ARI Working Paper Series

The quest for the public city needs to be situated within the debate about the people’s ability to exert agency over the use and design of physical urban spaces. Building on the public city concept and insurgent actions in the previous chapters, this chapter identifies the public city as: 1) an inclusive urban society with regards to decision making in the public sphere; and 2) a city with public spaces that are relatively free from state and corporate control. However, with the design and planning of the urban built environment in the hands of typically elite professionals who symbiotically work with the powerful to sustain the status quo, there is the hegemonic notion of retaining or designing the built environment as a historic, economic, and a financial exercise. Urban spaces potentially retain the ideological hegemony of those involved in its building and design.

Given the inequality in power relations in the city, this chapter features Jakarta and Singapore to integrate theoretical and empirical insights to understand how, when, and why urban residents can potentially construct their own spaces and reframe the built environment in their own counter-hegemonic ways. Both cities have different urban governance regimes and state-society relations, but similarly experiencing ever-expanding corporatization of space that pressurizes the public city and insurgent urbanism. The analysis highlights that counter-hegemonic spaces of hope is more than calling residents to build their own neighborhood space; it also involves breaking down the elitism of the design profession to be accessible by residents and questioning existing power structures in various levels that sustain the status quo. Furthermore, to direct these counter-hegemonic spaces towards constructing the public city, it requires a conscious recognition of residents as empowered citizens rather than mere users of space.