The Trans-Pacific Status Seekers: Dialogue and Discontent of Transnational Suburbanization

Abstract

This paper explores in more depth the role status plays in the transnational process of suburbanizing Taiwan and China. It describes how the social homogenous American suburb is becoming the most influential force within new developments in Taiwan. In particularly, it looks at housing developments for high technology engineers, many of who studied and or lived and worked in the Silicon Valley. It records the stories of these engineer families and these new “model developments” and how status objects like lower density suburbs, homogeneity¸ segregated and gated enclaves removed from existing city centers have arisen in Hsinchu, Taiwan and Shanghai, China.