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A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S My initial interest in the topic of urban preservation was kindled by the drastic urban transformation of my hometown, Beijing. Since the late 1990s, Beijing has gone through rapid urban renewal, and a large proportion of the historic city has vanished under the wrecking ball. I was sad to see that many places from my memory were gone and that the city had become increasingly unfamiliar. So I decided to write this book. By looking at other cities in the world and exploring how they have handled their architectural legacies, I hope to better understand what happened in my city. In the course of researching and writing this book, I accumulated enormous personal debts of gratitude to many people and institutions. This book had its origins as a doctoral dissertation in politics at Princeton University, and I would like to express my profound gratitude to my dissertation committee members—Lynn T. White, Stanley N. Katz, Paul J. DiMaggio, Jessica L. Trounstine, and Michael N. Danielson—for their advice, sustained interest in my project, and unflagging academic and personal support throughout the years. Lynn has been an incredible advisor and mentor. He set a high standard for scholarship and provided constant encouragement and guidance during my graduate study at Princeton. Stan has been an inspirational guide during every stage of this project and taught me to embrace a humanistic vision in social science research. Paul was always able to steer my project in a much better direction by raising questions that alerted me to unseen political and social dynamics. Jessica encouraged me to think big and tie urban preservation to larger questions of democracy. Mike walked me into the world of urban politics research and guided me to crystallize my interest in urban preservation into concrete research questions and projects. In addition to my dissertation committee, I was fortunate to be surrounded by wise and supportive faculty and peers at Princeton. Special x AC K N OW L ED G M EN TS thanks go to Ezra N. Suleiman, Gilbert Rozman, Steven J. Tepper, Susan Naquin, and the participants in the Comparative Politics Research Seminar in the Politics Department for their encouragement and helpful feedback at various stages of the project. I must also thank Princeton University for its institutional support.The generous financial assistance provided by Princeton enabled fieldwork for this project. My preliminary study of the three cities was made possible by a research grant from the Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies. The center quickly became a home and, under the efficient yet gregarious leadership of Stanley N. Katz and Paul J. DiMaggio, occupies truly cherished place in my heart. The workshops at the center were an invaluable source of inspiration for my research and provided good venues for me to present my work in progress. I also received crucial financial support throughout my dissertation writing from the Princeton University Institute for International and Regional Studies, the Program in East Asian Studies, and the Princeton–Harvard China and the World Program. I thank all these institutions and agencies for their generous support. This project is based on extensive fieldwork in Beijing, Paris, and Chicago from 2003 to 2010. I am deeply indebted to the many people who generously took the time to share with me their knowledge, stories, and views on cities. In Beijing,Wang Changsheng,Wang Jianping, Ge Xun, and Wang Youquan offered me the rare access to many preservation projects in the field. Wang Jun and Xu Yong inspired me to dig harder and deeper into the spatial transformation in urban China. In Paris, Patrick Terrior connected me to many key figures in French local and national government and took me to see some of the urban gems of Paris. Bernard Franjou allowed me to bother him frequently and showed me how preservation projects were implemented in Paris. Claire Monod, Dominique Masson, and Elsa Martayan helped me draw a better picture of intergovernmental relations in France. Francesco Bandarin, former director of the UNESCO World Heritage Center, lent me a global vision to investigate the issue of cultural heritage preservation. In Chicago, Tim Samuelson offered me the first and best introduction to the city’s history of urban preservation. Brian Goeken and Phyllis M. Ellin greatly enhanced my understanding of how local politics works. Blair Kamin told me why architecture matters and kindled my interest in exploring the stories...

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