning and heritage conservation.