Re-evaluating Urban Asia

With the collapse of several Western economies, the curiosity towards Asia and particularly Asian cities has never been greater than it is today. Yet, the understanding of the Asian urban landscape remains surprisingly simplistic. Most of us continue to see Asia as a set of distinct regions – South, South-East, Middle-East and Far-East – even though such terms are essentially biased constructions by European powers, with reference to their geographic locations. Such breakdowns bias the differences over the similarities and create the false impression that various Asian regions have nothing to do with one another, when the truth is just the opposite. Not only are these regions profoundly interconnected through deep histories, they are also interrelated through numerous social, political and economic realities that unify them as parts of a single gigantic continental land mass we loosely call Asia. 

In other words, Asia is a mosaic of numerous circumstances, each of which has shaped places of a particular kind at different times in its history.

Asia’s oldest urban landscapes stem as much from cultural and religious beliefs as practical responses to climate and geography. Here one finds the ruins of one of the world’s earliest planned cities, Mohenjodaro (India, 2,600 BCE), with a citadel designed around a great public bath as its central public space. One finds the ruins of Parsa (Persepolis, Iran, 515 BCE), the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid dynasty. One finds China’s first metropolis, Changan, built to the northwest of modern Xian with an area of around 35 sq kms, probably equaled by only Rome (Italy) in size. One finds the remains of Asia’s oldest universities in Nalanda and Taxila (both in India) and its oldest public policy document in Chanakya’s Arthashastra. Some of these ancient landscapes are alive today. The most significant example is the city of Varanasi (India) that still wears vivid traces of its ancient ancestor, Kashi, around where the Buddha gave his first sermon. 

Such places represent the earliest patterns of formal urbanism in Asia and therefore offer significant clues on how Asian cities were born through forces both similar and different from their Western contemporaries.

The second kind of landscape emerges through numerous cultural transfers and exchanges within the continent itself. An example is the planning of the cities like Nara or Kyoto in Japan based on a Chinese predecessor like Changan. Another example is the spread of Islam that establishes great capitals such as Timur’s Samarkhand in Uzbekistan and Shah Abbas’ Isfahan in Iran. This Islamic trajectory finds its way into the Indian-subcontinent where new cities – Bijapur, Agra, Shahjahanabad, Fatehpur Sikri – generate new urban models simultaneously, Islamic and Indian. And the original Persian themes of the mausoleum and quadrangular Char Bagh garden gradually evolve into the magnificent Taj Mahal. 

Today, these hybrid landscapes are vivid reminders of the complexity of Asia’s urban history and questions on their conservation and future remain at the heart of this discussion.

The third landscape is created by Colonisation. The earliest Western visitors to Asia are the Greeks, but Alexander the Great’s influence remains largely limited to Indian sculpture and art. From an urban standpoint, the Portuguese come first and transform the verdant tropical landscape of Goa (India) with hundreds of churches, chapels and wayside crosses and entire towns emulating their homeland. The Spanish do the same in Manila (Philippines) and the Dutch in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). And eventually, the British Raj in India becomes by far the largest colonial imprint in the world, proclaimed by both large public monuments and humble utilitarian structures like bridges, canals and cantonments. 

Decades after the colonisers depart, the places and structures they created get absorbed into emerging Asian cities through various means. It is not their original visions but their legacies that now come to the forefront.

The fourth type of landscape emerges from self-imposed Westernisation in several parts of  Asia. For instance, in 1868, the Tokugawa Era finds its end in the Meiji Restoration and Japan opens its doors to Western influences. In 1872, the Ginza becomes Japan’s first designed ‘Western’ street, with British architect Thomas Waters replacing the fire-ravaged maze of traditional wooden structures with brick buildings and wide tree-lined boulevards. Eventually, Japan’s defeat in World War II gives rise to a new nation under the American Occupation, making it the first industrialised non-Western democracy in the world. Meanwhile, in 1911, China enters the Republican era and Beijing’s 1950’s development plans, following Moscow’s (Russia) example, divide the city into functional zones with ex-urban industries surrounding an administrative urban core. These landscapes affirm another side of the relationship that Asia shares with the West, one that unlike colonisation is less about cultural tension and more about being inspired by industrialisation and technology.

The fifth landscape is formed through Asia’s embrace of Modern urbanism and architecture. Circa 1951, barely four years after the British depart from India, the Swiss-French modern architect Le Corbusier designs his largest project ever in Chandigarh, the new capital of Punjab (India), fuelled by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s mandate for a utopian city symbolizing the values of a new India. Circa 1961, the construction of the 130-meter high Monumen Nasional in post-independent Jakarta (Indonesia) is inspired by the Eiffel Tower, even as the city’s massive southward expansion manifests an ambitious new ‘Nation-Building’ free from any colonial memory. In Japan, architect Kenzo Tange proposes a plan (un-built) for Tokyo’s expansion with nine infrastructural loops and high-rise mega-structures spanning Tokyo Bay. And the Chung King Mansions are completed at 36-44 Nathan Road in Hong Kong introducing a new high-rise housing type in Asia. Modern urbanism and architecture become the new symbols of cultural progress across Asia, a phenomenon that continues to dominate several parts of Asia today.

