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Lanes and Neighbourhoods in Cities in Asia - DPU involvement

27 June 2016

Lanes and Neighborouds in Cities in Asia

This week , Director of the and Urban Laboratory Co-Director and DPU PhD candidate Kisnaphol Wattanawanyoo聽will be presenting in Singapore at the conference jointly organised by Asian Urbanisms Cluster at the Asia Research Institute,聽National University of Singapore, the International Institute for Asian Studies, and supported by University聽College London. Kisnaphol will present part of his doctoral work in a paper titled 鈥溾橲oi聽Urbanism鈥 as Way of Life: The Bangkok Case of City-Making and the Creative Appropriation of the In-Between Everyday Territory鈥 and Camillo a reflection on the action research done in Cambodia in the last three years in a paper titled "The Upside Down of Urban Design: Differential Inclusion and Neighbourhoods Belonging in Cambodia鈥. 聽

Kisnaphol Wattanawanyoo鈥檚 presentation will examine Bangkok鈥檚 smallest urban unit of 鈥渟oi鈥 and 鈥渢rok鈥 community/neighbourhoods, which usually comprise of both the circulation network (soi and trok 鈥 small/narrow alley way or lane) and the community/neighbourhood surrounding them. In viewing Bangkok through this perspective, it provides an understanding of how the everyday city is made through the interaction of its inhabitants in these urban networks. The paper aims: 1) to understand the existing 鈥渟oi鈥 and 鈥渢rok鈥 community/neighbourhood in terms of their characters and their recent adaptation; 2) to theorise the everyday Bangkok through the concept of 鈥渟oi urbanism鈥; 3) to explore how the city dwellers in these 鈥渟oi鈥 and 鈥渢rok鈥 communities/neighbourhoods reclaim the city and also express their political identity and existence. Kishnaphol ultimately argues that 鈥渟oi urbanism鈥 is central and influential to Bangkok city making and as a creative way of life. It is not just the spatial, temporal, social dimension, but also political as well.

Camillo鈥檚 paper begins from the premise that homes and neighbourhoods have conventionally been spatial realms of identification and belonging. Accordingly, such relations are now becoming unstable, and new types of consciousness, realms of operation and allegiance are being sought towards multiple multifarious belongings. In the attempt to circumscribe the notion of belonging, Camillo seeks to question its twofold meaning of belonging聽(鈥渂eing in鈥, 鈥渂eing defined as such鈥) and as possession ("having"). When identity is conceived as performative and belonging as becoming, the repetition, reproduction and experimentation of certain spatial practices enables us to overcome the alienation of abstract space (produced by conflicts, migration, globalisation, commercialisation, etc.). Spaces re-appropriated through rituals become communal sites of embeddedness and new sites of resistances. Dispossessed, undesirable and marginalised communities that find themselves in such after belonging condition can thus acquire a 'presence', obtaining the potential for new collectivities to emerge. Grounding into ethnographic and action research done in the last three years with marginal, informal and relocated communities in Cambodia, Camillo鈥檚 paper aims to contribute to the debate around neighbourhoods as sites of resistance and new practice of city imagining and city making.