Asian Cities

Contemporary Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West: Care of the Self

Gregory Bracken

Contemporary Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West: Care of the Self examines urban communities and societies in Asia and the West to shed much-needed light on issues that have emerged as the world experiences its new urban turn.

An urbanized world should be an improving place, one that is better to live in, one where humans can flourish. This collection of essays examines contemporary practices of care of the self in cities in Asia and the West, including challenges to citizenship and even the right to the city itself. Written by a range of academics from different backgrounds (from architecture and urbanism, anthropology, social science, psychology, gender studies, history, and philosophy), their trans- and multidisciplinary approaches shed valuable light on what are sometimes quite old problems, leading to fresh perspectives and new ways of dealing with them. One thing that unites all of these papers is their people-centred approach, because, after all, a city is its people.

Gregory Bracken is an Assistant Professor of Spatial Planning and Strategy at TU Delft and one of the co-founders of Footprint, the e-journal dedicated to architecture theory. From 2009-2015 he was a Research Fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) Leiden.