Place Matters

Abstract

The large-scale changes that had affected every corner of Shanghai since the early 1990s made it easy for us to assume that territoriality has become less an issue than it was in the recent past. Over the course of our ethnographic fieldwork and observations conducted intermittently between 2000 and 2010, however, we came to realize that the age-old dichotomy between the lower quarters and upper quarters had hardly been blurred by the profound social and economic transformations. Making explicit links among Shanghai nostalgia, place attachment, and neighborhood gentrification, this article explores the ways in which historical memory was reified and manipulated in dichotomized "upper and lower quarters" as a consequence of conscious efforts by local residents and municipal officials. Our research findings suggest that the notions of the "lower quarters" and "upper quarters" continued to be an extremely meaningful category of articulating one's status and position in a rapidly stratified society. We argue that the ongoing spatial reconfiguration have answered the strategic need of the municipal officials in their bid for a global metropolis and has impacted the community-building practices in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods such as Bay Bridge.