Challenges and Resilience in Myanmar’s Urbanization: A Special Issue on Yangon

Abstract

Many large cities in Southeast Asia have undergone parallel processes of modernization, gentrification and exclusion as a result of economic development. In Yangon, Myanmar’s former capital city and still the main urban centre, this process has accelerated only recently. Since the start of the current political and economic transition period in 2010, opportunities for employment, education and business have been drawing ever larger numbers of people towards Yangon. While the city is emerging as an Asian metropolis, it faces problems of marginalization, congestion, gentrification and its corollary, the growth of informal urban outskirts that contribute to rising inequality rather than inclusive development. The exogenous, non-democratic and top-down urban policy led in an uncoordinated manner by the national, regional and municipal authorities leads to more social injustice and inequalities. Urban planning policies such as conservation heritage are also questioned in terms of the inequalities they are likely to generate. However, the marginalized groups, violently evicted or not, should also get their “right to Yangon”. In order to present the three following articles, this article aims at introducing Yangon’s metropolization and its challenges for the Yangonites, discussing the causes and consequences of these new and exacerbated forms of exclusion.

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