Urban Asias – Essays on Futurity Past and Present

4 
Preface
This volume emerges from a research project on “Aspirations, <strong>Urban</strong>
Governance and the Remaking of Asian Cities”. Funded by a grant
from the Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE2012-T2<strong>–</strong>1-153), the
“<strong>Urban</strong> Aspirations” project (for short) concerned the cultural and political
dynamics of urban future-making in Asia. We sought to build in particular
upon Arjun Appadurai’s influential work on “the capacity to aspire”, 1
examining the aspirations of both “ordinary” city-dwellers and a range of
authorities, as well as often contested engagements between them. Between
2013 and 2016, a total of 11 collaborators at the National University of
Singapore (NUS) conducted field-based research in cities across 8 Asian
countries. Eight of the 26 contributions that are collected here were written
by core members of the <strong>Urban</strong> Aspirations grant team—the essays by
Jamie Gillen, Eli Elinoff (now at the University of Wellington), Elaine Ho,
Rita Padawangi (now at Singapore University of Social Sciences), Michelle
Miller and Vineeta Sinha, as well as our introductory and concluding chapters.
Two other contributors, Mike Douglass and Peter van der Veer, were
visiting professors in the original research grant (although by the time the
grant began, Mike had joined the full-time faculty at NUS).
The <strong>Urban</strong> Aspirations grant also funded international workshops at
which many of the other essays were first presented. Indrawan Prabaharyaka
was among the presenters at the graduate workshop on “<strong>Urban</strong> Aspirations
Asia” that was held in August 2015. We are grateful to Ananya Roy (who was
also a visiting professor associated with the grant) and Anant Maringanti,
both of whom gave plenary addresses at that workshop, and whose insights