This Is Part of Our History: Preserving Garment Manufacturing and a Sense of Home in Manhattan’s Chinatown

Abstract

This article explores attempts by labor and community advocates to retain a garment industry base in Manhattan’s Chinatown after 9/11. Specifically tying the viability of such proposals to ongoing processes such as gentrification, transnational capital investment, local development, and broader anti-manufacturing urban policy, I argue that strategies for appropriate and sensitive community development that are rooted in sectoral preservation or development need to take into account the specificities of place, class, and ethnicity. In particular, the concept of a valued cultural or home space adds urgency to the advocacy of such proposals beyond the generic economic rationale of manufacturing retention.