Cities, Vol. 24, No. 3, p. 242–244, 2007

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doi:10.1016/j.cities.2007.01.004

Conference report

Reclaiming the City:The Fourth Great AsianStreets SymposiumSarah Moser *

Department of Geography, National University of Singapore,Block AS2, 1 Arts Link, 117570, Singapore

Received 13 December 2006

Available online 27 March 2007

While much has been written on the‘Asian city’, English-language contri-butions have been made largely byacademics located in North Americaand Europe. Therefore it was refresh-ing to attend The Fourth Great AsianStreets Symposium (December 6–8,2006), which drew a diverse range ofurban academics and practitionersfrom around the region: Australia,Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Singa-pore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan,and Thailand. Organized by theSchool of Design and Environmentat the National University of Singa-pore, the symposium focused on Asianpublic spaces and has become a forumfor urban design in Asia. With a rec-ognized lack of Asian publicationsand resources written from Asian per-spectives in English, the symposiumreflects a growing desire for Asiansto participate globally in urban designdebates and to theorize their own ur-ban environments with the ultimategoal of improving them.

Over the past several decades,Asian countries have transformedfrom predominantly rural to urbansocieties as they experienced massiveinternal migration to cities and wide-spread industrialization. As a region

that has experienced unprecedentedgrowth and change in the past severaldecades, there is the growing sensethat public spaces are ‘losing theirvitality as they are transformedaccording to the dictates of the globaleconomy’ (Huo and Lee, 2006, p. i).In the region it is popularly felt thatwith recent urbanization, industriali-zation and modernization, local iden-tities and histories have been lost,natural environmental systems havebeen degraded or destroyed, andeven existing locally valued urbanform has been badly neglected. Re-cent urban renewal and preservationprojects have sparked questions asto which histories should be pre-served, who determines this, and towhat extent designers should evenbe involved. Furthermore, the dra-matic urban changes seen in Asiancities have had a range of socialrepercussions among populations thatare rarely consulted. The papers pre-sented at the Asian Streets Sympo-sium can be grouped broadly intosix overlapping themes, each repre-senting a different challenge facingurban professionals, academics andpolicy-makers in ‘reclaiming the city’:urban renewal, identity and place-making, historic preservation, envi-ronmental issues, social impact andthe changing role of designers.

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It is widely recognized that condi-tions in many Asian cities have rapidlydeclined for the majority of the popu-lation. Several of the presenters exam-ined projects of urban renewal whichbroadly sought to improve urbanspace that had been badly degradedand to reclaim it for public use. Manyof the presenters examined projectsthat reclaimed urban areas from cars,such as streets that had been closedfor pedestrians and more comfortable,upgraded sidewalks in the CBD thatimproved social interaction and circu-latory systems for pedestrians. In themost extreme example of reclamation,Kim Kiho discussed the Cheonggyec-hun Stream, a project in downtownSeoul in which a wide boulevardtopped by an elevated expresswayhas been dismantled and transformedinto a linear river park.

Api Kasemsook argues that foreignexpatriates and the growing middleclass are the main stimuli for urban re-newal in Bangkok. The middle classhas placed pressure on the govern-ment to revitalize public urban spacessuch as old traffic circles, abandonedparks, and under-used litter-filled pla-zas. However, Kasemsook casts doubtas to what extent the local inhabitants’spatial practices of everyday life havebeen incorporated and questionswhether these projects are simply

Conference report: S Moser

accommodating the middle class tothe exclusion of the general public.

The rapid rate of economic andpolitical change seen in most Asiancities in the past decades has beenaccompanied by the destruction offamiliar places and their replacementwith urban form and architecture thatis often felt to be foreign, dull, place-less and inappropriate in scale. HengChye Kiang and Chong Keng Hua ob-serve how planning philosophies havedeveloped to prioritize the creation ofa sense of place in public housing pro-jects in Singapore, where 80% of thepopulation lives in homogeneous gov-ernment-subsidized highrise apart-ments. Bambang Hari Wibisonodiscusses failed attempts at place-making in the Indonesian city ofYogyakarta where he argues thatdespite a strong sense of history andculture in Yogyakarta, efforts atenhancing local identity have not beensuccessful, largely due to the lack ofcommunication between shareholdersand competing identities.

However, there are signs that, de-spite the secular rationality of themodernist movement, a sense of placecan be seen in the spiritual connec-tions that are still being made inhighly urbanized contexts in Bangkok,as observed by Nuttinee Markchanap-orn in her paper ‘Bangkok: The Cityof Angels – Reclaiming the Citythrough the Occult Order’. Markcha-naporn’s research reveals a range ofsuperstitious and spiritual practicesthat modernization was meant to haveeliminated, indicating some of the lim-itations of supposedly homogenizingprocesses of modernization andglobalization.

