Asian Urbanism in Bhumi 2010

Bhúmi, the Planning Research Journal, Vol. 01, No. 02, December 2009

Asian Urbanism and Planning:

Viewing the Production of Space from the Spaces of

Production NIHAL PERERA

Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Associate Professor of Urban Planning, Ball State University, USA [email protected]

(Revised paper received, December 2009)

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ABSTRACT - Global affairs are increasingly shaped by events in Asia and its cities are undergoing profound

social (i.e., economic, polit ical, and social) changes. Yet the spatial transformations in Asian cities do not

seem to follow this social change. According to the dominant discourses, Asian urbanization is following

Western models, and the planning of Asia‟s cities is conservative, reactive, and piecemeal. I will argue that

the above characterization of Asian urbanization is inaccurate and is caused by external urban and planning

perceptions. The discourses on Asian urbanization focus on its Westernization and approach the subject

from upper-class perspectives. As they speak, the scholars, professionals, politicians, administrators, and

developers create the image of the Asian city as one that is dominated by West -centered global forces and

processes, marg inalizing the transformat ions caused by local inhabitants and communities. In this, they

deny space for locally-produced developments that might take these urban environments in alternative

trajectories. Hence it is important for p lanners and planning educators in Asia to focus on the innovative

urban and planning practices in Asia, particu larly those developed through learning by doing, and view

them from the places of production.

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INTRODUCTION

Henri Lefebvre (1991) highlights that “A revolution that does not produce new

space has not realized its full potential.” Global affairs are increasingly shaped by

events in South-East Asia and its cities are undergoing profound social (i.e., economic, political, and social) changes.

Yet its spatial transformation, as highlighted in the dominant discourses,

especially those on globalization, modernity, global city, world city, informational city, international

development, and their critics, is mostly reactive, slow, and sporadic. In this,

Asia is undergoing a massive social change without a spatial counterpart, the latter simply following Western models.

The social and spatial transformations seem to go in opposite directions:

socially Asia leading the way and

spatially following the West. Moreover, the planning in Asia‟s cities is conservative, reactive, and piecemeal.

I am skeptical about this view. I

will argue that this characterization of Asian urbanization and planning is partial and inaccurate. The above

discourses –wrapped in global understandings-- focus on mega projects

and the Westernization of Asian cities. This is simply one transformation among many. Beyond and besides this, Asian

cities are undergoing a large-scale spatial transformation. The larger problem is

with the perception caused by the theoretical approach adopted in these discourses, especially the vantage point

and the analytical framework which are external to Asia and privilege the West.

mailto:[email protected]

2 Nihal Perera

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Yet the social power of the dominant discourses is not absolute. The changes

taking place at the “bottom” (when looked at it from authorities‟ or planners‟

vantage points) and in the interstices of the society --or the real life-level-- reveal that (colonial) modern society was not as

systematic and complete as we are made to believe by the dominant discourses.

As Partha Chatterjee (2007) argues: The reason why many of the forms of modern government actually manage to work is because they make adjustments and negotiate with many of these contrary forms. They do so at the localized level, very often by recognizing themselves as merely exceptional cases. But, of course, exceptions pile up on exceptions and very often there are localized norms which are often quite contrary to what the larger principles would dictate. Very often, at the local level, people have an understanding that the norm is actually quite different. It is only by recognizing that norm at the local level that in fact the larger structure will survive.

While the system of domination is not

complete, non-compliance, defiance, and

resistance to the West- induced transformation operate in the center,

within the cracks, and the margins of the system. “Bottom-up” processes and innovations take place and new ideas

emerge in Asia‟s cities, but at a small scale, slow rate, by small people who

negotiate space for their daily practices. The professionals who adapt to the society, culture, and environment also

“learn by doing.”1 These innovations in Asian urbanism and planning lay beyond

and besides the city of dominant Western narratives, in grounded realities. “Western” here stands for a perspective

and vantage point; “innovation” refers to transformative practices that do not

directly follow or mimic dominant or hegemonic examples. It does not refer to pure or authentic spaces, but to hybrid

perceptions, conceptions, creations, and

transformations of space that creatively combine local, regional, Western, and

global knowledge and experience in new ways, but grounded in global, local, and

daily processes. These are spaces that the subjects negotiate for their day-to-day practices within, besides, and in the

margins of the larger spatial structures of the authorities. In so doing they create

new physical spaces and redefine existing ones.

The resulting hybridity of Asian cities is well described in Jeremy

Richmond‟s journal from his south-Asia based field study CapAsia IV in spring 2005.2

Bangkok’s landscape is woven with religious and political imagery. Spirit Houses occupy various locations throughout the city; the process of how these edifices are placed is not clearly evident to the casual observer, though ... there must be some criteria. The King is portrayed in large enshrined posters that line the major intersections and the political center of the city. The major political campaigners are portrayed ... on large posters, seemingly enshrined, which indicates their otherness from the average Thai... the King is portrayed in lavish dress as well as more common “European” dress indicating that they are other than the common man but simultaneously of the people. This merely touches the surface of the intricate cultural and political landscape which weaves itself through the city. One such phenomenon is that there is a monk only standing area on the ferries.

According to this observation, Bangkok is neither Western-modern nor Thai-traditional and does not fit into this

opposition; it is a unique hybrid with a strong sense of place and identity.3

Richmond continues:

“Asian practices, as understood in these localities, use the structure of the West since the idea of ... design [and planning professions are] Western, though there


Viewing the Production of Space from the Spaces of Production 3 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

may be mimicry or blind use of the Western minded practice, they are still working within the system to understand their own voice. Sri Lanka has produced very indigenized architecture through the impetus of several architects. ... How are these emerging “professionals” constituted and legitimized in this Euro-centric world system, able to find their own voice and presence, either becoming more unmarked practitioners (architect…planner) or more local or possibly marked (Indian architect…Thai planner)? Or will the “third” in-between “space” come into being somehow managing both extremes – the “middle way” of design with Buddha at a drafting table on a lotus chair?”

