UC San Diego

This dissertation conceptualizes cultural heritage production as a case of global city-making. The relationship between historic preservation and urban redevelopment has long been debated in urban scholarship. While some argue that old buildings contribute to long-term development, others view preservation as a constraint on redevelopment. Underlying these debates is a common element: both positions are rooted in competing imaginaries of the city’s future. Although cities often promote market-oriented and lived-experience-oriented imaginaries as mutually compatible, tensions between them persist and must be negotiated. Challenging this dominant “win-win” illusion in global city-making discourse today, this dissertation argues that heritage production operates as a participatory placemaking practice through which competing imaginaries are governed and transformed into urban realities that partially shape what I call global-city character—a quality through which a city’s urban form is perceived as both comparable to and distinctive from other global cities. Focusing on 21st-century Taipei, where preservation conflicts surrounding everyday buildings are particularly pronounced, this dissertation draws on a mixed-method research design combining content analysis, quantitative modeling, and case study evidence to examine how the Heritage Review Board makes designation decisions. Findings show that neither market-oriented nor lived-experience-oriented imaginaries dominate the heritage review process in Taipei. Instead, champions of each vision are conditionally advantaged through different parts of the institutional design. To make preservation conflict governable, the Board translates competing claims into defensible decisions by relying on materially verifiable features of buildings, enabling it to maintain expert authority while selectively responding to and defending against stakeholder demands. The findings further illustrate the broader spatial implications of heritage production. The cumulative effects of these designation decisions produce stratified urban landscapes. In Taipei, preserved low-rise heritage buildings coexist with adjacent high-rise developments, illustrating how competing imaginaries are selectively materialized. Over time, these placemaking decisions shape the city’s global-city character. Through authorized heritage discourse, the city is framed within broader narratives of development and modernization. This master narrative not only represents Taipei’s urban identity but also reflects how the city seeks to be understood by the world. These findings demonstrate the forward-looking and outward-facing orientations of heritage production.