A growing literature about the burgeoning problems of the region’s urban spaces

1. Urban Social Sustainability in Southeast Asia Presentation FAU CONFERENCE 2008, Cities, Climate Change and Development: Is Urban Change for Sustainability possible? Workshop 4: Urban Ecosystems and Environmental Change, 14-15 May, 2008, Copenhagen Business School, Foreningen af Udviklingsforskere (FAU) - The Association of Development Researchers in Denmark Johannes Dragsbaek SchmidtAssociate Professor, Global Development Studies, Aalborg University, Fibigerstraede 2, 9220 Aalborg East, Denmark. Tel. +45 99408404, Fax. +45 98153298 Email. jds@ihis.aau.dk, Website. www.ihis.aau.dk/gds

2. Success of progressive environmental management in Southeast Asia - profound implications for regional economic, political and social stability Asia Development Bank estimates environmental degradation and climate change could cut economic growth by 10 per cent over the coming decades This will not only affect the quality of life of the region’s inhabitants but also has implications for international economic stability and geopolitical relations Thus, the familiar tension between continued economic growth and effective environmental protection is central

3. A growing literature about the burgeoning problems of the region’s urban spaces Bringing together the ideas of social and environmental equity, some literatures now focus on the possibility of creating ‘social sustainable cities’

4. Overall, such debates bring into question the efficacy of prevailing urban management and planning paradigms in the region Such a focus is timely given the increasing list of environmental problems which include poor air quality, unsound waste management, encroachment into agricultural and forest lands, and over-exploitation of groundwater These problems are coupled with both rapid, and often unplanned, urban expansion and creeping social inequality, wherein unstable job markets contain few social ‘safety net’ livelihood options

5. The major argument here is that although there are multiple dimensions to sustainable urban development, it doesn't make much sense trying to solve the problems - be they ecological or distributional - if the majority of the population is kept outside the decision-making process and excluded from the political arena This is where the concept of “social sustainability” becomes important and why I attempt to emphasize issues of labour and welfare which are pivotal in the development of other and additional aspects of urban sustainability – it is basically an attempt to bring in the social actors

6. Here it is suggested that for the management of the city to be successful, policies need to be conducive to "social sustainability“ This concept is defined as development compatible with the emergence of a social contract, fostering an environment conducive to the harmonization of relations between culturally and socially diverse groups while at the same time encouraging social integration and improvement in the quality of life of all segments of the population and the physical surroundings

7. A preliminary framework for analysis of the urban can perhaps best be viewed as the loci of a number of social processes interacting with one another in different ways • First of all and most fundamentally, the city is viewed as a focus of production • Second, the city is the locus of money, finance and credit, in short, of the manipulation of money and power

8. A third and related way in which the city can be viewed is as a locus of consumption • Fourth, the city is a locus of the reproduction of subjects • Lastly, the city can be seen as a locus of meaning, as a means of representation, as a source of understanding, as an anchor of culture

9. One example is to turn the focus on urban social movements and the way they inscribe the city with their presence, and the city inscribes them Such an analysis will need to take in elements of each parameters outlined above in one way or another in order to reach a judgement on the ways in which people have been able to experience social identity formation and how it intermingles with other social relations like gender, and the extent to which the social emerges as a primary force in political, environmental and distributional struggles

10. Equity, social tensions and environmental problems - caused by among other factors, the migration of polluting industries from the NICs, Japan and the West • Probably the most serious problems in ASEAN are related to the environment, but the reasons why these problems have grown out of control are not only the lack of political will, but a supportive or oppositional citizenry (a social contract), and appropriate implementation structures

11. The major problem with regard to obtaining a minimum level of social sustainability in urban Southeast Asia depends on the often contradictory process of attempts by organized, disorganized and during particular historical and structural circumstances oppressed labor movements to establish autonomous types of organization Another is that there is widespread resentment of a perceived 'wealth gap' between the plutocratic few who have made fortunes and the disadvantaged many who have not. To some extent, the fact that everybody was getting richer eased these tensions but this is no longer the case

12. Future Risk & Conflict in SEA • • Rising inequality and declining state performance and legitimacy is • the most serious risk in SEA • • Resource conflict over land, water and energy resources are • expected to intensify • • Climate change is expected to intensify this • • The slow process of democratisation, national and sub-national • political settlement and addressing questions of identity and • representation • • Global and regional geo-political conflict has and could increasingly • spill-over in the region • • A core unaddressed endogenous silent conflict zone across much • of SEA is Social exclusion

13. A few impacts of Social Exclusion Socio-Economic • • Income and asset poverty and chronic debt • • Livelihood insecurity • • Inhuman working and living conditions • • Poor access to public services: high coping costs Political • • Dis-entitlement and disenfranchisement • • Violation of human, economic, cultural and political rights • • Involuntary displacement • • Insecurity, violence, injury and loss of life

14. Potential Social Inclusion ‘Change agents’ • 1. Economic change agents • 2. State development-led agents • 3. Civil-society agents • 4. Faith tradition-based agents • 5. Subaltern Political and People’s movements • 6. Insurgencies and revolutionary movements

15. Appendix –Note on Conference Theme • Climate Change (ethical or political issue)! • Increasingly a security issue • What are the links to other types of crises and is it possible to identify it as a systemic failure? Horizontal links to depletion and price of oil and other natural resources

16. Scarcity of water- already a security issue (together with oil) • Food crisis/price of food • Links to the global financial crisis- speculative capital – has now reached the real economy • Combined with the global shift of economic gravity from West to East • Historical experience – war or a multipolar world order!