It’s late at night in Bangkok. I’ve just returned from the SEANNET 2.0 launch meeting in Surabaya, where I had the pleasure of meeting wonderful people and new colleagues, trying new foods, and seeing new sights and sites, all the while being overwhelmed by the hospitality of East Java. Ten hours and three coffees later, there is still so much to unpack, including my suitcase, that I am unable to sleep. So here I am, in the comfort of my Bangkok neighborhood, trying to process the impression in the only way I know how: through writing.

It now goes without saying that Western-centric urban theory fails to explain much, if not most, of the world’s urbanisms, but no amount of theory could have prepared me for what I saw firsthand. It humbled me to see the geographical region that must have inspired Terry McGee’s Desakota: the geography of in-betweenness, where the urban and the rural interlace, and one often cannot tell where one ends and the other begins. It generously unfolds over our two-hour bus ride from Surabaya to Malang, mocking the urban-rural divide and shunning administrative divisions. It spans a speckled (read: troubled) tapestry of land, soil, and water, engulfing the small towns and villages that nourish such firm, fluffy rice.

Given that our ancestors spent centuries living in this part of the world, we would have assumed that we could understand places such as Kampong Ayer, the eponymous Water Village, presented by our colleagues from Brunei. Urban forms in Southeast Asia are solid and liquid, earth and air, which, incidentally or coincidentally, means in the Malay world. And yet, our urban settlement policy has evolved to favor the solid land, the terra firma, over the wayward water. In Bangkok, similar riparian livelihoods are frowned upon as remnants of the backward past, as something that stands in the way of development. And yet, in the same breath, floating markets are promoted as a global tourist attraction in an overt display of self-exotification. ‘Water people,’ from Brunei to Thailand, are being asked, if not forced, to relocate to land despite the fact that, as one of our colleagues puts it, water equals land for many of us in Southeast Asia.

But if there’s anyone who literally turns water into land, it is urban Singapore. The amphibian village of Kampong Ayer contrasts sharply with the sleek, techno-utopian urbanism of Singapore’s Northshore project. In Southeast Asia, where urbanization is marketed as modernization, the smart-city project will help to further solidify Singapore’s reputation as the “Singapore model.” But as presented by our colleagues from Jayapura, the Papuan city is a sobering reminder that political unrest and urbanization can go hand in hand. Although the Indonesian transmigrasi policy in the 1980s was meant to decentralize and alleviate congestion in Java by promoting migration into other regions, some locals view it as expansionist and assimilationist, especially in light of simmering ethnic and political conflicts.

In fact, Jayapura’s urbanization reflects a broader pattern of Southeast Asia’s internal colonization, where central governments manipulate demographic dynamics through internal migration. Similar tales are told about the 1960s nationalist government’s exodus of Buddhist Thais from the impoverished Northeast into the ‘troubled’ Southern provinces and the flood of Filipino Catholics to the Muslim-majority Mindanao. Urbanization, in this sense, is a governmental project. Many places in Southeast Asia urbanize under the watchful eye of the state, modernizing at the mercy of its surveillance and violence. Frequently, it is the same state that waxes lyrical about Singapore, singing praises of its urbanist achievements. Aspiring smart cities now speckle the desokota of Southeast Asia, glossing over its troubled political pasts and presents.

But the concept of desakota does not only exist in morphological form but, as I later found out, in spirit. Not from a large vantage point, but in the most intimate of spaces. Again, how would the Chicago School sociologists reconcile a place like Kampung Peneleh that has urbanized but not grown blasé à la George Simmel? Would Baudelaire’s flâneur walk his nonchalant walk down the alleys of Kampung Maspati without being at all affected by its intense intimacy? Is an urban kampong necessarily an oxymoron?

For me, the trip reaches its peak at the jaranan ritual up in the hills of Kampung Songgoriti in Batu. A group of performers dance in a dreamlike trance as a crowd gathers around them with loud music blasting and incense burning in the thick air. Intoxicated by the senses, they continue to dance, transported to a higher spirit so divine that it is feral. Along comes a provocatively dressed female singer. Unfazed by her surroundings, she belts out loud, sonorous tunes, yearning for some faraway land, for some meaning not found on earth. In the tilt of her head and the gesture of her hands, the sexualized body transcends the false twin of urban and urbane. As if the former were the synonym of the latter. As if to be urban, one had to be urbane. She sings on. The village is her stage. The esek-esek sex villas that speckle the hills are her timid spectators.

But ten hours and three coffees later, I’m home. Back in my sheltered neighborhood, back to my mundane university routine and working manuscripts. As night becomes day, I now get ready for my fourth-year urban design studio, where students are taught to be visionary and ‘dream big’ (smart cities, anyone?). But the small sites and their small dreams are still raw in my mind, so I write for fear that I will forget the endless possibilities of being urban. The story has ended but here I am, drunk on its languid dénouement, bothered by a faraway spirit that feels close to home.

Saphan Kwai, Bangkok
15 February 2023

Author’s note: 
SEANNET Collective is a collaborative platform of scholars and practitioners who study cities and urban life in Southeast Asia. Exactly a year ago, I decided on a whim to write this piece as a way to record my fleeting memories. Many thanks to Alexandra and Ruth for their interest in my story.

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Napong Tao

Napong Tao Rugkhapan is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Faculty of Architecture, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. He is a geographer of urban planning broadly interested in the geographic implications of planning intervention. In particular, he is interested in the technopolitics of urban design and planning, which he defines as the political contestations over knowledge-laden, spatial instruments – maps, zoning, building codes, architectural guidelines. His intention is to expose their ideological, political underpinnings that legitimate planning intervention. His other research interests include comparative urban theory; cross-context circulation of planning ideas; gentrification and inner-city revitalization; and urban architectural heritage.