Messy Urbanism: Understanding the "Other" Cities of Asia

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

Dense, vibrant, hybrid, and dynamic are words often used to characterize cities in Asia. From street vendors in Bangkok and Mumbai to night markets in Taipei and Hong Kong, the landscapes and urban life of these cities exude a peculiar order that escapes the predominant theorization of cities and urbanism in the past century. Crowded, bustling, layered, constantly shifting, and seemingly messy, they possess an order and hierarchy often visible and comprehensible only to their participants, thereby escaping common understanding and appreciation. Besides enabling many of the neighborhoods and communities to function effectively and efficiently despite extremely high population densities and limited infrastructure, such “messiness” (or order) also allows marginalized populations to stake out a place and sustain themselves in the unevenly developed terrains of cities and regions. Understanding the urbanism and urban life of these cities requires an understanding of these compositions and processes that are often hidden, disguised, underappreciated, or dismissed as simply messy or underdeveloped. With a cross-disciplinary group of presenters in architecture, literature, public space design, and urban planning, this panel examines a selection of cases in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Manila, Seoul, Shanghai, Taipei, and Tokyo and explores the historic and contemporary production of their dynamic urban fabric and processes. Messiness is simultaneously a range of urban conditions that we are about to examine in this panel and a notion that we attempt to unpack and challenge in this investigation.

Area of Study

• Southeast Asia

Session Organizer

• Jeffrey Hou, University of Washington

Individual Presentations

• Concrete Jungle or Geo-cultural Cipher? Reading Lineage into the Perils and Prospects of Metro Manila - José Edgardo Abaya Gomez, University of the Philippines-Diliman

• The Royal Field (Sanam Luang): Bangkok’s Polysemic Urban Palimpsest - Koompong Noobanjong, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology, Ladkrabang

• Neutral Equilibrium in Public Space: Mong Kok Flower Market in Hong Kong - Kin Wai Michael Siu, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

• Little Manila: The Other Central of Hong Kong - Daisy Tam, Hong Kong Baptist University

• Everyday Urban Flux: Temporary Urbanism in East Asia as Insurgent Planning - Jeffrey Hou, University of Washington