Negotiating the Urban Past: The Relationality of Metro Station Naming in Suzhou, China

Abstract Cities worldwide increasingly leverage their urban past to advance place‐making, economic revitalisation, regional competitiveness and cultural identity. However, how the urban past can be meaningfully integrated into everyday urban geographies remains a critical and underexplored challenge. This study situates the contested politics of metro station naming within this broader context, demonstrating that the appropriation of urban pasts is a dynamic process of negotiation, relationality and place‐making. It focuses on the disputes over the extent to which historically evocative place names can be used in Suzhou Metro stations during closed‐door naming conferences. Drawing on relational thinking, this paper argues that the sociocultural legitimacy of historically evocative toponyms arises from their relationality with other elements within specific urban contexts. While place names that echo the urban past are often seen as beneficial for identity construction and place branding, their legitimacy becomes contested when they are divorced from their situated contexts.