musings on Design in Development MScBUDD 2012_2013

The time we spent in Beoung Chung Meanch Thmey II community is a wealth of experience that I will always cherish.

All my experiments with image, text and film mediums fall short of conveying the dense details within each day. Those, however, are what truly counts. Below is a glimpse into our third day on site, one of my favourites.

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After surveying each house individually creating a profile not only of the numeric factors (family members, income, contribution to the community savings group, etc) but also documented histories of their story (when they moved to the community, why, what were the major changes over time, how do they spend their day, etc) along with elaborate sketches of the floor plans and use of spaces within each household, I, personally, was overwhelmed with all the details we were discovering. How within the same settlement there was, beyond the shared experiences, such difference in living conditions. We wanted to share and expand on that together with the community.

We created a model of our updated understanding of the layout of the settlement, placed it on the floor of the community space and invited everyone in. To be honest, I was slightly concerned for the level of abstraction of the model. But before we even began to explain what we meant, people were beginning to engage with it. Slowly recognising what the pieces of coloured sponge placed on recycled paper represent. Some of the more outgoing community members were pointing out their houses and the pathways, picking up the pieces to examine them.

Laughter started breaking, along with excited commentary.

The lady in the hat showed up to every single activity we held. Her kind smile had an air of shyness as she carefully watched us interact with louder more dominant voices in the community. I was fortunate enough o have her in my group as we split into three smaller units, each working around their cluster of the settlement model. Mony, the energetic Khmer student who was facilitating our group, starts explaining the rules of the exercise/game: ‘personalise the plain sponge, stick a flag, draw on it, whichever way you choose to expresses and represent yourself and your household. Get creative!’

She held the sponge that represented her house. As everyone starts drawing, she falls silent and stutters a few words in Khmer. I poke Mony and ask about what she said. ‘I never realised my house was this small’, he replies.

There it was, more evident than ever, how those silly games trigger, not only a common understanding of the condition of the community, but self-awareness within each member of their position within the collective and in relation to others.

As the lady in the hat drew what I imagine to be a small lamp post and a thin line of greenery behind it tying it all at the end with a small plant, everyone else were also adding their touch to their part and slowly a new model was being created.

‘Use the orange stickers to tag your favourite things about being in Beoung Chung Meanchy Thmey, what do you like? The blue is for things you aspire to have or would like to see happen in the community, what do you want?’ Mony explained.

There was a short questioning pause and then... chaos!

Repositioning the question towards the positive, I believe, sparked positive energy, the kids in my group were excited to show their favourite spaces which they drew in the form of stick figures playing and placed the papers on the model. A mother placed three orange stickers on her baby’s cheeks and forehead. beyond that, proximity to vital spaces like the school, hospital and market kept being brought up over and over again. The aspirations, on the other hand, were even more interesting. Taking a step back from the persistent demand of land tenure and focusing the attention on the spaces represented in the model, people were saying ‘oh, flowers along this pathway would be nice’, ‘I’d love a small garden’ or ‘we could use lights along here’. Constantly questioning: ‘but where would you place that?’ even triggered conflict and subsequent negotiation around contested spots.

All of these ideas were all being shared at the same time.

The model, the artefact, did not matter because of its craftsmanship. By the end of the exercise, it was a complete mess. Our idea of colour coordinated neat findings evaporated into thin air. The findings, however, remained, a wealth of co-produced understanding of each cluster’s little treasures and aspired desires. The artefact was but a mean, a tool that grabs the attention of participants and mediates an open conversation.

All of those moments were crucial as we moved on to co-creating a new layout of the community and negotiated with the local government. The accumulation of tiny moments of recognition amongst community members, small acts of solidarity, spaces to practice negotiation, games to shed a positive light on conflict.

On top of all of this, the were valuable moments of connection, between us the DPU students, the Khmer students, the ministry representative and the diverse group that is the community, with their varying interests to create new knowledge.

“mutual knowledge is not determined by professional norms and expectations, but rather is founded exchange, in negotiation, out of hunch, out of intuition. Mutual knowledge means abandoning the hierarchies embedded in most professional relationships (I know more than you do,) and instead welcoming contributions from everyone in the spirit of a shared enterprise.” (Alan, Schneider and Till, 2013)

 During the research and the field visit, I recognized that the transition is opportunity for transformation because it is the time when people can be critical about its changes; in Cambodia, it is obvious from the election in 2013, people already started questioning the way their country develop, which deprived people take less benefit. Besides, the government is also in transition in a way to consider the people left behind from its rapid development.

 On the other hand, I struggled with the idea of transformation after experiencing the fieldtrip because I cannot see how the transformation would be possible. This is the point I did feel when I was a law student. Since the process is usually invisible and slow, I am sure that most development practitioners are struggling, and this is the point we need a philosophy in each mind so as not to lose the motivation.