An issue that currently sparksheated debate among citizens, govern-ments, academics and designers inAsian cities relates to what is consid-ered historical and whose historyshould be preserved. Local popula-tions are often eager to remove physi-cal remnants of colonial history andquestion the appropriateness of usingprecious resources to protect colonialhistory over projects that cultivate asense of local or national identity. Sev-eral presenters traced the develop-ment of preservation movements invarious Asian countries from whatJohn K.C. Liu calls an object-oriented

perspective, in which a building is theobject of preservation, to a subject-oriented view which goes beyondmaterial heritage to include areas of‘‘live’’ preservation. Where the publicwas once satisfied with preservingindividual buildings as artefacts, thereis now growing call to preserve set-tings, contexts and ways of life, partic-ularly of minorities, indicating a shiftin what is valued and consider histori-cal. Widjaja Martokusomo argues thatconservation is part of an enablingenvironment that allows people tokeep their identity and that it is crucialthat the identity of the community isnot sacrificed in the process of revital-ization. This approach takes peopleinto account as both the impetus andthe goal of preservation efforts, mak-ing historical preservation an integralpart of reclaiming the city for itspeople.

Several papers probe the extent towhich the state should get involved—if at all—in engineering outcomes forpreservation areas. In some cases ithas been determined that the best out-come for preservation is one thatmaintains the existing urban fabricalong with the residents who con-structed it. Whether from the state orfrom private investors, too much inter-vention can destroy the very thing thatgives a place historic or cultural value.

Several papers focused on environ-mental realities and constraints andhow these can inform urban design.Drawing on his own excellent empiri-cal studies of temperature variationwithin the Sri Lankan city of Colom-bo, Rohinton Emmanuel points outthe range of temperatures found indifferent urban environments of thesame city. Based on this data, Emman-uel recommends that urban designersin tropical areas prioritize shade atthe pedestrian level through treesand built structures, try to promote(or at least not to block) air circulationthrough built form using streets asbreeze facilitators and design futureurban fabric to take full advantage ofwind patterns.

Perry Yang discusses new approachesfor ecological design in intensive ur-ban environments. Increasing sprawl,the emergence of mega urban forms,and the expanding ecological footprintof cities have resulted in an increase in

landscape fragmentation. Yang notesthat despite Singapore’s increasedamount of total ‘green space’ overthe past fifteen years, these spaceshave become more fragmented, mak-ing them less hospitable for wildlife.He discusses some encouraging pro-jects underway that acknowledgerather than control natural forces suchas the new Taipei Eco-City MasterPlan which reflects an attempt to cre-ate a porous city plan with the poten-tial to store water in various placesaround the city in the event of atyphoon.

The social impact of urban projectswas implicit in most of the papers pre-sented. In the name of heritage preser-vation or modernization, the statefrequently forces residents out ofareas with which they are familiarand which they constructed them-selves in some cases. In his paper on‘‘‘Gated Communities’’ and the Priv-atization of Streetscapes in (Post-) So-cialist Shanghai’, Pow Choon-Piewexamines how gated communitieshave affected social lives in the cityby creating vast areas of privilege thatexclude the rest of the populace andcreate boundaries throughout the city.Many presenters at the symposiumcriticized the rapid replacement offine-grained urban form with increas-ingly large urban grain drawn frommodernist planning philosophies con-sisting of mega-blocks and tall build-ings. This has resulted in littlerelation between the street life andthe architecture, has been unsuccess-ful in creating spaces that are enjoy-able, safe and comfortable for users,has created urban landscapes of sur-veillance and has provided no continu-ity for residents. As was pointed outby many of the presenters, projectsare always political. It therefore cru-cial to critically examine who is beingexcluded and whose needs are beingaccommodated and why.

The changing role of designersemerged many times during presenta-tions and discussion. Several peoplenoted that due to the nature of designprofessions, an intervention or designsolution is always produced, evenwhen it is best to leave a place as itis. It was suggested that in some casesdesigners can best function as activistswhen what is needed is protection and

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advocacy over urban design. Publicparticipation, although more time-consuming, is increasingly being valued(if not practiced) as more designersand policy-makers begin to value resi-dents’ knowledge of place over that ofdesigners, a process that has beenfound to be more sustaining andsuccessful.

In general I would have beeninterested to see more analysis ofindigenous urban forms and moreexploration as to how these could be

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drawn upon to inform current designin a way that would provide continuitywith local ways of living and maintainlocal identities. Rather than challeng-ing the underlying cultural assump-tions of European or North Americanapproaches and their appropriatenessin Asian contexts, many participantsunquestioningly used ‘western’ urbanvalues as models for Asia.

Themes covered in the symposiumparallel issues in other regions of theworld—they are not unique to Asia.

However, non-Asian designers work-ing in this region will benefit from hav-ing access to such discussions ofcurrent issues in Asia.

Reference

Huo Ning and Lee Kah Wee (Eds.), (2006)4th Great Asian Streets Symposium: APublic Forum on Urban Design in Asia.‘Reclaiming the City’, Proceedings(December 6–8, 2006) Singapore, Cen-tre for Advanced Studies in Architec-ture, National University of Singapore.