Reclaim the City: Stories and Critical Perspectives from Southeast Asia

Reclaim the City: Stories and Critical Perspectives from Southeast Asia

Date & Time: Thursday, 19 November, 9:00pm – 11:00pm HST (Friday, 20 November, 3:00pm – 5:00pm Kuala Lumpur/Manila/Singapore time)

This international webinar is jointly organized by Universiti Sains Malaysia’s School of Social Sciences and De La Salle University’s Southeast Asia Research Center and Hub (SEARCH)

Register here: https://forms.gle/RzLPUTCcbMJhDH1q6

Abstract
This webinar brings together scholars from the region to conduct a critical inter-SEA conversation on urban politics. ‘Reclaim the city’ invokes not just pictures of loss, marginalization and displacement, the statement also summons up images of resurgence, resistance, action and urban activism. As importantly, it raises many questions: Who owns a city? If the city has been lost, lost to whom? How has it been lost? If displacement has sparked resistance and activism that aims to reclaim the city, reclaiming by whom and for whom? In discussion of urban development, the theme ‘reclaim the city’ brings into picture not just developers, industrial players and state actors, but also civil society, activists, city dwellers and marginalized groups. The theme is an entry point to explore governance, urban planning, built environment, space configuration, politics and economies of city, state-society relations, government-industry relations, sovereignty, strategies of resistance, and inter-minority relations, to name a few. Urban political and economic dynamics in Southeast Asia have a lot to contribute to this conversation as the pursuit of urban renewal and redevelopment has sparked resistance and activism in many parts of the region.