Heritage as city vision leverage: the suspended transformation of the railway landscape in Changhua City

ABSTRACT This paper shows how heritage can become leverage working against the pro-growth city vision. In most cases, historic preservation in urban areas can hardly combat the dominant developmentalist ideology. The heritage thus produced may exacerbate uneven development, or simply be utilised as a cultural commodity. The case of Changhua City in Taiwan, however, proves otherwise. Through its 30-year controversies concerning the railway infrastructure, we show how the local government’s redevelopment vision since the 1990s can be gradually shifted, and that the secondary position of Changhua, plus the socio-materiality tied by three preservation movements upon the railway landscape, has made such shift possible. Drawing on planning reports and interviews with preservationists, we analyse how the static cityscape, though frustrating to developers and preservationists alike, has actually produced the kind of time-space required for civic life to develop, and for heritage to be lived as ordinary everyday life. With this case, we hope to contribute to the rethinking of heritage’s role in relation to the urban development.