Futures of Crisis, Futures of Urban Political Theory: Flooding in Asian Coastal Megacities

Abstract

Coastal megacities across Asia have experienced devastating floods in recent years. Studies project dramatic increases in populations prone to chronic flooding and potential permanent inundation of densely populated urban areas in future decades. The uncertainties presented by future flood risks disrupt prevalent state visions of globalization‐driven prosperity. The emerging reality of a shift in relationship between water and urban settlements has begun driving recalibration of power relations around a range of issues, including longstanding contestations over infrastructure delivery, housing, land rights and political representation. Flood mitigation efforts have played out in debates over displacement and eviction, and distributional concerns about the costs and benefits of these initiatives. This article develops a conceptual framework for assessing the implications of projections of flood risk for urban political theory. The article begins by identifying political contestations that emerge around the varied ways water intersects with urban processes—through dynamics of permeability, flow and drainage, aquifers and pipes, and coastal defense. It then explores how projections of the crisis of flooding have reshaped three contemporary debates in urban politics: those around property rights and the question of ‘informality’; around neoliberalization and financialization; and around the rescaling of the state. Finally, it briefly deploys this framework to examine the case of Jakarta.

Automatic Detection of Spatiotemporal Urban Expansion Patterns by Fusing OSM and Landsat Data in Kathmandu

“…Growth can, unsurprisingly, cause negative environmental (and socio-economic) impacts on the existing city environment and surroundings if there are no plans to accommodate the growth [13]. For one, the continuous expansion of impervious surfaces results in a host of water issues, from flooding, to inadequate aquifer refill, to soil erosion [14]. To preserve ecosystem services, like those that well-managed water can provide, city planners and policymakers must know the relationship between built-up area expansion and ecosystem services [15].…”

Fixing a Swamp of Cobras: The Clash between Capital and Water in Shaping Urban Vulnerabilities

“…Focusing on the emblematic case of Suvarnabhumi International Airport/Cobra Swamp, this paper fills theoretical gaps regarding the relationship between capital, land and flood risk. This paper responds to recent calls to address issues of governance, power and politics in addressing urbanisation and flood risks (Gillespie 2020; Shatkin 2019; Weinstein et al 2019) alongside arguments for urban theory to be better grounded in the experience of the South and emerging economies (Parnell and Robinson 2012; Watson 2013). We focus on how the internal logic of capital accumulation can create, redistribute and absorb risks associated with flooding and climate vulnerability, thereby making hazardous space all the more attractive for investment.…”

“…While the literature on capital fixes tends to treat “land” writ large, this paper adds a dimension that has been overlooked in the theoretical work, by highlighting the significance of the ecology of the land in which such fixes occur as a means of understanding patterns of investment, land use change, risk and vulnerability. As such, the paper provides important contributions to a range of current theory on urban political ecology (Gillespie 2020; Shatkin 2019; Weinstein et al 2019) but also to scholarship grounded in the social construction of hazards, vulnerability and disasters (Adger 2006; Hewitt 1983; Mustafa 2005; Taylor 2014; Wisner et al 2004).…”

Resilient Growth: Fantasy Plans and Unplanned Developments in India's Flood‐Prone Coastal Cities

“…A closer knitting together of the fields of climate resilience and critical urban studies, however, would require that urban studies scholars also devote more attention to the threats of climate change and its current and anticipated effects. Rather than ceding this ground to more technical fields, scholars long concerned with questions of urban inequality, contested governance and discourses and ideologies of planning should be looking more directly at how these dynamics are shaping and are being reshaped by climate change, rising sea levels, and severe and unpredictable storms (see Shatkin, , this issue).…”