Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Xiaoling Chen, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

In this talk I will present key discussions from my recently published book People-led Development: Interstitial Practice and the Production of Differential Spaces in Hanoi, co-authored with Ngai-Ming Yip. Using Hanoi as a case study, the book explores city-making through the everyday activities of ordinary people.

The book integrates the concept of interstitial practice—understood as the everyday, situated actions through which individuals and communities appropriate or modify space within the gaps of dominant institutional or spatial systems—with Lefebvre’s framework of the production of differential space to conceptualise the diverse and seemingly ad-hoc space-making activities of urban residents.

These practices are situated in relation to the state’s disciplining projects through housing and urban planning. Moving beyond a simplistic, dichotomised discussion of informality and formality it examine the tensions between state-driven visions of modernized urbanisation and the everyday spatial practices of ordinary people. By highlighting interstitial practices, the work offers a more nuanced understanding of the diverse processes through which various forms of differential spaces are produced.

Focusing on the more “ordinary components” of city-making that are often overlooked or neglected, the book highlights the spatial agency of ordinary people in responding to the imposition of state-sanctioned abstract spaces and the suppression of state social engineering. It argues that induced or minimal differential spaces, while fragmented and limited in scale, carry political significance. These spaces not only act as forms of resistance, but their accumulation also holds transformative potential.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Hoai Anh Tran is Associate Professor of Built Environment at the Department of Urban Studies, Malmö University, Sweden. Her research provides a critical analysis of the relationship between the state and society in urban space production, in the formulation and implementation of urban and housing policies, as well as the relationship between people and the built environment, with studies from Vietnam and Sweden. Her research topics include urban development policies and social justice, sustainable planning, urban space production, housing research, gentrification, everyday mobility, informality, and rhythm analysis.