Such complex understanding of

the Asian city is hampered by the lack of

analytical tools and theoretical approaches, due to the dependency on

the West for intellectual tools. The scholars pay very little attention to the production of space, place, and identity

by the majority of citizens. This focus on Westernization occupies the historical

space of regular people of Asia of which the literature speaks. The discourse has thus marginalized and silenced local

voices, 4 causing epistemic violence, much worse than physical colonialism of

the past. In order to bypass this impasse, I would propose that we observe the production of space from the spaces of

production, from the vantage point of the agents who produce these spaces and

from the place of production. THE LACK OF INTELLECTUAL

FRAMEWORKS

An African adage reminds us that what we know is what you see. Although the process of seeing and observing might be

more complex, the parameters of what a researcher finds (or not find) is largely

mapped out in the research design, particularly the analytical framework and the methodology. In this type of

Western-scientific research, there is

hardly any space for the observation of realities that lay beyond the research

focus in particular and Western worldviews in general. According to the

former Director of Singapore‟s Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), Liu Thai Ker (2001), a Western architect

who was commissioned by the URA for a project in Singapore took two years to

understand rain. It is not so much the physical rain that he is referring to, but to its meaning, especially how it is

understood from a Singaporean standpoint, and how people –especially

architects-- react to this environmental condition forming an aspect of culture. To be fair to the Western scholar,

whether in the West or Asia, the identification of indigenous-friendly

planning practices outside of the West (or Westernized localities) are constrained by the Euro-centric

analytical frameworks and approaches. These frameworks silence, erase, and

marginalize indigenous practices. Anthropologists, among others, have attempted for decades to cross this

boundary, but, Johannes Fabian (1983) argues that they create their other by

denying the subject the same time, or coevalness, of the researcher. While there are exceptions, researchers of

Asian cities largely deny their subjects the same time and space that the

researcher occupies. The transformations of the city by regular citizens are not given the same time and

space given to official planning and high end projects. In this, the regular citizens

are Othered.

Besides, the city is a perception

and there is no one city in which to carry out empirical studies. The absolute city

is, therefore, accessed through representations; as we do so, we create the city by classifying particular sets of

processes as urban --marginalizing others-- and flattening the selected layers

of activity and space into one. Each

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observer makes sense of the city by using intellectual frameworks of

understanding which comes with their own “baggage” including premises,

assumptions, biases, beliefs, interpretations, and narratives. Most crucially, as a person perceives and

describes it, she or he also creates the city. The city thus differs from one

observer to the next, depending on the time and place from which it is observed (the vantage point), the knowledge and

the world-view (the framework) applied, and the language employed to build it.

The administrators‟, planners‟, and scholars‟ cities are perceptions constructed through the definition and

identification of particular sets of social processes and structures as well as the

territory on which these are believed to be concentrated as “urban.”5

Despite its partiality and the social power involved in it,

representation is a necessity for the analysis, planning, and management of the city and its neighborhoods.

Representations are not false, but quite the opposite; they give tangibility and

materiality to the city by providing intellectual access to the city that is “out there.” This mediation enables the

scholar and the practitioner to understand, examine, and modify it.

What is false is the “objectivity” attached to certain representations, thus privileging them over the others. Hence,

in this paper, I focus on the “discourse” on Asian cities which Michel Foucault

defines as the system of statements within which the world can be known.

The strongest impact of colonialism and European expansion is

the establishment of a European cultural hegemony, i.e., the socialization of the locals to think the way the colonizing

society did. Although some societies in Asia were not directly subjugated by

Western imperial powers, many scholars

have argued that they have not been significantly different in regard to their

cultural and economic dependence on the West, especially after the mid-

nineteenth century. It is in this broad sense that I use “postcolonial” in this paper, and apply it to non-colonized

countries such as China and Thailand.

In their colonies, the Europeans not only built cities but also taught the “natives” their ways of understanding

the city, although never completely, establishing a hegemony for their

cultural perceptions and practices.6 The superior position was established through several means: the identification

of certain environments in Colombo as a problem in the 1920s, the scientific

definition and classification of these environments, the bringing of so developed perceptions into circulation,

and making the Ceylonese accept these.7 The level of hegemony that this planning

discourse has achieved is evident in the fact that sixty years after independence of 1948, the cultural “unpacking” of the

British town planning discourse has not yet been undertaken.

There are several ways in which

the professionals and academics use

Western knowledge. The main approach to knowledge is the direct use, i.e., to

study the Western urbanization processes and apply them to local situations. Here the assumption is that this knowledge is

scientific, that is free of cultural value, and can be transferred to other locations

and times. While most professionals simply apply this knowledge, many have highlighted their frustrations when the

Western analytical frameworks and methods do not work for them.

Sulakshana Mahajan (1998) has the following observation:

Arguments, projections and

models based on the urbanization trends observed in the early industrialization

period will prove grossly inadequate,



redundant and futile like the forecasts based on future population growth in

India made 5, 10, or 15 years ago. How these projections made by the United

Nations Population Division for Calcutta and Mumbai have proved totally wrong. It is essential to analyse the failures of

these projections and reasons behind them.

Despite the criticism, Mahajan also refers to these frameworks as belonging to the unmarked early

industrialization period in the West.

From within the Western world-view, these mismatches are not seen as structural, but as shortcomings that need

minor adjustments. My own studies have revealed that even the basic

processes of urbanization in the West and in Sri Lanka are very different; even the idea of evolution of cities from rural

areas, which is fundamental to the understanding of Western urbanization,

is redundant in modern Sri Lanka. I have argued that it is not Sri Lanka that made Colombo, but it is (colonial)

Colombo that made Ceylon.8 This is a radically different understanding which

challenges us to develop a different understanding of Asian (and other) urbanizations.

As Mahajan, Otto Koenigsberger

has also made similar observations and criticisms. He was one of the first postcolonial planning critics in

independent India to realize, in the 1950s, that British-style master planning

does not work in Asia as its urbanization process is much faster and different than that of the societies in which this method

was originated. He developed an alternative named action planning which

better responded to local conditions. In order to avoid, among others, the inability to make accurate long term

projections, he suggested that plans be made and implemented quickly and

planning be carried out in cycles,

updating and expanding the plans frequently within three to five years.

Despite Koenigsberger being the Chief Planner of Delhi, action planning has not

rooted in India or Southeast Asia. The hegemony of the West has been too strong.

The second way in which

Western knowledge is used is by locating the city or the country within a larger structure which provides it a place

in relation to dominant countries, within oppositional/ hierarchical structure.

Here I refer to dualities such as developed-underdeveloped, metropole-colony, core-periphery, or hierarchical

structures such as the capitalist world-economy and world cities. These

frameworks provide a structural relationship in which Sri Lanka, for example, becomes the colony, the Third

World, and periphery. All of these positions are subordinate to the West.

The frameworks are West-centered and Eurocentric, and provide limited identity and agency for the locals within the

structure of subordination.

In this, if I want to know Colombo in relation to a hierarchy of world-cities, it is important to know the

Global Cities, i.e, New York, London, and Tokyo. But I do not need to know

anything about Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur. In fact neither of these cities fully exist in this framework; if they do, they do so

only as peripheral places, a quality which is shared by a large number of

cities that provide the background for world cities. This framework too classifies, categorizes, and organizes the

cities of the world from the USA –the vantage point– thus developing

knowledge of the world for the USA. As we socialize into this way of thinking, the differences between Asian cities such

as Colombo, Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur, and the need to learn about them

disappears. Hong Kong and Singapore

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are simply absorbed into the world cities discourse. Most crucially, these global

structures cannot be viewed from the vantage point of those cities, but only

from the West which devalues them as Asian cities.

