Abstract
The photograph of the bright, spacious and orderly airport terminal that fills both covers of the book may suggest that the focus of Airport Urbanism: Infrastructure and Mobility in Asia is the string of new and spectacular airport facilities that have accompanied the unprecedented urbanisation rates in Asia over the last two decades. Although the author does discuss some of these projects, his concern is a rather opposite phenomenon: the appearance of a transnational low-cost and largely informal transport system that struggles to keep pace with the exponential rise in air travel in Asia. Significantly, this increase mainly responds to the emergence of what he calls the nouveaux globalisés: a new and variegated flying public, composed amongst others of migrant workers, budget tourists and expatriate retirees, whose movement has been facilitated by a reduction of restrictions on transnational mobility and the growth of low-cost airlines. In this respect, the book not only presents a valuable and in-depth examination of airport-related infrastructure in a region where, in spite of the dramatic expansion of aerial mobility, this issue has received relatively little academic attention. It also – and fundamentally – provides a nuanced insight into Asian cities that transcends an exclusive focus on either mega-projects or informality; rather, it persuasively shows the value for understanding and planning these cities of examining the in-between, the less evident infrastructures of low-cost transnational mobility.
The book owes part of its effectiveness to the author’s approach. Firstly, as he notes, the book is affected by his personal experience of growing up in five different countries, and thus he approaches the topic from both an academic and a participant perspective. References to his own experience are frequent, particularly in the introduction and conclusion. Secondly, he adopts a methodological approach that seeks to combine the aesthetic insights of the architecture and urban design fields with the historical and ethnographic modes of enquiry of historians, geographers and anthropologists. This ‘urban humanities approach’, as he terms it, is then applied to different cases of cross-border transport infrastructure in five East and Southeast Asian cities: Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Singapore. The result is a rich and enjoyable empirical examination of the implications of the growth in transnational mobility for the development, planning and design of the Asian city. It is written in a very accessible way and is punctuated by numerous and relevant black and white and colour images.
The book is organised in four chapters framed by an introduction and a conclusion. The introduction locates the issue of transnational mobility in Asia within the current literature on mobility, infrastructure and the everyday, and presents the interdisciplinary approach adopted by the author. The following three chapters focus on different instances of cross-border transport infrastructure in the Pearl River Delta. Chapter 1 examines the desegregation of the transport corridor between Hong Kong and its international airport, as newer members of the flying public appropriate transport networks and facilities intended for local use to seek more economical alternatives to the Hong Kong Airport Express high-speed rail link. Chapter 2 investigates the emergence of a cross-border transport system in the Pearl River Delta that allows passengers from Mainland China to check-in ‘upstream’ and travel by ferry directly to Hong Kong International Airport, without passing through Hong Kong’s customs and immigration procedures. Cross-border transport in the region is further examined in Chapter 3, which focuses on how increased demand for transnational mobility has led to the establishment of a bus transport system that provides cross-border access to the airports of Hong Kong and Shenzhen, a rapidly developing border city where the state elites’ aspirations for international connectivity are constrained by more powerful regional interests and national security concerns. Chapter 4 broadens the geographical scope of the analysis to trace the emergence of the low-cost travel industry in Southeast Asia and examine the development of budget airport infrastructure in the cities of Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Singapore. Finally, the concluding chapter briefly draws common themes from the preceding chapters before moving beyond a specific concern with transport infrastructure to focus instead on the implications of increasing transnational mobility for the planning, design and study of Asian cities. It does so by drawing on the author’s personal experience as a post-doctoral researcher in Singapore.
Although the different cases are sufficiently distinct to merit particular attention on their own, they all illustrate at least one type of tension: between the intentions of the planners and policy-makers and the demands of the majority of the public; between the magnificent and costly designs of flagship terminal buildings and the nondescript and inexpensive spaces of low-cost transnational mobility; between the socio-economic reality of increasing international flows and a political geography that fails to regulate them efficiently. These contrasts reinforce the author’s main claim that policy-makers, planners and architects are not adequately responding to the transport and planning implications of the rise of low-cost transnational travel in the region, yet they arguably oversimplify some of the phenomena he analyses. There are important differences between the various transport arrangements described. In certain cases the transport terminal, designed with the participation of an international architectural firm, is not aesthetically dissimilar to some of the mega-projects it is contrasted with; in other cases, it was designed anonymously and inexpensively. Likewise, whereas some of the infrastructures were pre-existing and taken over by transport providers, others were purpose-built and required significant investment by the state. Different types of actors have taken part in the development of these varied infrastructures, and a more nuanced disaggregation of them, although possibly reducing the clarity of the argument, would have strengthened it.
Another issue concerns the contribution of the book to the existing urban studies literature. At the outset of the book, the author claims that urban scholars and practitioners have not sufficiently engaged with the complexities of contemporary urbanisation, particularly beyond Western cities. His approach usefully seeks to incorporate insights and methods from both the design disciplines and the humanities and social sciences to advance in this endeavour, yet what seems to be missing is a more elaborated engagement with recent relevant developments in the field of urban studies. Although the author’s attention to the everyday experience of urban infrastructure is certainly adequate for examining the appropriation of infrastructures by the travelling public, there is not a sufficient recognition of the burgeoning human geographical and anthropological literature on urban infrastructures and the everyday (e.g. Graham and McFarlane, 2015). Similarly, the need to overcome West-centred approaches to urbanisation has long been highlighted by post-colonial perspectives in urban theory (Robinson, 2006), yet this is not adequately acknowledged. Admittedly, however, the author’s intention to reach an audience wider than academia may have led him to favour engagement with general understandings of the topic rather than with advanced theoretical developments.
On the whole, the book remains particularly valuable on the empirical level. It skilfully weaves personal, ethnographic, planning and political economic accounts to provide an insightful and convincing narrative on the emergence of alternative transport systems and practices that challenge conventional understandings of urban infrastructures and the city. It is precisely when these perspectives are combined that the narrative is most effective in conveying the urban implications of low-cost transnational mobility. Its perceptive and extensive empirical analysis will certainly be of value not only to scholars of East and Southeast Asian cities but also to those who intervene directly in their planning and development.