The sixth landscape is born as a simultaneous result of rapid modernisation across Asia. With industrialisation and the simultaneous influx of people from villages into the city, the squatter as a habitat begins to garner attention. Here one encounters landscapes such as Dharavi, one of Asia’s largest slums, located in suburban Mumbai (India). Spread over 0.67 square miles, it provides cheap, though illegal dwelling alternatives for over 600,000 people, with rents as low as four US dollars per month, while also nurturing a thriving micro-economy with a total annual turnover of around 600 million US dollars. From informal markets in Lebanon to homelessness in Dhaka (Bangladesh), the amazing resilience and resourcefulness of these illegal, informal habitats within the franchised city remains one of the most perplexing issues in Asian urbanity today.

The seventh landscape consists of Asia’s indigenous rural habitats that are struggling to find their place within its ongoing urbanisation. Here one finds the bang (aquatic villages) of Thailand with their infamous floating markets, the agrarian hamlets of Borneo, the fast disappearing ‘urban villages’ of Guangzhou (China), the forgotten qanats and karez (subterranean indigenous water channels) of Yazd (Iran) and Aleppo (Syria), and the tribal settlements of Inner Mongolia. The conversion of these places, patterns and peoples into tourist magnets, their merciless absorption into cosmopolitan landscapes or their complete destruction, all raise difficult questions on economic and cultural justice that demand to be understood and answered.

The eighth landscape emerges from the lukewarm reception to Modern urbanism and architecture in Asia, particularly in less developed nations. In response, planners and architects attempt to reflect a sense of history and regionalism in both urbanism and architecture. For example, in Baghdad (Iraq) from 1979-1983, second and third generation European and American Modern architects gather to participate in an ambitious urban redevelopment fuelled by a booming oil economy. It includes major inner city revitalisations such as the Khurafa Street Development, with regulations encouraging densification with the visual uniformity of arabesque streetscapes. On a smaller scale, the architectural projects of Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa, from hotels to houses, with traditional sloping tiled roofs, courtyards and local materials, represent a direct critique of abstract Modern architecture. Such efforts reveal a renewed interest in local history and preservation, and in this sense, Asia provides a new intellectual canvas to rethink the limitations of Modernism beyond the West.

(Photos by Brian McMorrow)

The ninth landscape, made up of Asia’s ‘sudden’ mega-cities, stands out for its sheer pace of development. Here one finds the streetscapes of Shinjuku and Akihabara (both in Tokyo, Japan) whose electric signage makes Las Vegas (USA) and Times Square (New York, USA) look tame. One sees the dramatic evolution of Asia’s most iconic vertical metropolis, Hong Kong, with uniquely slender ‘pencil skyscrapers’ and multi-use high-rises linked by high-speed public transportation, elevated walkways and sophisticated subterranean worlds. Meanwhile, Dubai in four decades goes from a city of 58,000 to 1.5 million natives, with an additional 5.1 million annual visitors.
Its southward expansion, before the collapse of the global economy, remains one of the most ambitious and dramatic developments in recent urban history. It includes plans for the largest infrastructural project in the world – the 75 km long Arabian Canal Development, as well as the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, even as the city as a whole becomes a vast collage of isolated mega-projects. From Tokyo (Japan) in the ’70s to Shenzhen (China) in the ’90s, this phenomenon of ‘instant’ urbanisation remains one of the most magical and scary characteristics of Asian urbanism.

The tenth landscape comprises Asia’s emerging urban models dominated by ideas of sustainability, pedestrian dominance, increment planning and an attempt to stop rampant sprawl. Here, one finds Putrajaya, Malaysia’s 11,300-acre built-from-scratch ‘environment-friendly’ administrative capital. The interconnected street grids and figural open spaces of the American anti-sprawl movement, New Urbanism, are seen in new towns such as Lavasa in India and Dos Rios in the Philippines. Among the nine new towns being built outside Shanghai (China), Thames Town, replicates the classic English market town with cobbled streets, Victorian terraces and corner shops, a church, a pub and a fish and chips shop. And the 700-hectare new city of Masdar in Abu Dhabi is designed to supposedly achieve Carbon Neutrality. While the long-term significance of these examples remains to be seen, they do represent refreshing counterpoints to Asia’s recent development trends. They bear the potential to either chart new futures or conversely vanish into oblivion.

These ten landscapes suggest that reading Asia as a set of distinct regions or geographies is neither necessarily complete nor correct. The fundamental forces shaping Asian cities are neither isolated nor regionally unique. 

As seen in the discussion above, the Indian sub-continent is historically connected with the cultures of the Persian and Gulf regions. China’s or Dubai’s rapid urbanisation is an echo of Japan’s rapid growth in the ’70s and Hong Kong’s in the ’80s. Across the continent, informal urbanisms are diffused with metropolitan landscapes and colonial towns are gradually taking on new identities. And Asia’s oldest cities – among the oldest in the world – are themselves a rich mixture of cross-cultural histories far too complicated to unpack.

How then do we engage with these diverse landscapes? We do so by recognising that at the end of the day, practicing urbanism in Asian cities is a multifaceted, open-ended and plural art that has to embrace all the diverse themes, concerns, as well as overlaps that exist in different places at different times. Even as we embrace Asia’s globalising aspirations, we must not forget the landscapes of poverty that are shaping Asian cities every day. And even as we lament the loss of Asia’s heritage, we cannot afford to undermine its emerging ambitions. Asian cities – some far older than the oldest Western ones – are far more complex and contradictory than their Western counterparts. They are treading their own path to their future. They must be understood and evaluated on their own terms.