What is significant here is that neither of these main approaches

promote the movement of ideas across Asian countries, even in this so-called globalized era. There is no way to know

how these structures operate, say from Manila. If a scholars in Manila learns

about Colombo, he/she largely do so through the West, within a Western frame work and categories, temporally

and spatially locating it within this structure, for example, as a Third World

city affected by a separatist war.9 It is very important to question this structure of knowledge. Understanding the

identity of a community is a prerequisite for planning. Sang-Cheul Choe (1998)

argues that East Asian cities are very much in transition, and are struggling to find their own identity. He claims that

this is the beginning of a long and thorny journey exploring the Asian way of

urban transformation which ensures itself from the risk of blind imitation of the alien urban paradigms Vikramaditya

Prakash reflects on his own thoughts: “I came back from [the second conference

on Tradition and Modernity, held in Indonesia in 1996] feeling ... that to understand the full impact of the

development that is going on today, one needed something of a paradigm shift of

a kind that is still unclear to me.” Hence the question: How can we understand Asian urbanization? I wish to highlight

that, if we are to understand the local aspects of the Asian city, it is more

pertinent to view these from the city itself, i.e., to view the production of spaces (in Asian cities) from the very

spaces of production.

ASIANIZING THE ASIAN CITY

The Asianizing of the Westernizing and Globalizing Asian city is largely carried

out –besides, beneath, and around these processes– by regular people at the day-to-day level. According to Lefebvre

(1991), the reduction of (colonial) modern representations of space which

are based on mathematics and science (that the Europeans were developing during the imperial era) does not take

into account the autonomy and creativity of the subjects. Despite the profoundness

and intensity of its impact, European colonialism (and/or hegemony) is a layer in the multi- layered present of Asia.

Nevertheless, the European hegemony has caused ruptures in regard to both

time and space, privileging this layer from other historic and vernacular spaces that have combined over time making

hybrid identities and spaces. The bridging of the gap between the

externally imposed spaces and local spatial practices is an essential component in postcolonial space-

making.

What urban studies have largely failed to consider is that, to quote Arjun Appadurai (1998) in a different context,

“at least as rapidly as forces from various metropolises are brought into

new societies they tend to become indigenized in one or another way.” What is missing in most studies is the

idea that, in Goh Beng-Lan‟s (2002) words, the “people are never passive

recipients of external initiatives, but rather always struggle within their own immediate contexts of constraints and

opportunities to produce a meaningful life with their own particular values and

goals.” In regard to planning, Jill Grant (2005) highlights the familiarization of New Urbanism:

Although within the ultimate New Urbanist scenario, home owners live next



to renters and the merchants live above the shops, both apartments and houses in Canada are mostly occupied by owners, and the image has become a caricature and the settlement a theme park.

As the recipients of a space make

it meaningful for themselves, especially for their social and cultural activities, the original space tends to transform.

Anthony Giddens (1987) highlights “the capability even of the most dependent,

weak and the most oppressed … to carve out spheres of autonomy of their own.” The assuming of a subject position

within a space (including the dominant space) requires the creation of new

hybridized cultural practices and spaces of varying autonomies. Hence, the assuming of a subject position itself

opens up the possibility of redefining, negotiating and, if necessary, subverting

space.10 Familiarization, including indigenization, localization, and personalization are simultaneously forms

of questioning, resistance, and adaptation of extant spaces and spatial structures.

Spaces are being constantly

familiarized by people who live and

migrate to Asian cities. Chandigarh, the great modernist capital in Asia, is

complemented by many neighborhoods built by migrants beyond and besides the administrative city. According to Aditya

Prakash (2003), worked with the team that who saw the city develop,

Chandigarh was planned as an elite city and the rest of the city, beyond its planned, elitist limits, grew by creating

its own momentum. The outsiders who were excluded from the original plan

have built their own neighborhoods near the residences of the lowest grade government workers. Over 100,000

people now live in these self-built settlements. At the same time, many

inhabitants redefined their lives within this administrative city; this is evident in Bujwada and Nagla villages and the

Shastri market. The city designed and

built was thus filled in and expanded by people with little power.11 In short, those

who were excluded from the planned city engaged in creating their own

spaces; this is represented in self-built housing, non-planned settlements, satellite towns and new industrial areas.

All Asian cities are comprised of

many cities and the less powerful are highly creative in making many decisions that planners make in regard to

the location, size, and scale of the settlements and dwellings they create as

part of constructing the type and kind of their activities. Bangkok, for example, has many cities that function alongside

with the formal city quite evident in the continuous flow of people who eat on

the sidewalks from very early mornings to late nights, right outside of big restaurants and highrise offices.

In regard to Mumbai, Rahul

Mehrotra (2007) brings to light what he calls the Kinetic City. This temporary city is not simply created by the poor or

who are conventionally recognized as being in the informal sector. Following

Western perceptions, the stereotypical informal sector is economically defined and this definition privileges the

economy over other aspects of life. For Mehrotra, ephemeral structures are built

even by the government and the powerful actors to celebrate the national day and more formal organizations to

celebrate occasions such as the Chinese New Year. There is no lack of such

structures in any Asian city.

In the transforming China, the

people whose economic and spatial needs are not met create their own

villages: urban villages. The expansion of Chinese cities takes away the farming land of the nearby villages that get

incorporated into the city. This way they are left with their houses, or

reproduction land. The migrants who

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come to the city also do not have affordable housing. Matching these two

needs, and creating opportunities for both, the inhabitants of Tianhe village in

Guangzhou, for example, have build their houses up, about seven stories, and rent the spaces to migrants. This is

extremely innovative matching of the needs of two groups in the city. Even

within China, the creation of such urban villages is not uniform. The migrants from Zhejiang province in Beijing, for

example, created their own village with the help of similar villagers in the city.

Yet the migrants were more entrepreneurial and more powerful to create a village, Zhejiangcun, to suit

their own needs but modified to the conditions in Beijing.12 This way they

familiarized the urban space in more different ways than the migrants of Tianhecun in Guangzhou.

The transformation of Chinese

cities is not limited to migrant spaces. The citizens themselves are engaged in refamiliarizing spaces created during the

Cultural-Revolution era; this is evident in the recreation of religious and other

cultural spaces. 13 Moreover, such transformations from the “bottom” are carried out in all cities in Asia. In Hong

Kong, for example, people protest against most development projects

today. The issue is, how can we understand the regular (or subversive when viewed from a formal viewpoint)

space-making which challenges the administrative and planner-centered

space-making?

