TRANSCULTURAL CITIES: BORDER-CROSSING AND PLACEMAKING

Edited by Jeffrey Hou

(Routledge 2013)

In cities and regions around the globe, migrations of people have continued to shape the makeup and making of neighborhoods, districts, and communities. While contributing to the multicultural vibes in cities,

migration and movements have also resulted in tensions, competition, and clashes of cultures between different ethnic communities, old-timers, newcomers, employees and employers, individuals and institutions. How can cities and urban places facilitate cross-cultural transactions and understanding?How can cross-cultural understanding be constructed, “staged,” or engendered through social and spatial practices in the contemporary urban environment? How can a better understanding of the transcultural processes inform the transformation of the contemporary city?

With a collection of case studies around the world presented by a multidisciplinary group of scholars and activists, Transcultural Cities focuses on the intercultural exchanges as well as the cultural trans-formation that takes place in urban spaces. In doing so, it views cultures not in isolation from each other in today’s diverse urban environments, but as mutually influenced, constituted and transformed through acts of placemaking.

TABLE OF CONTENT

1. Your Place and/or My Place?
Jeffrey Hou

Part One. Placemaking at the Margins

2. Transcultural Placemaking: Intertwined Spaces of Sacred and Secular on Devon Avenue, Chicago
Arijit Sen

3. Brazilian Restaurants and the Transcultural Making of Place in Tokyo, Japan Vera Zambonelli

4. West African Immigrants’ Hybrid Spaces and Identities in Rainier Valley, Seattle Rachel Miller

5. The Sin Oh Dan Street Lion Dance Competition: a Temporary Space for Cross-cultural Understanding
Jayde Lin Roberts

Part Two. Placemaking in the Space of Flows

6. The Korean Diaspora in Philippine Cities: Amalgamation or Invasion?
José Edgardo Gomez, Jr.

7. The Transcultural Production of Space: Making “Little Shanghai” in Sydney Duangfang Lu & Hongguang He

8. Listening to Transcultural Voices, Watching out for Trans-Asian Places: Kampung Kanthan in Transition
Shenglin Elijah Chang & Yenchew Foo

9. Everyday Places that Connect Disparate Homelands: Remembering through the City Clare Rishbeth

Part Three. Bridging Spaces of Difference

10. "We are the Fruit Bowl": Place, Cultural Identity and Social Ties among Immigrant Residents in Public Housing. Lynne C. Manzo

11. Spaces of Negotiation and Engagement in Multi-ethnic Ethnoscapes: The “Cambodia Town Neighborhood” in Central Long Beach, California Felicity Hwee-Hwa Chan

12. From a Neighborhood of Strangers to a Political Community of Fate: The Village of Market Creek Plaza Michael Rios

13. Dumb White Kids and Asian Nerds? Race and Ethnic Relations in Silicon Valley Suburban Schools
Willow Lung Amam

Part Four. Building Communities across Cultures

14. The Road Less Travelled: Transcultural Community Building
Caitlin Cahill

15. Creating Political and Social Spaces for Transcultural Community

Integration Trinh Mai & Kimberly Schmit

16. Transcultural Participation: Designing with Immigrant Communities in Seattle’s International District Jeffrey Hou

17. Urban Agriculture as “Agricultural” Producer Adam Prince

Part Five. Struggles for Transcultural Cities

18. What’s Parks Got to Do with It? Latino Children, Physical Activity, and the Parks System in Lancaster, Pennsylvania Mallika Bose & Kirk Dimond

19. Placemaking In Between Urban Redevelopment: Little Indonesia in Taipei Hung-Ying Chen

20. Regulation and Reception of Public Space in Hong Kong Kin Wai Michael Siu

21. Peripheralization and Other Roman Stories Lorenzo Rinelli