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Thames Town-an English-like village built in Shanghai-is many places at once: a successful tourist destination, an affluent residential cluster, a city of migrant workers, and a ghost town. The Real Fake explores how the users of Thames Town transform a themed space into something more than a "fake place." Piazzoni understands authenticity as a dynamic relationship between people, places, and meanings that enables urban transformations. She argues that authenticity underlies the social and physical production of space through both top-down and bottom-up dynamics. The systems of moral and aesthetic judgments that people associate with "the authentic" materialize in the village. Authenticity excludes some users as it inhibits access and usage especially to the migrant poor. And yet, ideas of the authentic also encourage everyday, spontaneous appropriations of space that explicitly break the village rules. Most scholars criticize theming, arguing that it produces a fake, exclusionary, and controlling city. Piazzoni complicates this view by focusing on how people negotiate a sense of authenticity in an explicitly "fake" environment. Heritage studies tell us that we authenticate places through affective and embodied experiences, as evidenced by the data collected in Thames Town. Although the exclusionary character of theming remains unquestionable, it is precisely the experience of "fakeness" that allows Thames Tow's users to develop a sense of place.
List of contents
Introduction 1
1. The Controversy of Theming 21
2. Thames Town and the Chinese Landscapes of Mimicry 41
3. Everyday Life in the English Village of Shanghai 69
4. The Spaces Authenticity Makes 109
Acknowledgments 123
Bibliography 125
Critics' Corner 141
About the author
Maria Francesca Piazzoni is an Architect and a Ph.D. Candidate at USC, Price School of Public Policy. She holds a Ph.D. in Architecture and Urbanism from IUAV, University of Venice.
Summary
The Real Fake explores how the users of Thames Town—an English-like village built in Songjiang New Town near Shanghai—negotiate the notion of authenticity through their everyday social and spatial practices. Piazzoni argues that authenticity underlies the social and physical production of space through both top-down and bottom-up dynamics.