The development of our ability to see

innovations in ordinary spaces would help us overcome the hegemony. It

allows us to provincialize Westernization, for innovations are locally produced, not borrowed, but

within a global context and are influenced by Western and non-Western

societies. In Asia, the citizens do

produce their own globality. Although referring to the immediate post-

independence period, India‟s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1946) best

highlights his notion of local (Indian) modernity:

India is a . . . cultural unity amidst diversity, a bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threads. Overwhelmed again and again, her spirit was never conquered, and to-day when she appears to be a plaything of a proud conqueror, she remains unsubdued and unconquered. . . . She is a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision, and yet very real and present and pervasive. . . . From age to age she has produced great men and women, carrying on the old tradition and yet ever adapting it to changing times. .... there can be no real cultural or spiritual growth based on imitation . . . true culture derives its inspiration from every corner of the world, but it is home-grown and has to be based on the wide mass of the people. Art and literature remains lifeless if they are continually thinking of foreign models.

It is this diverse and hybrid

society and space that we miss when we look for and apply pure (Western)

categories. Identities are complex and cannot be spelled out in pure categories. So are Asian cities.

Whether an observer sees the

creations of such subversive spaces, what she sees in them depends on her focus. The “low-politics” of the subjects

largely become dismissed as unimportant compared to the “high-politics” of

authorities which is about power and economics.14 Planners have a way of focusing on growth and being silent

about important tensions that emanate from ethnic and cultural differences,

portraying these issues as “low-politics,” especially by getting back into their technology nest and serving the power.15

The official planning story, according to Leonie Sandercock (2005), portrays

planning as a heroic pursuit leaving out



gender, class, race, and cultural biases of planning practices, and by implication,

serving as an agent of social control, regulating bodies in space. Moreover,

such documentation reinterprets planning, locating it in a scientific mode of historiography.16

Despite challenging the

modernization paradigm from a mode of production standpoint, and highlighting the significance of urban and social

movements, the urban political-economy approach is still Western scientific

(modernist) and its bearers view urban processes from an external viewpoint, and tend to privilege it as “objective.”

They classify and categorize the subjects, transforming them into objects

and limiting the positions that the latter can assume within the structure employed by the researcher.17 This way,

they see global cities, world cities, network societies, and civil societies all

through (Western) scientifically constructed categories. They have provided a significant insight into

society but, in this view, culture and the worldviews are static and muted.18 They

do not see their own subjectivity and themselves in the discourse. They see classes but do not necessarily see the

subalterns, let alone the latter‟s perspective. Most crucially, they wish to

represent the subalterns within their frameworks. Within this external view, planning is seen as a provision: we

provide for them, a view which is somewhat revised by the “class

struggle.” I am not convinced that digging deeper into the same paradigm of Western rationalistic science is

capable of providing alternative insights.19 Building on the insights

provided by the urban political economy of the 1970s, scholars of planning such as Leonie Sandercock, Oren Yiftachel,

Karen Umemoto, and Vanessa Watson (1994) have been searching for new

ways of understanding planning.

In my own research, I had to develop my own strategy. I pursued a

simple question: Why do people in Sri Lanka plan, design, and build the way

they do? Yet there is no authentic Sri Lankan. In Decolonizing Ceylon, I map out the territories, urban systems, and

architecture created by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British in Ceylon,

from Western perspectives, and asks how did local groups such as the elite, the nationalists, the socialists, the youth

movements, the separatists, the planners, and the architects respond to these

spaces. As many brilliant studies of colonialism and urbanism carried out from a Western vantage point exist, my

interest was to find out what I would see from the Sri Lankan (Asian) side.

Hence, I had been open to the possibility of Sri Lankans creating spaces that would go beyond and besides colonial

spaces. I have documented the processes of familiarization of colonial Colombo

by the elite, workers, migrants, the Buddhist establishment, and women. Similarly, in the context of Singapore,

Brenda Yeoh examines the production of space excellently; her Contesting Spaces

examines the conflicts between British and Singaporean-Chinese spatial perceptions and practices.

Today, there is a strong body of

work that approaches postcolonial urbanism from postcolonial standpoints. A cohort of scholars in urban studies

employs locally-friendly perspectives that could acknowledge local agency and

be empathic to inhabitants. The deconstruction and the decentering of colonial, Western, and nationalist

discourses has been effectively carried out by scholars of subaltern and

postcolonial studies.20 Despite the expansion of these studies beyond their original foci of history and English

literature, they have little to say about social space and urbanism. Approaching

from a number of theoretical

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perspectives, particularly political-economy, scholars of colonial urbanism

have, from the mid-1970s, begun to expose the political and social power

involved in the historical construction of social space and the connections between colonial policies and spatial

subjectivity. Beginning in the 1990s, critically feeding off these streams of

studies as well as new cultural geography, scholars of urbanism and planning began to not only expose the

Euro-centrism and male-centrism in mainstream work, but also attempted to

acknowledge agency and the transformative capacity of subordinate people in creating space. Shifting the

vantage-point in different ways and questioning „post-colonial‟ and

„nationalist‟ constructions of social space at different scales, the work of Holston (1989); King (1992); Hershkovitz

(1993); Yeoh and Kong (1994); Yeoh (1996); Nalbantoglu and Wong (1997);

Perera (1998); Sandercock (1998); Kusno (2000); Zhang (2001); Law (2002); Goh (2002); Nasr and Volait

(2003); Yang (2004); and Hosagrahar (2005) among others, laid a foundation

for the study of urbanism from “subaltern/postcolonial” perspectives.

These works, produced from local vantage points could help us

develop our own frameworks to understand Asian urbanization on its own terms. As these authors highlight, it

is important to develop appropriate analytical frameworks. In addition, I

would stress the significance of adopting local vantage points. Moreover, paying attention to the spatial stories of ordinary

Asian citizens and those of planning which learns from people and making

these practices visible would lead to the creation of new cascades of thought, practice, and scholarship. More

immediately, their documentation would create an alternative “tool box” for urban

managers, leaders, and planners in Asia,

not simply to borrow or mimic, but to generate inspiration for more diverse

practices. These studies can shed light on the complex urban processes in Asia,

particularly on subversive and contested spaces.

At the same time, it is important to avoid significant problems. First we

should avoid thinking of Asia as the opposite of the West, but deconstruct the hierarchy and the structures that

disprivilege Asia by provincializing the West. This way we can be open

ourselves to the idea of hybridity and to treat the West as any other region from which the planners can borrow as and

when needed. Moreover, it is important to understand that whatever the

knowledge that we produced is not complete. As long as it is about subjects, they too develop knowledge and spaces.

Hence we should locate ourselves also within the discourse, and acknowledge

the subversive elements existing within our own narrative.

