TRANSFORMING ASIAN CITIES
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 the vantage 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, and avoiding larger global and national processes. Instead of viewing Asian cities in opposition to the Western city and using 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 that 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.
Nihal Perera is Professor of Urban Planning at Ball State University, and Director of the CapAsia field study program. He was Fulbright Scholar in China (20062007) and Senior Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore (2010). His publications include Decolonizing Ceylon, Peoples Spaces, Contesting Visions in Chandigarh, and Feminizing the City.
Wing-Shing Tang is Professor of Geography at Hong Kong Baptist University, and a member of the Editorial Board of Urban Geography and Corresponding Editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. His research focuses on interrogating Lefebvre, Foucault, Gramsci, and Harvey with the local spatio-history to construct an interdependent understanding of urban (re) development and planning in Hong Kong and China.
TRANSFORMING ASIAN CITIES
Intellectual impasse, Asianizing space, and emerging translocalities
Edited by Nihal Perera and Wing-Shing Tang
First published 2013
by Routledge
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2013 selection and editorial material, Nihal Perera and Wing-Shing Tang; individual chapters, the contributors.
The right of Nihal Perera and Wing-Shing Tang to be identified as authors of the editorial material, and of the individual authors as authors of their contributions, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Transforming Asian cities : intellectual impasse, Asianizing space, and
emerging trans-localities / edited by Nihal Perera and Wing-Shing
Tang. 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Cities and townsAsia. 2. Sociology, UrbanAsia. I. Perera, Nihal.
II. Tang, Wing-Shing.
HT147.A2T73 2013
307.76dc23
2012013911
ISBN13: 978-0-415-50738-7 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-50739-4 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-09389-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo by
Keystroke, Station Road, Codsall, Wolverhampton
CONTENTS
FIGURES
TABLES
CONTRIBUTORS
Diganta Das is a Researcher at the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. His doctoral research examined the changes in the landscape of Hyderabad due to high-tech development. Currently, he is involved in a project that investigates issues of livability, sustainability, and diversity of Asian cities.
Tessa Maria Guazon is Assistant Professor of Art Studies at the University of the Philippines-Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines. She writes about contemporary images of Manila and their constructions through space, city planning, art, and film. Published essays in Aghamtao, the Philippine Humanities Review, and Pananaw examine contemporary public art practice, cities, and arts publics.
Sharon Hong practices urban planning at a heritage conservation firm, ERA Architects Inc., in Toronto, Canada. Her work engages local heritage and culture as tools for community development and city building. She completed her graduate studies in planning at the University of Toronto.
Hon-Chu Leung is Principal Lecturer in Sociology at Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon, Hong Kong. He has written on networks and life courses of women workers, Mainland Chinese migrants in Hong Kong, and families living across the MainlandHong Kong border. His research interests include non-standard employment and projects in social economy.
Toshio Mizuuchi is Professor at the Osaka City University Urban Research Plaza, Osaka in Japan. He received his Ph.D. from Osaka City University. He is an urban social geographer and specializes in urban history, housing problems, and homelessness in contemporary East Asian cities.
Takuya Motooka is Assistant Professor at Doshisha University Institute for the Study of Humanities and Social Sciences, Kyoto in Japan. He received his Ph.D. at Osaka City University. He is an urban social geographer and specializes in urban squatter problems and Korean minority issues in Japanese cities.
Jagath Munasinghe is a practicing architect and a town planner in Sri Lanka, and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Town and Country Planning, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. He received his Ph.D. from the National University of Singapore. His research interests are the spatial dynamics of small towns, spatial cognition, and urban design.
Koompong Noobanjong is Associate Professor at King Mongkuts Institute of Technology, Ladkrabang (KMITL), Bangkok, Thailand. He engages in critical studies of architecture and the built environment, particularly on the semiotics and politics of built forms. He is a licensed architect and a senior associate of a design firm in Bangkok.
Nihal Perera is Professor of Urban Planning at Ball State University, and Director of the CapAsia field study program. He was Fulbright Scholar in China (20062007) and Senior Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore (2010). His publications include
