The Floating Urbanism of Cambodia’s Tonlé Sap

Authors

  • Bruno De Meulder KU Leuven
  • Kelly Shannon KU Leuven

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.58981/bluepapers.2024.2.08

Keywords:

Indigenous knowledge systems and practices (IKSP), gallery forests, fishing settlements, wetness, heterarchy

Abstract

For decades, the floating villages of Tonlé Sap, a lake in Cambodia, have demonstrated ingenuity by necessity and adaptability to the seasonal rhythms of nature. The villages are examples of ephemeral, floating urbanism, a response to discriminatory land tenure practices that is able to adjust to ever-increasing fluctuations in water levels exacerbated by global warming. The villages’ Indigenous knowledge systems and practices (IKSP) display a distinct intelligence, in which water-based modes of living and livelihoods are connected with a resourceful understanding and use of locational assets. Conducting intensive fieldwork by boat and living in the floating villages for ten days in August 2023, the authors gained knowledge of local expertise through observation and informal interviews. They documented livelihoods and modes of settlement that suggest a pause in the neo-liberal market-driven globalism sweeping Cambodia. Here they relate their research to existing literature and studies (primarily ethnographic and policy-oriented) of the region’s unique monsoon culture of floating villages with a culturally specific identity that combines hierarchy and heterarchy.

How to Cite

De Meulder, B., & Shannon, K. (2024). The Floating Urbanism of Cambodia’s Tonlé Sap. Blue Papers, 3(2), 104–15. https://doi.org/10.58981/bluepapers.2024.2.08

Published

2024-11-21

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 2 (2024): Water & Heritage for Sustainable Development

Section

methodologies and case studies

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Copyright (c) 2024 Bruno De Meulder, Kelly Shannon

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Author Biographies

Bruno De Meulder, KU Leuven

Bruno De Meulder teaches urbanism at KU Leuven, and is the current program coordinator of MaHS and MaULP and the vice-chair of the Department of Architecture. With Kelly Shannon and Viviana d’Auria, he formed the OSA Research Group on Architecture and Urbanism. He studied engineering architecture at KU Leuven, where he also obtained his PhD. He was a guest professor at TU Delft and AHO (Oslo) and held the Chair of Urban Design at Eindhoven University of Technology from 2001 to 2012. He was a partner of WIT Architecten (1994–2005). His doctoral research dealt with the history of Belgian colonial urbanism in Congo (1880–1960) and laid the basis for a widening interest in colonial and postcolonial urbanism. His urban design experience intertwines urban analysis and projection and engages with the social and ecologica challenges that characterize our times.

Kelly Shannon, KU Leuven

Kelly Shannon teaches urbanism at KU Leuven, is the program director of the Master of Human Settlements (MaHS) degree and the Master of Urbanism, Landscape and Planning (MaULP) degree and a member of the KU Leuven’s Social and Societal Ethics Committee (SMEC). She received her architecture degree at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh), a post-graduate degree at the Berlage Institute (Amsterdam), and a PhD at the University of Leuven, where she focused on landscape to guide urbanization in Vietnam. She has also taught at the University of Colorado (Denver), Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, the University of Southern California, Peking University and The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, among others. Before entering academia, Shannon worked with Hunt Thompson (London), Mitchell Giurgola Architects (New York), Renzo Piano Building Workshop (Genoa) and Gigantes Zenghelis (Athens). Most of her work focuses on the evolving relation of landscape, infrastructure and urbanization.

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