THE ABSENCE OF INNOVATION

IN PLANNING

Despite the large scale transformation of Asian cities and the innovative practices

at the day-to-day level, planning is yet to catch up with these developments. I do

not refer to the absence of the tallest building or the largest fountain in the world, which are claimed to be in Asia.

Moreover, the highrises and mega-projects are being Asianized in places

like Shanghai though new roof designs and lighting at night. I focus on the weak connection between planning and

the culture, nature, and the history of the place. The planners are yet to open

themselves up to learning from the people and people‟s practices and developing a more locally oriented

discourse.



Despite the fact that new professional ideas have seeped into

Asian cities, and the higher-end planning is operating at more or less the “cutting

edge,” the perceptions are largely imported from the West. As mentioned earlier, Anthony King (1980) argues that

colonialism was the vehicle by which contemporary urban planning, developed

in the West within a Western culture, was exported to many non-Western societies. This was initially carried out

by the conscious laying out of various settlements, camps, towns, and cities

according to various military, political and cultural principles developed in the metropolis. The beginning of the

twentieth century saw the export of formally stated town planning

ordinances and theories. The process of exporting planning has continued beyond European- imperial times, well into the

era of so-called sovereign states, and further intensified under the banner of

liberalization, globalization and, now, sustainability. Whether as part of foreign aid packages, a concern for the

poor or the environment, an interest in taking part in the process of

globalization, or training professionals in the West and within Western discourses, the export of values, ideologies, and

planning models from the West is still strong.

What planners in Colombo are

most excited about is the environment.

This is not an indigenous idea: The new concern for the environment is an

imported notion which does not provide much room for indigenous notions, from the past, or from the vernacular. The

concern of the Urban Development Authority (UDA) of Sri Lanka (2001) for

the environment is not based upon the nature-culture relationship with which the Sri Lankans are familiar; the one that

was widely practiced for millennia before the British introduction of

domination over nature, a monoculture-

based vegetation system, and economically shaped environment in the

mid-nineteenth century. It is about protecting the wild life, the rain forests,

and marshes which are very relevant to the well being of the USA. This is not to belittle the fact that the planners in

Colombo have, for example, different views about reclaiming land. They no

longer think that the marshes are waiting to be filled and “developed.” Therefore, strategies have been introduced to

preserve and retain natural areas in their existing state, while permitting activities

in harmony with the natural/cultural environment. Other exported ideas –that will not be discussed in this paper–

include historic preservation, modernity, and globalization.

The planners who presumably

undertake to create a future strongly

acknowledge existing –largely colonial– boundaries, data, and information. Old

structures distorting current development and management of the city is a constraint that transcends Asia; the

limited land area that falls within the city –excluding the suburbs– itself is a

problem for managing the city in the USA. In Colombo, while the planners hesitate to confine the “practiced” city

within its municipal boundaries, for the lack of a larger metropolitan boundary,

they use another colonial demarcation, Western Province, as the larger urban region.

Most questionable is the fact that

planning is considered to be politically and culturally neutral. Although planning was considered an objective

exercise practiced for the public good at the early days of the profession, the fact

that planning, development, and foreign aid are political was exposed in the late 1960s. The issues of environment and

globalization, and the new pro-growth neoliberalist approach taken by the

planners, have caused planning, once

12 Nihal Perera

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again, to appear apolitical. In this context, the American interest in selling

computers to communities that need food and housing gets camouflaged

within the desire to have modern Western technology and the idea of integrating them into the so-called

informational society.

Despite the new ideas, concerns, and considerations that have entered into planning practice during this period,

urban planning in Asia still lacks direction; planning responses to the

current transformation at large have been rather weak. Planning has principally been reactive and has responded to what

planners have recognized as immediate problems. Planning, in most cases, has

been a piecemeal effort which has not taken into account the larger and longer term processes that are underway. For

the most part planning has taken the form of strategic intervention, but the

silences are significant.

According to Liu Thai Ker

(1998), the economic upgrading of Asian countries have not been matched by

environmental improvement. Hence the current urbanization process is bound to require a second round of planning, later

on, especially once the problems that are overlooked become critical. As more

land is developed, and further developed, any changes to the city‟s infrastructure and the built environment is going to be

more costly, and will result in the relocation of citizens, activities, and

functions, and the demolition of buildings and infrastructure.

The two crucial issues at this time concern the perceptions of the city

on which these planning exercises are based and the new directions in planning. Firstly, the unique aspects of

Asian urbanization have not been adequately understood. For example,

many Asian countries do not have

clearly defined urban and rural areas as once conceptualized in Europe. They

have large tracts of semi-urban areas. Terence McGee and Norton Ginsburg

(1991), who have argued about what they call “desakota” and “extended metropolitan regions,” have begun to

identify some aspects of this uniqueness. Although they begin to problematize the

shortcoming of the conventional view, they use Jean Gottman‟s (1961) work on megalopolis which is more US-centered

as a point of departure, and focus on the economy which is most pertinent for the

analysis of Western cities. Nevertheless, within the urban political-economy paradigm, McGee argues that the

Western paradigm of the urban transition is not directly transferable. He (1991)

highlights the difference: “The uneven incorporation of these Asian countries into a world economic system from the

fifteenth century onward created divergent patterns of urbanization.”

Although this is also an outside view, from the core of the world-economy, it provides some insights into Asian

urbanization. Yet the Colombo Metropolitan Regional Plan (CMR Plan)

does not mention much uniqueness nor does it engage with the semi-urban areas, or desa-kotas. While the CMR Plan

correctly identifies that “Incompatible land use and ribbon development along

the principal trunk roads in the region has led to traffic congestion and delays in passenger travel,” 21 it is unable to

characterize this non-conventional development from a local standpoint.

Instead, the Plan identifies an urban hierarchy, and implies a clean division between the urban and the rural.22

Anything that is outside of this model is a problem that needs to be corrected. In

this, their top-down approach itself creates (planning) problems on the ground.

Despite the renewal of the

discourse, however, the people‟s day-to-



day language has not entered plans and planning reports. In other words,

planning in Asia still remains foreign with very little indigenous perceptions of

space-making finding their way into the planning discourse. In Sri Lanka, people define space in terms of handi

(junctions) and mulu, in India they use chowks, in Kathmandu space is

organized around durbars and hitis, and longtangs are very important in China. The language of massive resistance to

growth –categorized as development– in Hong Kong has not entered the planning

discourse either. These and other important signifiers of space have hardly entered the planning discourse, the

explicit objective of which is “public good.”

At the same time, if these

concepts enter the planning discourse,

there is also a danger of them being assimilated into the dominant discourse,

in which process their meanings will be transformed. This may not be a deliberate act, but reveals a structural

constraint of the intellectual frameworks employed by planners.

