Theorizing the Southeast Asian City as Text

Urban Landscapes, Cultural Documents, and Interpretative Experiences

Nonfiction, Art & Architecture, Architecture, Planning, Social & Cultural Studies, Political Science, Politics, Economic Policy, Business & Finance

• Author: Robbie B H Goh, Brenda S A Yeoh
• ISBN: 9789814486590
• Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
• Publication: May 20, 2003
• Imprint: WSPC
• Language: English

Theorizing the Southeast Asian City as Text examines the ways in which culture, ethnicity, languages, traditions, governance, policies and histories interplay in the creation of the urban experiences in contemporary Southeast Asian cities. It focuses on the ways in which urban spatial forms are textual experiences, subject to interpretative strategies and the influence of other discourses. In addition it also analyzes the experiences of modernization in such cities, but also in terms of the strategies of containment, refurbishment, and loss which this has occasioned.

Contents:

• Urbanism and Post-Colonial Nationalities: Theorizing the Southeast Asian City (R B H Goh & B S A Yeoh)
• Reading the Southeast Asian City in the Context of Rapid Economic Growth (K S Tay & R B H Goh)
• “The Rise of the Merlion”: Monument and Myth in the Making of the Singapore Story (B S A Yeoh & T C Chang)
• Things to a Void: Utopian Discourse, Communality and Constructed Interstices in Singapore Public Housing (R B H Goh)
• Selective Disclosure: Romancing the Singapore River (S Huang & T C Chang)
• Malaysia's High-Tech Cities and the Construction of Intelligent Citizenship (T Bunnell)
• Museum/City/Nation: Negotiating Identities in Urban Museums in Indonesia and Singapore (K M Adams)
• The Urban and the Urbane: Modernization, Modernism and the Rebirth of Singaporean Cinema (A R Guneratne)
• Benjamin in Bombay? An Asian Extrapolation (R Patke)

Readership: Undergraduates, graduate students, academics and professionals in architecture and urban planning.