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Reclaiming Rangoon: (Post-)imperial urbanism and poverty, 1920–62

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Sugarman, MW 

Abstract

This article considers the relationship between poverty in Rangoon and the ways in which both an imperial and a post-imperial urbanism helped ‘improve’, develop, and reclaim Rangoon's urban environment. Examining the actions of the Rangoon Development Trust before and after the Second World War in the context of actions taken by the Bombay Improvement Trust, Bombay Development Directorate, Singapore Improvement Trust, and Hong Kong Housing Authority, it both analyses measures taken in Rangoon and constructs a connective history of urban development in relation to other Asian port cities. Incorporating documents released only in 2014 by the National Archives of Myanmar, this analysis for the first time considers interventions made in Rangoon's post-war built environment of poverty, connecting these actions to policies constructed over the preceding decades.

Description

Keywords

4406 Human Geography, 44 Human Society

Journal Title

Modern Asian Studies

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0026-749X
1469-8099

Volume Title

52

Publisher

Cambridge University Press