From a physical viewpoint, there

is not much concern for the older fabric

of the built environment. In regard to the historic areas in Beijing, Wu

Liangyong (2000) asserts that Throughout much of the post-Second World War era ... urban renewal and the wholesale replacement of old dilapidated city precincts with entirely new and different types of structures was quite acceptable. Today, by contrast, in most parts of the world, it is clear that traditional urban patterns of settlement are to be valued not only for their strict historical significance, but also for their aura.

Roger Chen (2000) argues that Whilst it is imperative that Shanghai develops into a finance and service economy in the informational era, it is

equally important that the city maintains its traditional sector .... Cities that can preserve their own cultural characters, keep and make full use of their unique natural advantages when they develop according to an international standard, will be better places for living, visiting, and investing.

The remaining historic areas of a

city have more significance than their sheer history and aura; they are part of

continuity of the identity and culture of the people. At the same time, the conservation of hutongs occur within the

larger processes of commercialization and gentrification. In the more state

dominated Singapore, Perry and others (1997) highlight that “much of the conservation initiative is state driven and

state-planned and serves the various ideological intents of the government.”

Hence, there is a substantial gap between the planners and the “citizens.” In regard to three plans for Singapore and

Hong Kong, John Friedman (2000) argues that, “As top-down efforts with

very limited involvement of others than government and certain business sectors, [the plans] fall short of the criterion of

active citizen participation.” Yet the use of overarching external categories such

as the “civil society” to identify the whole non-political community homogenizes the community and make

individuals inactive.

Going beyond this limitation requires the shifting of the vantage point. In regard to Seoul, Joochul Kim and

Sang-Chuel Choe (1997) highlights the significance of acknowledging the on-

going urbanization processes: When strolling along the streets of Seoul, particularly in the island of Youido, one is left with the impression that it is like any other modern western city. Buildings, street designs, business activities and other city functions closely resemble cities such as New York, Tokyo, and London. A uniquely Korean

14 Nihal Perera

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tradition in architectural and cultural presentation is lacking. The absence of traditional Korean influences, along with a substantial increase in urban density and crowding, reduces the overall legibility of the city environment: the city looks disjointed, chaotic, and unattractive. The development of special functional districts within the city might enhance its image and ambiance. At present, a number of special districts such as theaters, antiques, general consumer goods, and electronic products have been created in various sections of the city, but others, such as foreign embassies, historic sites, and the arts, are not available. The creation of such special districts cannot be brought about by zoning or other enforcement mechanism alone, but rather through a historical process of urban growth and development.

The addressing of Western concerns such as modernization,

Westernization, environmental degradation, and globalization could only transform non-Western cities into

more familiar Western environments, for the West and the Westernized locals, and

more profitable environments for local businessmen and growth coalitions. Although the contemporary planning

tools provide some advancement for the non-Western societies within the

dominant structures, within an international setting, these strategies do not empower the local people very

much. Although all plans mention equity, the way in which privatization is

promoted, 23 the plans disempower the people.

Planning has become an expert-driven exclusionary activity which does

not provide room for other voices. The planners have moved away from a century- long tradition of growth control

to become promoters of economic development. This approach has a

strong element of pro-growth urban politics and an interest in showcase

projects which have been common in the USA. So far, experts with alternative

views, NGOs and the general public have played highly subdued roles.

Beyond the import and export of ideas, the dependency on the West is reproduced by training planners in the

West and Western institutions, and maintaining the centers of knowledge

production and the journals that validate knowledge in the West. A major cause for the continuation of exporting

Western planning and planning ideas is the training of planners within Western

discourses, whether in the West or elsewhere.

What the Euro-centric discourses have failed to do is to reconnect planning

with the place, the people, the culture, the past, and the future. Yet this is a colossal undertaking. Chung-Tong Wu

(2000) points to the fact that “planning practice in Asia is more than ever both

difficult and challenging. Most planners who work in Asia will have to spend their time navigating the unknown.”

Ideas that might give rise to place and culture specific ways of thinking and the

development of new approaches to planning in Asia have been hampered by the marginalization and silencing of

ideas and practices that fall outside of the Euro-centric discourses. In this

context, highlighting such ideas and practices would help planners develop more place and culture specific

discourses.

ASIANIZING PLANNING

At the same time, many Asian leaders,

administrators, and planners are responding to this challenge. They are

navigating the unknown and are learning by doing. Planners and planning scholars need focus more on their

progressive practices. In order to see these practices, they need to develop

intellectual frameworks and adopt local



vantage points and look at the right places. Innovative practices are found in

the cracks of the society, in the exceptions, and the details. Moreover,

planners ought to learn from the people. In this section I wish to highlight how planners are engaged in the

empowerment of local communities and thereby in Asianizing planning.

A prerequisite to seeing

subversive and innovative practices is to

acknowledge the fact that successful planners and designers of social space in

Asia are largely trained in the field (on the job), through learning by doing. As I have argued elsewhere, select architects

have developed place and culture-specific practices which I call critical

vernacularism. Although it is not as pronounced as in architecture which has a strong visual element, this is not

uncommon in planning. As mentioned above, Koenigsberger developed the

notion of action planning in Asia and also practiced it. Matthew Nowicki who developed the first plan for Chandigarh

finished all his designs in an Indian idiom. Institutions like the Urban

Redevelopment Authority (URA) of Singapore, the Mahaweli Architectural Unit (MAU) of Sri Lanka, and the

Design Cell of KRVIA have developed their own models of research and

development, and the Department of Town and Country Planning at the University of Moratuwa has launched a

bachelor‟s program and its new leaders have radically redefined planning

education at graduate level.

At the same time, however, the

type of development that is taking place in Asia is also considerably different.

Most significantly, planning is becoming popular and being practiced in most cities. During the latter part of the last

decade, when the demand for architecture was sliding downwards, the

demand for admission to the planning

program at the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) in New Delhi

increased, and a leading private school of architecture in Mumbai, Kamla

Raheja Vidyanidhi, have been focusing on large-scale community development projects, such as the Eastern Waterfront

Development and the Redevelopment of Dharavi.

There are fundamental

differences in the way in which many

Asian cities take part in the discourses of environmentalism and globalization. An

extraordinary feature of the CMR Plan (2001) is the acknowledgment of the existing system of paddy fields,

wetlands, and the canal system in Colombo, and undertaking to protect and

promote that pattern: Colombo Metropolitan area has a unique natural landscape with wetlands, water bodies, and paddy fields combined with rivers and natural and man-made canals. ... The strategy of the CMR Plan is to utilize this natural layout by making further improvements for sustainable development through application of appropriate environmental and physical planning strategies.

