This book explores the multiple and changing ideas, concepts, and representations that shape contemporary cities in Asia in a historical perspective. It does so by using multiple sources, objects (architecture, planning, spaces and practices), and methods of inquiry. At a time when intense dynamics of urban development of Asian cities puzzle and disorient, Ideas of the City in Asian Settings offers knowledge about the ideas that lay beneath the historical and contemporary production of cities in Asia, in order to deepen our understanding of the processes and meanings of urban development in the continent. The book sheds more light on the vast array of rules and perspectives that make cities into complex objects that are continuously 'in the making'. Because Asian cities have experienced unprecedented dynamics of urban development during the last fifty years, they are considered as crucial places to question the aspirations that multiple actors project onto changing urban environments, as well as the evolution of the role of cities in globalisation.

EDITORS

Henco Bekkering is Emeritus Professor of Urban Design, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. He has been Netherlands Professor at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan, USA, and Visiting Scholar at the School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, Beijing, PR China. He has co-edited Mapping Detroit. Land, Community, and Shaping a City, Wayne State University Press, 2015. He is currently involved in the publication of the historical morphological analysis of the metropolitan area of Wuhan, PR China. He is member of the board of the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden, the Netherlands.

Dr. Adèle Esposito was trained as an architect and urban planner. She is a researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRSAUSSER). Her research deals with the uses of cultural heritage in the contemporary development of Southeast Asian cities. Combining the examination of spatial transformation with the analysis of social behaviors, political strategies, and collective meanings, her research considers cities and human settlements as complex cultural phenomena which give an account of the evolution and legacies of Southeast Asian societies.

Dr. Charles Goldblum is emeritus professor in urban planning at the University of Paris 8 and former director of the French Institute of Planning. He is currently associated researcher at AUSSER/IPRAUS Research Laboratory (CNRS/ENSAPB). He is a specialist in Southeast Asian urban studies, his ongoing research being focusing on heritage policies, attitudes and issues in the changing context of Southeast Asian metropolitan development. He is the author of several papers on urban policies in cities like Bangkok, Phnom Penh or Singapore and has been co-editor for several books dealing with urban planning and development in Southeast Asia, namely: Territoires de l'urbain en Asie du Sud-Est. Métropolisations en mode mineur (CNRS, 2012); Vientiane, architecture d'une capitale. Traces, formes, structures, projets (Recherches, 2010); Spatial Planning for a Sustainable Singapore (Springer, 2008). He is also a member of the Editorial Board of the IIAS Publications "Asian Cities Series".