Urban Transformational Landscapes In The City Hinterlands Of Asia

In the context of mounting challenges stemming from a rapid transformation of the urban-regional landscapes in many Asian countries, this book highlights a multifaceted array of issues that increasingly engage the academic and planning communities in search of viable solutions to complex problems facing us. Even though cities continue to dominate development studies, urbanization of Asia is evolving toward a hybrid urban-rural nexus beyond the cities. This volume considers these shifting dynamics of Asian urbanization, including urban spatial transformations and their ramifications in the context of sustainability and planning. Through the lens of a set of empirical studies across diverse disciplines, geographies and methodologies. yet with an overarching concern for sustainability in varied (but interconnected) areas such as climate change, land use planning, infrastructure and urban mobility, and quality of life, these studies examine a range of important topics (e.g., flooding, transportation, housing, open space/ green space, urban garden and such) in city/regional settings. Together, they add insights into varied transformational processes or patterns at work on the urban-regional landscapes in a number of Asian countries while offering innovative approaches or alternatives. The proposed volume fills a gap in urban/regional studies in context of South and Southeast Asia that will be of interest to all stakeholders (e.g., planners, administrators, academicians and the citizenry), particularly those interested in sustainability and planning paradigms. It should be a timely and valuable addition to the Asian urbanization literature.

Theorizing the Southeast Asian City as Text examines the ways in which culture, ethnicity, languages, traditions, governance, policies and histories interplay in the creation of the urban experiences in contemporary Southeast Asian cities. It focuses on the ways in which urban spatial forms are textual experiences, subject to interpretative strategies and the influence of other discourses. In addition it also analyzes the experiences of modernization in such cities, but also in terms of the strategies of containment, refurbishment, and loss which this has occasioned.

Theorizing the Southeast Asian City as Text examines the ways in which culture, ethnicity, languages, traditions, governance, policies and histories interplay in the creation of the urban experiences in contemporary Southeast Asian cities. It focuses on the ways in which urban spatial forms are textual experiences, subject to interpretative strategies and the influence of other discourses. In addition it also analyzes the experiences of modernization in such cities, but also in terms of the strategies of containment, refurbishment, and loss which this has occasioned. Contents:Urbanism and Post-Colonial Nationalities: Theorizing the Southeast Asian City (R B H Goh & B S A Yeoh)Reading the Southeast Asian City in the Context of Rapid Economic Growth (K S Tay & R B H Goh)“The Rise of the Merlion”: Monument and Myth in the Making of the Singapore Story (B S A Yeoh & T C Chang)Things to a Void: Utopian Discourse, Communality and Constructed Interstices in Singapore Public Housing (R B H Goh)Selective Disclosure: Romancing the Singapore River (S Huang & T C Chang)Malaysia's High-Tech Cities and the Construction of Intelligent Citizenship (T Bunnell)Museum/City/Nation: Negotiating Identities in Urban Museums in Indonesia and Singapore (K M Adams)The Urban and the Urbane: Modernization, Modernism and the Rebirth of Singaporean Cinema (A R Guneratne)Benjamin in Bombay? An Asian Extrapolation (R Patke) Readership: Undergraduates, graduate students, academics and professionals in architecture and urban planning. Keywords:Urban Studies;Southeast Asian Cities;Society and Culture;Literature;MediaReviews:“… there is much of value in the book both theoretically and empirically and it certainly deserves a readership beyond those interested in South-east Asia … this edited collection provides a good illustration of the benefits of taking the cultural turn, interpreting texts very broadly to cover anything from the built environment through museums and films as cultural artifacts to the role of the flâneur in construing rather than constructing the city.”Urban Studies

This book presents the latest research on three issues of crucial importance to Asian cities: governance, livability, and sustainability. Together, these issues canvass the salient trends defining Asian urbanization and are explored through an eclectic compendium of studies that represent the many voices of this diverse region. Examining the processes and implications of Asian urbanization, the book interweaves practical cases with theories and empirical rigor while lending insight and complexity into the towering challenges of urban governance. The book targets a broad audience including thinkers, practitioners, and students.

While there is no lack of studies on Asian cities, the majority focus on financial districts, poverty, the slum, tradition, tourism, and pollution, and use the modern, affluent, and transforming Western city as the reference point. This vast Asian empirical presence is not complemented by a theoretical presence; academic discourses overlook common and basic urban processes, particularly the production of space, place, and identity by ordinary citizens. Switching thevantage point to Asian cities and citizens, Transforming Asian Cities draws attention to how Asians produce their contemporary urban practices, identities, and spaces as part of resisting, responding to, andavoiding larger global and national processes. Instead of viewing Asian cities in opposition to the Western city andusing it as the norm, this book instead opts to provincialize mainstream and traditional knowledge. It argues that the vast terrain of ordinary actors and spaces which are currently left out should be reflected in academic debates and policy decisions, and the local thinking processes that constitute these spaces need to be acknowledged, enabled, and critiqued. The individual chapters illustrate that "global" spaces are more (trans)local, traditional environments are more modern, and Asian spaces are better defined than acknowledged. The aim is to develop room for understandings of Asian cities from Asian standpoints, especially acknowledging how Asians observe, interpret, understand, and create space in their cities.

Seemingly messy and chaotic, the landscapes and urban life of cities in Asia possess an order and hierarchy that often challenges understanding and appreciation. With contributions by a cross-disciplinary group of authors, Messy Urbanism: Understanding the “Other” Cities of Asia examines a range of cases in Asia to explore the social and institutional politics of urban informality and the contexts in which this “messiness” emerges or is constructed. The book brings a distinct perspective to the broader patterns of informal urban orders and processes as well as their interplay with formalized systems and mechanisms. It also raises questions about the production of cities, cityscapes, and citizenship. Messy Urbanism will appeal to professionals, students, and scholars in the fields of urban studies, architecture, landscape architecture, planning and policy, as well as Asian studies. “The rubric of ‘messy urbanism’ is a productive antidote to the binaries that have limited a productive discussion about urbanism in Asia. This book is a significant contribution in understanding the inherent nature of the built environments in aspiring democracies—an emergent urbanism that seamlessly embraces the incremental, temporal, and ephemeral as given conditions in the formation of Asian cities.” —Rahul Mehrotra, Architect / Professor of Urban Design and Planning, Harvard University “This book is of a high quality, with multiple examples from Hong Kong and China. The authors have covered the topic admirably and I expect the book to attract a wide readership.” —Vinit Mukhija, Associate Professor and Vice Chair of Urban Planning, UCLA

While global cities have mostly been characterized as sites of intensive and extensive economic activity, the quest for global city status also increasingly rests on the creative production and consumption of culture and the arts. Arts, Culture and the

Heteroglossic Asia presents an analysis of geographic, historical, cultural, economic, spatial and political factors underlying Taiwan’s maritime urbanity by means of case studies based on Taipei and Kaohsiung; two cities which represent the multi-accentual character of Taiwan’s urban environment and its recent changes and development through architecture. Focussing on the concept of a heteroglossic Asia Pacific, exemplified by the analysis of Taiwan’s urban transformation, the study argues that Taiwan’s urban environment shows a form of intended "fuzziness" which cannot be described as resting on either a simplified nationalist base or chaotic societal anxiety. Rather, this form lies between binary poles: autocracy and democracy, nation state and day-to-day life, top-down and bottom-up orientations, orthodoxy and hybridisation.