Toronto’s Chinatown was born out of a form of resistance which paired infidelity to official definitions of Canadian citizenship (who was allowed to belong) with fidelity to its community members (who belonged). Historical representations have often been unfaithful to the Chinatown community, and architectural imagery has often tended to erase it from view entirely. In this essay, the authors explore Linda Zhang’s appropriation of architectural technologies (such as photogrammetry and pointcloud scanning) as a form of antidisplacement resistance to the ongoing and centuries-old erasure(s) of Toronto’s Chinatown. Her project, Chinatown 2050, uses speculative futurist 3D reconstructions and community storytelling to reimagine what Toronto’s Chinatowns might be like in the year 2050. Unfaithful to the present and past “official” demarcations of the neighborhood, it is a form of social organizing and imagination towards a more generative future. In countering technological acts of erasure, Zhang’s work illuminates the broader sociopolitical implications of technological choices and critiques the ways in which history often silences marginalized communities.

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