Alleyways are an urban form historically shared by most cities in Asia, yet understudied. Our book critically explores "Global Asia" and the metropolization process, specifically from its alleyways, which are understood as ordinary neighbourhood landscape providing the setting for everyday urban life and place-based identities being shaped by varied everyday practices, collective experiences and forces. This turns the traditional approach of "global cities" upside-down and contributes to a renewed conception of metropolization as a highly situated process, where forces at play locally, in each alleyway neighbourhood, are both intertwined and labile. Beyond the mainstream, standardising vision of the metropolization process, the book offers a nuanced overview of urban production in Asia at a time of great changes. As such, the bookwill be welcomed by an array of scholars, students, and all those interested in the modern transformation of Asian cities and their urban cultures, including new approaches to social life, urban change and urban governance.
Marie Gibert-Flutre is Associate Professor of Geography in the Department of East Asia Studies (LCAO) at the University of Paris.Her research deals with the dynamics of public and private spaces in the production and appropriation of urban space in Asia. By critically exploring ‘global Asia’ from ordinary public spaces and neighborhoods, she turns in particular the traditional approach to ‘global cities’ upside down and contributes to a renewed conception of metropolization as a highly situated process, where forces at play locally are both intertwined and labile. As Principal Investigator, she manages the Ho Chi Minh City case study of the International SEANNET (Southeast Asia Neighborhoods Network) research programme (IIAS, funded by the Henry Luce Foundation). She has recently published Les envers de la métropolisation: Les ruelles de Ho Chi Minh Ville (Vietnam) (CNRS Edition, 2019) and Asian Alleyways: An Urban Vernacular in Times of Globalization (Amsterdam University Press, 2020), co-edited with Heide Imai.
