Events

This workshop brings together research on participatory city-making in Asia.  In probing the question of whose city, it seeks to go beyond resistance against the corporatization of urban governance and the production of urban spaces to further ask how do people, either through self-empowerment, with government or through other forms of cooperative association, create alternative spaces in the city?  From 1980 to 2010, cities in Asia added over one billion people to their rapidly growing populations, resulting in Asia having more than half of the world’s total urban population. By 2040 Asia will have added another 1.5 billion people to its cities.  During this period of globally-driven urbanization, cities are undergoing thorough transformations of their built environment and uses of urban space.  Especially from the late 1980s, global economic interest shifted from a focus on export processing platforms that were mostly peripheral to the city to the appropriation of core and peri-urban spaces for global accumulation through land development for retail consumption, housing estates, entertainment, business services and land speculation.  The active participation of ordinary people in producing urban vernacular heritage in the form of locally built housing, neighborhood formation and common spaces, among others, has been put in jeopardy by these trends. As the magnitude and shares of population living in cities continues to increase at often extraordinary rates in Asia, the question of the right to the city as manifested in the right to change the city by people rather than corporate interests becomes more important for cities today and into urban future.

Efforts to counter the alienating forces of the dominant modes of urban expansion are being asserted through both resistance mobilisations and organised projects for alternative life-spaces. Cooperative initiatives in producing urban spaces, which is simultaneously a physical and a social process, are observable everywhere in many forms and at many scales.  Local initiatives in neighbourhoods and larger communities, including managing and governing them, are key manifestations of an inclusive city by and for the people. Local projects such as community gardening may start in small scale but can also spread to other place-making actions throughout the city and to other urban areas. Actions are not only directed toward physical or material means of producing spaces are equally aimed at generating alternative institutional and legal means of forms of In several cities in Asia civil society organizations have also begun to work with local government in using new tools such as participatory budgeting, social enterprises, community currency and collective tenure as the means of empowerment alternative tools for urban residents to protect and nurture their spaces of hope.

“Alternative Urban Spaces: Cities by and for the people” asks epistemological as well as action-based questions in exploring possible alternatives to construct cities as theatres of social action:

The Possible Alternatives
1. What are the forms of urban projects by and for the people and how would these urban projects reflect the city as both idea and reality?
2. How are urban projects by and for the people governed and managed?
3. What are the key drivers for success in maintaining public spaces for people’s associational and public life?

Constructing Urban Theories
1. What are the theoretical bases and useful conceptual tools to generate ideas about cities by and for the people?
2. What brings together urban heterogeneities as social agents of change in the city?
3. What prevents people in the city to work together to build a progressive city?
4. How applicable is the right to the city as a conceptual framework in defining and practicing cities by and for the people?
5. How do we understand the local state (municipal or urban level) in relation to the idea of the city by and for the people?

This workshop is a continuation of research collaboration among the Urban Knowledge Network Asia (UKNA) scholars. The “Alternative Urban Spaces: Cities by and for the people” workshop intends to bring together urban scholars in the Asian region to advance theoretical concepts and provide empirical evidence as well as future research frameworks to further the agreed upon “Cities by and for the People” theme.

REGISTRATION

Admission is free, however, registration is required. Kindly register early as seats are available on a first come, first served basis. Please email Minghua at minghua.tay@nus.edu.sg to indicate your interest to attend the talk.

CONTACT DETAILS

Workshop Convenors

Prof Mike DOUGLASS
Asia Research Institute, and Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore
E | michaeld@nus.edu.sg

Dr Rita PADAWANGI
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
E | ritapd@nus.edu.sg

Secretariat

Ms TAY Minghua
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
E | minghua.tay@nus.edu.sg