Chinese American cultural identity in the urban landscape: Sunset Park, Brooklyn

When the New City Rezoning Plan of Manhattan was approved in 2008, it intensified the conflict over living conditions between Chinese tenants and landowners in New York’s Chinatown. As a result of rising real estate prices and loss of small business services, great numbers of Chinese residents and businesses have moved out to new communities, such as Sunset Park, Brooklyn. This thesis applies descriptive methods to compare and contrast several historical communities that are similar to Sunset Park, and then evaluates the impact of landscape and other elements in urban design on their community identity. This thesis compares Chinese communities in: 1) central and suburban Toronto, Canada; 2) central and suburban Los Angeles; and 3) Chicago, Illinois. Each of these communities has weathered stresses from gentrification and/or urban redevelopment processes. This research examines how those Chinatowns were able to revitalize without losing their unique cultural character and identity. In particular, the role of landscape amenities and urban landscape design in this process is examined, in order to understand if and how particular site-scale strategies, techniques and impacts of landscape can support longer-term cultural sustainability of diversified communities. This study applies those lessons to the new formed Chinese community at Sunset Park to illustrate a variety of ways that landscape design might contribute to sustainable development there.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.L.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Landscape Architecture

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Zhang, Yue

Contributors dc:contributor

• Harwood, Stacy A.
• Li, Chuo

• Chinese identity
• Chinese community
• urban landscape

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2015 Yue Zhang

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/78546

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/78546