The subject of this proposal is metamorphosis of urban space as lived experiences, political discourses, and governing technologies. Specifically, this project aims at an ethnographic study of the vicissitude of old neighborhoods in the city of Guangzhou, China from the early twentieth century to the contemporary. It examines how urban space is articulated in the development plans, represented in different visual images, perceived and used in everyday life in different power-knowledge apparatus. Engaged in theories of power, space and aesthetics, this project seeks to access to greater understanding of the elaborate interplay between spatial politics and the reproduction of political legitimacy.