Urban chronotextures: rethinking urban heritage through a temporal lens on Wukang Road, Shanghai

This thesis explores how temporal experience contributes to the perception, interpretation and management of urban heritage. While heritage studies have long addressed both tangible and intangible aspects of urban environments, there remains a tendency to prioritise spatial and material dimensions. The role of time—understood not only as historical chronology but also as rhythm, pace, repetition and rupture—has received comparatively less sustained theoretical attention. This research seeks to foreground the temporal textures of heritage by introducing the concept of urban chronotextures. Focusing on Wukang Road in Shanghai, a historically layered and culturally significant street, the thesis investigates how multiple temporalities intersect within a single urban setting. Through an interdisciplinary framework that draws on heritage studies, urban theory and time geography, and using qualitative methods including ethnographic observation, spatial analysis and archival research, the study examines how urban heritage is lived, narrated and regulated over time. The findings indicate that heritage is shaped by static preservation practices and historical interpretation, as well as by everyday temporal experiences, social rhythms, and the continuities and disruptions of memory. By articulating these processes in relation to a specific case study, the thesis contributes to a more temporally sensitive understanding of urban heritage and opens a conceptual space for reconsidering how heritage practices engage with the lived time of cities.