Edited by Manish Chalana and Jeffrey Hou
Seemingly messy and chaotic, the landscapes and urban life of cities in Asia possess an order and hierarchy that often challenges understanding and appreciation. With contributions by a cross-disciplinary group of authors, Messy Urbanism: Understanding the “Other” Cities of Asia examines a range of cases in Asia to explore the social and institutional politics of urban formality and the contexts in which this “messiness” emerges or is constructed. The book is a result of collaboration between faculty in the Center of Asian Urbanism at UW and colleagues in Asia and North America. It brings a distinct perspective to the broader patterns of informal urban orders and processes as well as their interplay with formalized systems and mechanisms. It also raises questions about the production of cities, cityscapes, and citizenship.
University of Hong Kong Press 2016
“The rubric of ‘messy urbanism’ is a productive antidote to the binaries that have limited a productive discussion about urbanism in Asia. This book is a significant contribution in understanding the inherent nature of the built environments in aspiring democracies—an emergent urbanism that seamlessly embraces the incremental, temporal, and ephemeral as given conditions in the formation of Asian cities.” —Rahul Mehrotra, Architect / Professor of Urban Design and Planning, Harvard University
“This book is of a high quality, with multiple examples from Hong Kong and China. The authors have covered the topic admirably and I expect the book to attract a wide readership.” —Vinit Mukhija, Associate Professor and Vice Chair of Urban Planning, UCLA
Table of Content
Chapter 1. Untangling the “Messy” Asian City
—Jeffrey Hou and Manish Chalana
Chapter 2. A History of Messiness: Order and Resilience on the Sidewalks of Ho Chi Minh City
—Annette M. Kim
Chapter 3. The Order of Messiness: Notes from an Indonesian City
—Abidin Kusno
Chapter 4. Concrete Jungle or Geocultural Cipher? Reading Lineage into the Perils and Prospects of Metro Manila
—José Edgardo A. Gomez Jr.
Chapter 5. The Royal Field (Sanam Luang): Bangkok’s Polysemic Urban Palimpsest
—Koompong Noobanjong
Chapter 6. Shinjuku 新宿: Messy Urbanism at the Metabolic Crossroads
—Ken Tadashi Oshima
Chapter 7. Little Manila: The Other Central of Hong Kong
—Daisy Tam
Chapter 8. Neutral Equilibrium in Public Space: Mong Kok Flower Market in Hong Kong
—Kin Wai Michael Siu and Mingjie Zhu
Chapter 9. Making Sense of the Order in the Disorder in Delhi’s Kathputti Colony
—Manish Chalana and Susmita Rishi
Chapter 10. Messy Work: Transnational Collaboration in Chandigarh
—Vikramāditya Prakāsh
Chapter 11. Everyday Urban Flux: Temporary Urbanism in East Asia as Insurgent Planning
—Jeffrey Hou
Chapter 12. Messy Urbanism and Space for Community Empowerment in China
—Daniel Benjamin Abramson
Epilogue: Sites of Questions, Contestations, and Resistance
—Manish Chalana and Jeffrey Hou
