Constructing Asia : an introduction

Scholars have shown how urbanization is rapidly transforming Asia as a region and repositioning its cities as critical spaces for 21st century urban theory (Jones and Douglass 2008; Ong and Roy 2011; Goh, Bunnel, and Van Der Veer 2015). Yet, construction has been curiously absent from many discussions of urbanism and remains relatively opaque as an industry. This is surprising given the centrality of the industry to the region’s post-war reconstruction and its Cold War economies (e.g. Chaleomtriana 2007). The nine papers in Constructing Asia aim to address this gap. We ask: how does construction shape the social, economic and political processes through which Asian cities come into being? We suggest that the intense flows of construction materials, capital, labour and their lingering after effects offer critical insights into contemporary urban economies and politics. We show how the arrangements of power and precarity, capital and labour and citizens and non-citizens that materialize on the construction site produce the city.