Mapping Voices in Chinatown

A research on local business owners' attitudes on gentrification
My Roles
Research

Recruited and interviewed 8 research participants. Actively engaged in local community's daily activities. Synthesized qualitative data.

Graphic Design

Communicated research outcomes with originally-designed diagrams.

Research Question

Where I got Started?

What are the opinions of Manhattan Chinatown inhabitants and business owners towards gentrification?

Research

How did I reach out to participants and collect data?

1. Observational Research
We focused on 3 elements in the observation: businesses, people and differences.
  • Business: the distribution of businesses, types of the businesses, their ownership and their customers.
  • People: The behaviors and distribution of people from different ethnic backgrounds.
  • Difference: the similarities and differences between Chinatown and the other (mainstream) neighborhoods of the city.
2. Semi-Structured Interview
We interviewed 8 people who are involved in or influenced by the swirl of gentrification. To have a holistic view of the situation, we reached out to interviewees from 2 generations and cover both residents and business owners in Chinatown. We carefully drafted interview questions based on their identity and experience.
3. Be In The Community
We attended two events held by W.O.W project, an initiative based in Manhattan Chinatown that aims to sustain the ownership of Chinatown in the future. By participating in these events, we were able to be in the community to hear their voice and wishes.
Synthesis

What I learned?

1. 3 Groups Of People And Their Interpretation Of "American Dream"
People describe Chinatown as “American Dream in action”. This statement highly covers the history of Chinatown, from how it was originated to all the problems it is facing nowadays. It bonded people together in the community but the expression of American Dream vary for each individual.
Details

First generation Chinese immigrant
They have low education level and limited English proficiency; They can hardly leave Chinatown and are only able to work in small business in Chinatown because of a huge language barrier and limited skill sets; Their attitudes toward gentrification are very negative, for the rising real estate price and the increasing living cost are big threatens for their living.

Second generation immigrants who left Chinatown
Many participants mentioned the phenomena of young people leaving Chinatown in the past years. We learned from the secondary research that the main reason people left Chinatown is financial difficulties led by gentrification. However, from our participant's words, we disclosed other layers of the story. The list below is several reasons we heard from the interviews.

Second generation business owners
They are second generation Chinese American who took over their family business or began their own business in Chinatown.Most of them are highly educated and better received western ideology compared with their parents.Some of them once dreamed of chasing American dream and left Chinatown.They more or less injected new blood to the traditional business in order to adapt to the changes or build agency to make changes happen.

2. Attitudes Map
With the project going on, we noticed that gentrification is a heated topic within the community and surprisingly, people had different attitudes toward this phenomena and are not absolute negative. Our participants told us about gentrification from different aspects and scales. We used information mapping to analyze and organize these narratives and attitudes.

After these organizations, we had this clear attitude map. Vertically, the four rows are four topics people brought up around gentrification. From left to right, attitudes aligned from negative to positive.
3. Business Ecosystem Map
We abstracted the whole ecosystem of Chinatown into this inner-outer ring structure. The circle in the most inside part of the system is  local residents and it is divided into young and elderly, these two parts. We divided it because we noticed that young and elderly residents seldomly showed up in the same spot and they have very different life style. The most outside ring represents the outsiders and they are asians and non-asians. The businesses are located in the middle of these two rings. The color of the circles shows the ownership and the arrows toward the circles indicates what groups of people the business attract.
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