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Space and Culture
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Revitalizing Chinatown Into a Heterotopia

A Geosemiotic Analysis of Shop Signs in Washington, D.C.'s Chinatown

Jia Lou

Georgetown University

With the changing immigrant population and rising real-estate prices in downtown Washington, D.C., the number of Chinese residents and businesses in its Chinatown has declined in recent years. Meanwhile, non-Chinese stores and restaurants have marched into this thriving neighborhood. Foreseeing the threat of Chinatown's disappearance from the urban landscape, leaders of the local Chinese community have devised and administered a mandate for all businesses, Chinese and non-Chinese, in the area to carry Chinese shop signs. To understand how this mandate has reconstructed Chinatown's semiotic landscape, this article employs the theoretical framework of geosemiotics and the (post-)structuralist conception of the sign. Through an analysis of shop signs in their material contexts, it is argued that the local community's preservation effort has inadvertently rendered Chinatown into a heterotopia, where heterogeneous spaces are juxtaposed into one place.

Key Words: Chinatown • shop signs • geosemiotics • heterotopia • urban revitalization

Space and Culture, Vol. 10, No. 2, 170-194 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1206331206298547
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[Abstract] [PDF]