Rapid socioeconomic re-stratification and neighborhood gentrification have resulted in the creation of new public spaces and cultural forms of urban communities in post-Deng China. Based on field research conducted between 1998 and 2001, this dissertation examines the impact of community building practices on the everyday life of the ordinary urbanites. After 1949, the Communist authorities initiated a series of “civilizing” projects aimed at transforming the social and political landscape of the Chinese cities and rebuilding the power structure of local society. For over half a century, the official neighborhood organizations were the cornerstone institutions of the socialist state. They served as the primary agent of change especially in localities known as part of the “lower quarters” such as Five Mile Bridge.; Throughout the 1990s, the Shanghai government officials actively pursued community development strategies aimed at professionalizing the neighborhood organization and showcasing citizenship as they attempted to transform Shanghai into a global city for the “new millennium.” Through an ethnographic investigation of the community development projects implemented in Five Mile Bridge, I explore the discrepancy between scientizing, futuristic visions of the City administrators and the harsh local conditions of a gentrifying neighborhood. Instead of forging a strong sense of identity within an imagined “Community,” the community construction scheme served to justify the existence of various communities representing different social and economic interests within a neighborhood that was a microcosm of a stratified, late socialist society.
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