Costa Rica's Chinatown: The Art of Being Global in the Age of China

Inaugurated in its capital city of San José in 2012, C osta R ica's Chinatown represents the newest addition to a list of over 100 C hinatowns worldwide. Through ethnographic research on the project's construction, public debates, and fall‐out, this paper analyzes how municipal efforts to enact urban revitalization were tied to a changing global landscape increasingly defined by C hina. In particular, I examine how planners, urban citizens, and ethnic C hinese community members use Chinatown as a space in which to debate and deploy competing visions of “the art of being global” based on their diverse valuations of C hina's significance to national identity and future development. The project's ultimate failure highlights how “world conjuring” efforts of this kind can undermine the multicultural histories and cosmopolitan ties that cities claim as the very source of their global difference and value.