We embrace the breadth and complexity of the Asian urban landscape to question our preconceptions of what cities are or ought to be. We take a broad intellectual approach to urban Asia as a series of multifarious confluences – geographic, historic and political - extending from the deserts of the Persian Gulf region to the Pearl River Delta.  These confluences have deep roots that are embedded in ancient and sophisticated civilizations. They have undergone transitions through multiple oppressive colonizations, thus affirming their incredible ability to assimilate foreign concepts while asserting their own.  And they have seen dramatic political transformations wherein autocratic rule was replaced by self-governance and the evolution of 20th and 21st century cities as large, complex, and rapidly changing entities.

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As seemingly unmanageable entities, Asian cities, many believe face an ambiguous future. The fact is, however, that they continue to so magically thrive, to survive social, cultural and economic extremes, and as some of the oldest in the world—far older than European or American ones—present issues that constantly challenge our implicit models of city sense and city design. As such, Asian cities are founts of deep knowledge, locales for innovation and resourcefulness borne out of survival, and everyday miracles of management, but most of all, sources of inspiration for future urbanities and urbanisms.



The Urban Asia Collaborative asks:  How do we engage with contemporary Asian cities? How do we interact with these complicated entities without destroying their established patterns or equally important, compromising their emerging aspirations? The contingent answers to these difficult questions are as multifarious and intertwined as the Asian urban landscape itself. We engage with Asian cities through curiosity (e.g. asking deep questions), understanding (e.g. conducting critical research), establishing perspectives (e.g. framing key issues), gaining insights (e.g. identifying key themes), approaches (e.g. adopting sophisticated positions), and interventions (e.g. developing design strategies and acting on them). All the while, we remain open enough to be challenged and changed by realities on the ground and their continual emergence.



In so doing, we seek to move in closer than academic distance usually permits. In the spirit of breaking out of a think tank mentality, we are more of a do tank engaging activist communities on the ground as a point of sharing and support towards real change. We are an inclusive point of exchange - enabling local discussions in Manila to benefit from hearing what has been achieved in Istanbul. We are interested in all aspects of city-making - urban form, process, phenomena and their relation to everyday life - but do not exclude the possibility that comparing the legal language of land rights in Hong Kong and Vladivostok might help us discover important opportunities for change. We are inclusive of all that is urban and Asian, while at the same time offering distinct and specific channels for focused engagements and plural exchanges. This is the focus of the “collaborative.”

One of the most crucial aspects of our collaborative is therefore the recognition of the various forces shaping Asian cities—from contemporary globalization to colonial legacies to historical trends—but also the realization that ultimately, engagement is as much a question of human agency as it is about larger structures. At the end of the day, cities are created and recreated by human beings most often not in the guise of one person’s or one group’s vision, but as a mixed-up result of multiple interventions by multiple groups. 

This indeed is practice in the best sense of the term: not as a master urbanist, but as one of the many actors who shape the city within a given set of conditions and circumstances.  As authors, scholars, professionals and enthusiasts, we practice in all these ways:  by instigating questions, by highlighting thematic areas for investigation and discourse, and finally, by indulging in proposatory acts, whether in staking out positions or creating visions of the future. At its heart, practice is ultimately about transformation, even though the vast majority of interventions fall short.  Such practice may be grass-roots or utopian and involve the invention of new ideas, rekindling of dormant circumstances, implementation of physical projects, or even discovery of accidental successes.  Yet the central thread that should run through all these practices, we argue, is to take responsibility for our actions and for the city. 

The Asian city is our city. And we rise to the challenge of practicing in and with it? We do so by being open to a constant feedback loop that allows multi-faceted engagements to emerge by their own right, through multiple minds and multiple perspectives, embracing the idea of collective engagement as superior to the limitations of a single mind. The complexity of Asian cities, we argue, deserves this kind of expansive, multi-dimensional engagement. This eventually is what the Urban Asia Collaborative sets out to do: to provoke engagement and practice in the best sense of the terms; to struggle with, to propose, to fall short, to learn, to try again, in the never-ending cycles of emergence transforming Asian cities.