Planning for Water Security in Southeast Asia

This book examines how four communities in the rapidly developing cities of Southeast Asia have creatively solved growing environmental problems. It’s description of how community-level collaboration in Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia provide new ways for thinking about how marginalized people can co-create their own equitable and efficient infrastructure.

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The central premise of the book, as well as the key lesson for readers is that infrastructure is the backbone of democracy. Without it, the process of collective governance fades beyond the immediacy of daily life. Using this premise, the book describes several case studies from Southeast Asia – rapidly urbanizing communities in Gresik, Indonesia; Can Tho, Viet Nam; Phnom Penh, Cambodia and Ha Noi, Viet Nam –that illustrate the embeddedness of highly localized governance structures in the built infrastructure. These four case studies illustrating similar community phenomena across differing social, political, and cultural context will encourage readers to consider the material, built environment stakes underlying participatory democracy as well as the importance of democratic participation in the visioning, building and management of large-scale urban projects.