What is identified is a complex vernacular land use system made up of natural land forms, natural and man-

made water features, urban land uses and farming which cannot be characterized

by conventional terms employed in analysis, the separation of uses. Here, planning begins by identifying the areas

that should not be developed and by promoting high density development in

other areas.

For Sri Lankan leaders,

globalization is both getting more connected to the global economy and

also reasserting Sri Lanka‟s national identity. While the UDA opened up the CBD of Colombo for private capital in

the late 1980s, inviting international banks and financial agencies to invest in

16 Nihal Perera

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it and to rebuild it in an international style, it also developed a new capital, a

political center in the outskirts of Colombo. In separating global-

economic and national-political functions, the UDA moved the national parliament house and the Secretariat to

the new seat of government in Sri Jayawardhanapura-Kotte. While the

new CBD in the Fort was built by private companies –after the government lead– in an International Style, attempting to

erase locally produced differences, the Parliament House was built by the

government in a Sri Lankan style, representing the nation and its identity. This way Sri Lanka is producing its own

globality, on its own terms, but within the larger global contexts. This is very

different to what the Global City, World City, and the dominant globalization discourses suggest.

In regard to the Mahaweli

Project, a large irrigation-based development project in the interiors of Sri Lanka, its design and planning unit

(MAU) developed its (unrelated) version of action planning. Prior to that in the

early 1980s, even after decades, the new towns in the north-central Sri Lanka had very few buildings dispersed in space

with vegetation (jungles) in between. These were partially developed rural

areas, but with harsher conditions as the trees were bulldozed. In the 1980s, MAU decided to provide the settlers

with a town from the beginning of their life in the newly irrigated areas. It

would build the towns outwards from a dense urban core created by the clustering of the institutional and

commercial buildings that would be built in the first few years. The plan was

updated annually based on the building program, funding, and other factors which were also determined annually,

thus connecting the social processes and space. While the town was anchored in

the core, it also allowed some flexibility

for the users to adapt through a “loose-fit” plan and design of buildings.24 These

towns were thus urban centers from day one, but their planning process continued

in cycles. In this, the planners were in close touch with all agencies involved in the development process and allowed for

future inhabitants‟ responses.

In the 1980s, the Sri Lankan government adopted a housing policy founded on the idea of “support

systems.” This was based on John Turner‟s idea that the state provision of

(public) housing is not a solution to self-building as the latter is the people‟s solution to the lack of affordable

housing. Instead, the people should decide what they want and the state

should support. Although this sounds idealist (and anarchist), the Sri Lankan government did implement a policy

based on such support systems. Although the policy is still known by its

political name, The Million Houses Program, its more substantive lessons have not been absorbed into the thinking

process. Valuable experiences such as that of MAU planning and support

systems are lost due to the focus which is on formal processes –although they may have failed– and not on the innovative

ones. This is very strong in both India and China where the students are most

concerned about getting a job in the formal system and the teachers and institutions largely support this notion,

thus encouraging planners to be quite far from people. Considering the role of

these two countries in the current transformation, this type of planning education might turn out to be a disaster.

Conservation also provides an

effective way to perceive the city or parts of it within indigenous histories –not necessarily as static environments

following the way Western philosophers such as Hegel have characterized Asian

societies. This would enable planners to



reconnect the future of the city to its past. The Ju‟er Hutong project in

Beijing provides a good example of this kind. Here the historic courtyard houses

organized around hutongs are revitalized, but within a contemporary setting.

Critics and planners are

highlighting that planning is political. In one of the profound planning analysis, Slumming India, Gita Dewan Verma

(2003) argues that the planning authorities have to accept responsibility

for their action. Particularly the slum formation in India cannot be viewed as the making of the slum dwellers or the

colonial regime, especially after five decades of independence. Moreover, the

plan is a document of entitlement, especially for the under-privileged. Hence, it is important to implement

these. These are novel definitions of the plan which are not well received in

India.

In a bold move, the National

Physical Planning Department (NPPD) in Sri Lanka has recognized that

planning is political. The planning commissions and boards at national and regional levels include leading

administrators and politicians. This way these leaders would buy into the plan

that they got involved in “making,” or authorizing, and have some interest vested in its implementation. Along with

the surge of planning, new planning agencies and institutions to support these

efforts are also emerging. Most of these cities not only have new plans, but also new agencies, for example, Mumbai

Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA), Delhi

Development Authority (DDA), Urban Development Authority (UDA) of Sri Lanka, and the NPPD in Sri Lanka

established in 2001. This way the institutional structure of planning in Asia

has been changing. With a different

mission at hand, the agencies themselves view the cities on which they focus

differently. Colombo is increasingly redefined within its metropolitan region.

MMRDA considers Mumbai region to be a multi-centric city. This is a different type of a city compared to the

traditional one that is found in literature which has a core and suburbs around it.

While Asia has been highly

innovative, the innovations have been

sporadic and temporary. This is largely due to the planning community‟s focus

on the developments in the West and the lack of availability of these innovations for them to understand and/or to use.

These innovative aspects of planning can be further enhanced and others can learn

from these experiences. It is the responsibility of the academics to provide visibility to the innovative and

locally grounded practices. Yet the mere documentation of these practices is

insufficient. They need to be documented in substantive and analytically sophisticated ways that

highlight their relevance. Why should a planner in Vientiane read about a

planning experience in Kuala Lumpur? Why is this experience more important than that of Paris? Moreover, these

practices also need to receive some legitimacy from the authorities so that

they can be practiced by planners. Although it is highly relevant, action planning is not commonly practiced in

India or any other country, largely because of the lack of legitimacy.

Many changes are taking place in

Asian cities and planning, but

halfheartedly. Empowering communities is the most certain way to

empower planning. This will give new life to communities and planning in rapidly transforming Asia. Centering the

community in the planning discourse is crucial for the planning process to

achieve this goal. However, the usual

18 Nihal Perera

______________________________________________________________________________________

town meetings which operate within the dominant discourse are grossly

inadequate. At times of transformation, it is important to maintain the

relationship between the society and space. If not, it is more likely than not for them to get disconnected, leading to

the defamiliarization of the environment for the inhabitants. Although the new

aggressiveness among planners should be valued, as the suggestions made by the team headed by Wu (2000) in

Beijing, reducing the speed and scale of urban renewal, and rethinking about the

dominant discourses, both theory and practice, is a prerequisite to build communities instead of physical

environments.

Most crucially, researchers of Asian cities should not deny their subjects the same time and space that

they occupy. Planners should work with people and not for people; they should

not represent people, but let the people represent themselves. At this stage, people in Asia are far ahead of planners

as a whole. This is not unusual as, at one level, they do not have the same

constraints that the planners have in regard to transformation of space. Nevertheless, there is much to be learned

from the people about Asian urbanization. Engaging with the people,

and learning from them requires the crossing of the boundary between us and them. The planner should become a

trans-status subject who can operate within the domain of the subjects with

whom he plans and an outsider who brings value to the planning process.

