Architecture of Endurance in Manhattan Chinatown

Myles Zhang & City as living laboratory

Welcome to Chinatown! With a population of ~150,000, this neighborhood is the largest ethnic Chinese community outside of Asia, and the neighborhood has gone through many transformations in it’s journey from a wetland to what it is today. Join historian and illustrator Myles Zhang on a mile-long walk through space and time.

You can explore this walk by clicking on the google map on this page. You can navigate it on this site, or you can click the box icon on the top right corner of the map to expand it; if you are using your phone and you have the google maps app, it will open up right there in your app.

Start at Stop 1 on Bowery and Canal Street- at each stop, click the pin and a window will slide in with images and test. Click the arrow on the left of that window to collapse it and move onto the next stop.

A few questions to keep in mind during our walk:

1.     How has Chinatown changed over two centuries of urban growth? What has not changed?

2.     What other cultures and ethnicities lived in before or simultaneously with the Chinese?

3.     How are the challenges that East Asians faced imprinted on the built environment of Chinatown?

4.     How does Chinatown street life blur the boundary between public and private space?

City as Living Laboratory has been exploring this neighborhood through walks for many years, recently as a part of our initiative to explore issues of climate, equity and health through the Chinatown’s unique food system. One of our current projects, Pedestrian Observations, by Stephen Fan and Myles Zhang, is collecting observations of street life in Chinatown for a panoramic illustrated map. Please feel free to use the response form below to share any observations you would like to include!