the reconstruction of chinatown in washington dc

Rita Wu, University of Virginia

TO BEGIN WITH...

The impact of this competition on me is far larger than just these several pages of work. It takes more than that to rethink different aspects of the word ‘culture’. What is culture? The dictionary defines it as “the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group” in the web dictionary. I don’t really like this definition because it is too vague and could apply to nearly everything from our daily life. The only thing I am sure of is that it is hard to explain in simple words,and harder to visualize it in a specific space. “

A quick self-introduction, I am a second-year university student and my hometown is China. I’ve lived in the U.S. for a year. While you may think that I will spend lots of time talking about how I adapt to the new environment, I can say that it’s pretty easy—I started to fit into the new lifestyle and act like other natives after my first week here. Living in a globalized world, the internet, education, and international trade make people’s (especially the young generation’s) daily lifestyles familiar, even if we may come from different “cultural backgrounds.”So, here’s the question: what do we need culture for? I had mixed feelings when I saw the lion dance at the spring festival gala at my school. It is definitely a part of Chinese culture, but actually, I seldom see it even when I am in China. Then I realized a problem, those “Chinese elements” famous in the U.S. are only a limited iconic part and far away from people’s daily life.

Since I had never been to Washington DC when I first saw I chose Chinatown as the place

I wanted to study. No matter how time changes, Chinatown is no doubt the first place that people (especially visitors and local groups) can think of when mentioning Chinese culture.

About Chinatown In Dc

People may wrongly interpret Chinatown as a flourishing place if they see the beautiful pictures on the websites. Although it is true that the typical entrance gate is still attractive and marks the glorious history of Asian immigrants, the current population in the community was reported as low as 300 in 2015, while Asian is no longer the dominant group in the area.

The origin of DC Chinatown can be dated back to the 1890s, when the gathering of Asian people finally caught the attention of local media, which announced the community’s existence. From then on, it continued its function as an important social infrastructure— providing both physical and emotional support for new immigrants. It kept attracting more Chinese Americans due to the language convenience and job opportunities. On one hand, I guess the culture of Chinatown at that time was really traditional because most residents were first-generation immigrants from

China. Still, on the other hand, the community must have been highly exclusive from the local people’s perspective, which resulted in another kind of social segregation caused by culture—although we cannot say if it is a good thing or not.

Many issues affect the continued expansion of Chinatown. However, the most severe impact is caused by the formalization process that started in the 1980s [3]. In the zoning plan at that time, the

Chinatown districts were marked as wild and messy, so it became an urgent task to demolish the whole place and make it an urban renewal project. Blocks around the community were quickly modernized and replaced by new concrete buildings, and commercial sites began to invade the Chinatown neighborhood. Even though citizens showed strong disagreement and refusal, some were still forced to move to suburban areas.

Nowadays

Nowadays, due to the excellent location near the city center, the land price and rent of the Chinatown area make it more difficult for small businesses to survive [4]. The simple business model (restaurant only) causes the decline of community vitality, leading to the lack of street activities and community maintenance. Therefore, it results in the disappearance of the sense of belonging and cultural identity.

WHAT ABOUT MY PROJECT?

Personally, I believe that a good economic status and enough social interactions are the basis of promoting “culture.” In the ideal situation, “culture” should be a part of our daily life.

My project aims to promote the economic growth and the social interaction of the community while revitalizing the culture represented by Chinatown and encouraging effective exchanges and integration with local cultures. So, I chose “shared public space” as the main focus of my project to try to explore new possibilities in different kinds of space. The first step I took was to take an overall look at the whole area in the east of Downtown Washington, D.C. along H and I Streets between 5th and 8th Streets [5]—the most direct feeling is that it is a really dense area that has a strong contrast with its surroundings.The “dense” here does not refer to the population but the significant numbers of buildings in the limited space; most are only several floors high. The whole Chinatown community lacks additional but essential space for people to do activities.

Instead of coming up with a whole zoning plan for the entire area and demolishing the existing built environment, I am thinking of solving this problem by adding small changes. When I walked from school to my dorm one day, I suddenly realized that the streets could serve many different functions and are one kind of the “third space” that people stayed in for the longest time. As a result, my project improves the streets in the China Town area, making it a “complete street” with green space, bike lanes, and open public space for more street activities. Especially during this COVID time, it is better to encourage outside interaction than inside the buildings. Meanwhile, according to the theory of Jane Jacobs, street activity means that more people can pay attention to the development of this area and reduce street crime to some extent.

Meanwhile, I notice there are about 14+ bus stops near this area. (When I was working on the project, I compared them to the bus stops near my home. However, it turns out that those differ slightly from the ones in Chinatown. I will describe how in more detail later.)

So, why not do some decorations and change them to unique elements just like the front gate of China Town? As bus stops can also be considered an ignored public space, they also have the functions of improving social communication and showing knowledge of the Chinese culture.