IN CLOSING

In short, Asia is transforming in its own way. As I have demonstrated above, the social transformations of Asia are indeed

paralleled by spatial transformations. The social and spatial transformations

are not isomorphic or isotemporal, but

take their own forms at their own times. The local people are not passive

recipients of global and dominant forces, but create and negotiate spaces for their

social and cultural practices. The transformation of the Asian city is far more complex than the hegemonic

discourses of modernization and globalization suggest.

Using “modernizing” and

“globalizing” to characterize this

transformation can only provide a partial view of this change. This transformation

cannot be understood simply as Westernization or Asianization by using simple dualities, using Western

frameworks of analysis, or by adopting external vantage points. It is important

to remove the ideological wrapper around the discourses on Asian urbanization of global discourses which

focus on mega projects and the Westernization of Asian cities and

identify globalization as simply one transformation among many.

The understanding of the Asian city on their own terms requires new

analytical tools. The documentation of diverse and innovative urban and planning practices in Asian cities could

provide an alternative tool box of ideas that could be used along with other tool

boxes to observe, understand, and create diverse environments and to inspire innovations of their own. In order to

substantially engage the city, the scholars and practitioners should

understand the local production of space and develop an empathy towards the local inhabitants; this requires the

shifting of the focus to local practices and the vantage point of inquiry from the

West to the locale, or the city itself: i.e., to observe the production of space from the spaces of production.

In addition to the multitude of

small transformations carried out by



local inhabitants, planners have also infused innovative elements into their

plans. Although almost every city plan in Asia has Western roots, some planners

have been learning by doing. The development of planning methods such as action planning and support systems,

the adoption of incremental and loose-fit planning, the acknowledgment of the

vernacular land use patterns, the politics of planning, and the negotiation of Colombo‟s globality demonstrate the

transformative capacity of the Asian planner. While planning needs to catch

up with the people, planning education should catch up with the progressive

planners.

Notes

1. See Nihal Perera, “People‟s Spaces: Familiarizat ion, Subject Formation, and Emergent Spaces in

Colombo” 2009 2. See http://www.capasia.net/iv/announcement.htm (Cap Asia iv, 2005)

3. See also Joochul Kim and Sang-Chuel Choe, Seoul: The Making of a Metropolis, 1997

4. Inspired by Anthony King, “Rethinking Colonialis m: An Epilogue,” in Forms o f Dominance: On the

Architecture and Urbanism of the Colonial Enterprise, eds., Nezar A l-Sayyad1992

5. See Nihal Perera, “The Planners‟ City: The Construction of Town -Planning Perception of Colombo”

(2006)

6. I have demonstrated elsewhere of four princip le stages of European colonialis m Ceylon: the military

conquest, the establishment of a colonial administration, economic incorporation, and the establishment

of a European cultural hegemony. (See Nihal Perera, Society and Space: Colonialism, Nationalism, and

the Postcolonial Identity in Sri Lanka, See Ranajit Guha, Dominance Without Hegemony: History and

Power in Colonial India, for a deeper analysis.

7. See Nihal Perera, “Importing Problems: The Impact of a Housing Ordinance on Colombo” Arab World

Geographer, (2005)

8. See Nihal Perera, Society and Space: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Postcolonial Identity in Sri Lanka

(1998)

9. See Nihal Perera, “Exploring Colombo: The Relevance of a Knowledge of New York?” In

Representing the City: Ethnicity, Capital, and Culture in the 21st Century Metropolis , ed., Anthony D.

King: (1996)

10. See Nihal Perera “Indigenising the Colonial City : Late 19th -Century Colombo and Its Landscape”

Urban Studies: Contested Landscapes, Asian Cities, eds., Lily Kong and Lisa Law, (2002),

“Femin izing the City: Gender and Space in Colonial Colombo” In Trans-Status Subjects: Genders in

the Globalization of South and Southeast Asia , eds., Sonita Sarker and Esha Niyogi De: (2002)

11. See Nihal Perera, “Contesting Visions: Hybrid ity, Liminality, and Authorship of the Chandigarh Plan,”

Planning Perspectives; “Chandigarh: India‟s Modernist Experiment,” in Planning Twentieth-Century

Capital Cities, ed., David Gordon (2004).

12. Li Zhang, Strangers in the City: Reconfiguration of Space, Power, and Social Networks Within China’s

Floating Population (2001)

20 Nihal Perera

______________________________________________________________________________________

13. Yang, “Spatial Struggles.”

14. Inspired by Scott A. Bollens, “Urban Planning and Intergroup Conflict: Confronting a Fractured Public

Interest” in Dialogues in Urban and Regional Planning I, eds. Bruce St iftel and Vanessa Watson:

(2005)

15. See Bollens, “Urban Planning and Intergroup Conflict.: Confronting a Fractured Public Interest” in

Dialogues in Urban and Regional Planning I, eds. Bruce St iftel and Vanessa Watson, (2005)

16. See Michel Foucault, Power/ Knowledge (1980)

17. For the limits of such dualistic positions, see Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. “Can the Subaltern Speak?”

in Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory, Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, eds., (1994)

18. This is precisely why the search for planning cultures failed. See Bishwapriya Sanyal, “Hybrid

Planning Cultures: The Search for the Global Cultural Commons” in Comparative Planning Cultures,

ed. Bishwapriya Sanyal: (2005)

19. For example, this is what some scholars do when they try to find answers to issues of culture in the

writings of well-known figures in polit ical economy. The results of this type of work are not very

different from a qualitative standpoint. Jane Jacobs clearly highlighted the limits of Western science in

understanding the city. See Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life o f Great American Cities (1961)

20. Edward Said, Orientalism (1978); Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes

Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (1989); Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its

Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (1993); Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture

(1994); Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”; A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999); Dipesh

Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (2000);

“Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Historiography” Position Papers, Nepantla: Views from South 1, 1

(2002); Gyan Prakash “Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Crit icis m” The American Historical Review

99 (5) (1994): 1475-1490; Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, The Post-Colonial Studies

Reader (1995); Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, Postcolonial Studies: The Key

Concepts (2000); Bill Ashcroft, Post-Colonial Transformations (2001); Partha Chatterjee, The Politics

of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World (2006).

21. Urban Development Authority, Colombo Metropolitan Regional Plan , 6.

22. Wu Liangyong, Rehabilitating the Old City of Beijing: A Project in the Ju’er Hutong Neighborhood

(1999), ix.

23. “The main task of government ... is to provide an environment that promotes competition and

efficiency and remove constraints that affect private sector participation.” (Urban Development

Authority, 73-4).

24. The term “loose-fit” for this planning was suggested by Wes Janz

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