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The In-Between Space: An Auto-ethnographic and Architectural Investigation into a Chinese Grocery Store

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Thesis(46.11 MB)

Date

2025

Authors

Supervisor

Sargent, Nick
McCabe, Micheal

Item type

Thesis

Degree name

Master of Architecture (Professional)

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Publisher

Auckland University of Technology

Abstract

This thesis explores a different way to engage with issues of displacement and gentrification during the process of urban redevelopment by exploring what roles a Chinese grocery store plays in the local Chinese community. General lessons at a broader scale are drawn for thinking about how urban planning and city regeneration can be more responsive to both Chinese migrant histories, and more importantly contemporary Chinese spatial and cultural practices. The research is situated in the context that Northcote town centre is planned to be completely renewed in the next fifteen years. The current shopping centre is home to some 90 businesses as well as community organisations, public facilities, and health and well-being practices. Well utilised by the local Asian community, the centre has developed as a centre for food, produce, and Asian goods. Led by Eke Panuku, the renewal project proposes to create a mixed-use neighbourhood in the current shopping centre, anchoring on community, culture, and business. However, many current businesses stakeholders who are mostly Asian migrants feel a lack of support and exclusion during planning and design processes and experience uncertainty for their businesses’ future. In addition, the local Chinese community’s fears of losing its current cultural character and worries that hosting small ethnic businesses may become unaffordable to them once the redevelopment project completes. Beginning with an extensive investigation of the context of Northcote and the long history of Chinese market gardening in Aotearoa, the thesis employs an auto-ethnographic approach to study the site – Da-Hua Supermarket, a Chinese grocery store that has served the community for years. This methodology enables the research to answer the inquiry by applying specificity and depth to the investigation, while exploring and celebrating personal experiences from different media such as vignettes, field sketches, mappings, and architectural drawings. A collection of depictions and reflections acknowledge the importances of personal experiences by utilising architectural documentation techniques to express the relationship between personal sentiments and the spatial conditions of Da-Hua Supermarket. It is through paying close attention on daily details on a person level, as a Chinese migrant, a mum, a wife, and a researcher that some specific socio-cultural values of a long-existing Chinese grocery store of the community appear to be visible. Furthermore, the documentation also aims to emphasise ordinary details of the grocery store that reflect some very different ideas and practices from the Chinese migrant community. For example, one of the narratives in this thesis presents how food and produce is differently valued and processed in a Chinese migrant family. To come back to the context of the Northcote town centre redevelopment, this research suggests an alternative process for authorities and city planners to consider in terms of public engagements and participation strategies. The thesis shows that iterative process of documenting and reflecting on data from a personal point of view that was based on the combination of architectural research techniques and autoethnography resulted in a better understanding of a collective cultural group. The subsequent visits, the valuing of personal experiences as well as the freedom to explore highlighted in this auto-ethnographic research address the gap between socio-cultural realities and urban planning, which is often instituted, directed and controlled .

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http://hdl.handle.net/10292/19347

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