Members of the Chinatown Community Development Center youth groups, spent months faithfully re-creating the San Francisco neighborhood in the world-building video game.  A lot of the re-creations were built from images found on Google Images and Google Maps, where crowded streets of Chinatown often obscure certain details these kids are trying to render; in a way, they’re rebuilding the Chinatown of the recent past to keep its tourist aesthetic in the present.

Linda Zhang, professor at Ryerson’s School of Interior Design in the Faculty of Community & Design, created this board game to create dialogue about what’s worth preserving and what the city’s Chinatowns should look like in the future. It’s on display now, including a large-scale 3D printed installation of Chinatown East Gate, at Vancouver’s Griffin Art Project as part of an exhibit called Whose Chinatown?, a collection of projects by Chinese Canadian artists about Chinatowns throughout the continent.