The experimental governance of urban nature in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Southeast Asia is urbanising at unprecedented speed and in unique, and sometimes paradigmatic, ways. As its cities grow, so too does the place and governance of urban nature require critical interrogation as cities start to develop new and more extensive relationships with their non-human inhabitants and natural environments. The articles that comprise this theme issue consider how the governance of nature in urbanising Southeast Asia is a resolutely experimental phenomenon that involves complex, and often contested, negotiations between actors spanning the public, private, and people domains. Foregrounding the role and importance of experimental governance is the primary contribution of this theme issue, with each paper considering how the agency of urban nature often circumvents and subverts linear cause-and-effect relationships and outcomes. A secondary contribution is the focus on Southeast Asia, with the papers contributing rich empirical insight from Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. Urban development in these countries is, or has been, rapid, and the governance of urban nature has taken a variety of forms, from it being a utopic aspiration of urban futurity, to it being a construct through which new forms of socio-spatial politics become manifest. Collectively, this theme issue advances multiple debates within urban political ecology, environmental governance, and sustainable multispecies flourishing in the Southeast Asian city.