The project includes giving bus stops an entirely new appearance

(the shape of Nian and lions) related to Chinese culture, along with constructing unique and dynamic tiny museums, food stores, or Chinese gift shops near them. Some of these “exchanging sites” can be automatic. For example, some can be introductions to festivals in China, and others can be interactive, like selling some snacks and experiencing the procedure of cultural crafts. It provides some workplaces for “low-income” people living here, and it has the potential to be a new fashion trend that attracts young people and makes the waiting time more fun and comfortable. Lastly, I found a medium-sized vacant lot inside by viewing the community’s plan. I decided to make it a mini-park with trees, water, and most important—a bridge in the shape of a dragon. The reason that I chose a dragon is that it is a typical character and easy to emulate. This action can add to the community’s social infrastructure and green space, benefiting residents and visitors. However, after visiting the actual site, I realized this park action is unrealistic, but I want to leave it here as a part of my thinking process.

Thoughts For Future And Suggesions For Improvements

During the spring break of 2022, I finally got the chance to visit Chinatown in Washington DC. It is pretty different from what I have expected. I am a little bit disappointed to find myself being the only Asian visitor in this area during my trip, so I sincerely hope that my project can help the situation better.

One problem I found is that I made a mistake when interpreting the scale of the vacant lot, so it came out to be too small for the park, so maybe the park can be moved to another place where needed. The currently vacant lot can be used as a small plaza for children and elders to do some daily exercise.

The good thing is that I noticed that there are already some traditional Chinese elements inside the community, including red trash cans, dragon-shaped lights, etc. But I think that my project is still valuable even if these elements exist—the bus stop proposal integrates culture into its function. Compared to the trash cans and lights, a bus stop is an actual place that provides people with incentives to stay and contains more content. While carefully examining the bus stops in Washington DC, I found that they already have roofs to prevent people from sun and rain. That will make my proposal even more straightforward: no need to construct them from zero; we can just invite artists, residents, and anyone interested in the project to decorate it; this process is also an excellent way to promote culture. Moreover, some bus stops near Chinatown are also linked to the internet and GPS guidance, which gives me ideas on the future possibilities of this project in further researching the role Chinatown plays nowadays in people’s lives. One idea is that we can make every bus stop unique and match them with QR codes (even maybe change the decoration every half year) for people to “make a collection” around Chinatown, maybe set up some posts collection on social media like Ins or Facebook blogs or apps, that can attract people to come to Chinatown for travel. Another idea is related to the concept of the “smart city”: to track people’s movements related to Chinatown, for example, where they come from in the city, and which store they most commonly go to. In this way, we can identify the attraction groups and the most frequent functions of Chinatown, which can provide a reference for future planning.

References

Chinatown demographics and statistics. Niche. (n.d.). Retrieved May 24, 2022, from https://www.niche.com/places-to-live/n/chinatownwashington-dc/residents/

Cooper, R. (2021, September 6). A neighborhood guide to Chinatown in Washington, DC. TripSavvy. Retrieved May 24, 2022, from https://www. tripsavvy.com/chinatown-washington-dc-neighborhood-guide-1039373

Wang, Y. (2015, July 18). D.C.’s Chinatown has only 300 Chinese Americans left, and they’re fighting to stay. The Washington Post. Retrieved May 24, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/dcs-chinatown-has-only-300-chinese-americans-left--and-fighting-tostay/2015/07/16/86d54e84-2191-11e5-bf41-c23f5d3face1_story.html

Weta. (2020, April 10). The History & Survival of Washington D.C.’s Chinatown. Boundary Stones: WETA’s Washington DC History Blog. Retrieved May 24, 2022, from https://boundarystones.weta.org/2020/04/10/history-survival-washington-dc%E2%80%99s-chinatown#footnote-marker-1-1

Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, March 1). Chinatown (Washington, D.C.). Wikipedia. Retrieved May 24, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Chinatown_(Washington,_D.C.)

Contributions

Urban Design Committee

AIA|DC managing editors

Janki Shah, Assoc. AIA

Saakshi Terway, Assoc. AIA

Kumi Wickramanayaka, AIA co-chairs

Janki Shah, Assoc. AIA

Kumi Wickramanayaka, AIA past chair

Saakshi Terway, Assoc. AIA

2022 Committee Sponsorers

editorial review

Bohesa Won

Hinali Shah

Mary Eveleigh

Mary Fitch, AICP, Hon. AIA

Scott Archer. AIA

Temitayo Fasusi, RA graphic review

Ameya Lokesh Kaulaskar

Ana Gabriela Mendoza Flores

Bohesa Won

Dita Bittenbender contributing authors

Bradley Benmoshe

Rishika Dhawan

Aaron Greiner

Ameya Lokesh Kaulaskar

Greg Luongo

Timothy Maher

Joseph McKenley

Erin Peavey

Dominic Weilminster

Rita Wu