Who destroyed Chinatown? Who preserved Chinatown? Confronting erasure and gentrification in North American Chinatowns

Activists in the United States and Canada have recently sounded the alarm that North America’s downtown Chinatowns are under threat. This is just the latest chapter in a long history of being targeted for erasure and redevelopment. But what parts of these dynamics are new? And what does it even mean to destroy or preserve Chinatowns? To understand the continuities and changes in this history, it is vital to parse the different actors involved, including in efforts to protect and rebuild the neighbourhood. This reveals some issues particular to Chinatowns, but also others shared with many working-class communities of colour in planning history and cities today. In this article, we trace the actors engaged in more and less explicit efforts to destroy Chinatowns and in defending and preserving them since their formation in the late nineteenth century. The diversity of public, private, and civil society actors involved illuminates the ambiguous, contested, and shifting meanings of Chinatowns’ destruction and preservation over the long term.