Besides, I think we should have been more critical toward the community we tended to support, because the community members also have issues for sure in a sense that they are susceptible to wait for changes that the government or development practitioner do act. I firmly believe people’s process can be possible to weave alternative discourse so as to challenge the existing power, however, it is also essential to motivate them to question themselves too.

 All the efforts come together, we can hope that transformation will take place in a positive manner, which is sure to bring another efforts join the movement to achieve the ideal transformation.    

David McEwen

Investigation prior to departing into the the definitions of transformation and transition in Cambodia, and perhaps more specifically Phnom Penh, set a very primary foundation for what we were to experience in reality once we arrived. We defined transition as ‘an opportunity for transformation’ and transformation as ‘the process of cultivating a plurality of discourses and knowledge that challenge the hierarchical dichotomy of the powerful and powerless by activating the circumstances and spaces for collaboration where alternative realities can be imagined, negotiated and realised.’ While based on sound theoretical underpinnings, they remained perhaps too abstract until we had the ability to experience them first-hand.

The idea of ‘cultivating a plurality of discourses’ followed an analysis which began remotely that development in Cambodia was following by a very specific, and well-known, course, one now typical of a globalised neo-liberal market. This was principally evident in the growing number of gated suburban communities catering to higher middle and upper class residents to the detriment of urban poor settlements. The site where my group operated in, Beoung Chuk Meanchey Thmey II was a perfect example of this trajectory, with a recent residential development contributing to the pollution of the water upon which the community was built, and placing increasing pressure on land. These issues were to be found in other sites we visited and worked in during our stay.

The most significant element of our definition was not simply a diagnosis of the present condition of the sites, but to then utilise or translate this into platforms of opportunity. The nature of transition in Cambodia, which has seen rapid change throughout its recent history, and is in constant movement and shift, is what theoretically permits the identification and creation of these platforms of opportunity. From a personal perspective, this is in contrast to the development I typically witness first-hand in London and the South-East of the UK, which feels frozen in a stubborn, static cycle. Finding this potential, initially at a site level, then at an expanding, wider scale, is what helps link the various sites. This can perhaps be most clearly elucidated in the creation and design of district or khan scale master-plans, many of which do not currently exist. Viewing this as a platform to alter existing discourses, a community-centred, participatory approach to the design of these master-plans, initially at a smaller, settlement scale, expanding to a district and city scale, productively deviates from the typical master planning process. This alternative methodology helps create and reinforce networks at multiple levels: at a community level, the creation of a master-plan can help unite a community, particularly through its savings group, and offer the opportunity for new and creative solutions to issues at this scale to be addressed; at a wider neighbourhood or potentially district level, the contribution of many communities can help better address infrastructure plans or even consolidate information, as well as strengthen community networks (particularly if based around a singular, shared issue, for instance communities around a canal or river); at a wider city level, the collation of community sourced information can for instance help create or establish a database of new potential relocation sites or once more addressing infrastructure plans such as national roads or other city-wide efforts.

“What have we left behind?”

David McEwen

One of the questions I have been asking myself since returning from the trip is what have we left behind: what effect will the work we have done have on the people we have been working with? The purported role of a ‘development practitioner’ is expansive: facilitator, enabler, architect, designer, negotiator, advocator, planner, activist, problem-solver etc. It can be a difficult role to wrap one’s head around, with seemingly endless expectations. This is only emphasised during the process of creating the final report with our numerous proposals for interventions at a variety of scales and timeframes. From which angle do we approach this, from which of the many roles of the ‘development practitioner’? And how is this feeding back to the ground, to those we worked and shared with?

I guess I need to begin by elaborating on my perception of a ‘development practitioner’, on the role I believe I played. I arrived in Phnom Penh having studied Architecture, worked as an Architect and had limited experience working in a settlement of comparable poverty and the inescapable problems associated with it. For me, my greatest value as a ‘development practitioner’ would derive from my role as an architect, as someone trained in design. Consequently, during exercises and work on the field, this was the manner in which i chose to present myself, to share my skills. As a result, it was here that I found the greatest potential to exchange knowledge and information with the community, this exchange of knowledge being a crucial principle we had identified prior to leaving on the trip. It is also here that I believe my greatest contribution will be felt after leaving the community and Phnom Penh: we were able to update an incorrect plan of the community to greater reflect reality, we were able to represent the current living conditions of each of the members of the community through detailed plans of each of their houses, and we were able to offer proposals for re-blocking of the community, with the choice of a variety of plot sizes, in accordance with the wishes that had been expressed during participatory exercises. These were contributions that I can view as a ‘development practitioner’-cum-architect with relative satisfaction. They were contributions that I felt were shared between community members we were assisting and ourselves.

Connection on a human level

By Ana P.

The most prominent aspect of my reflection after returning from the field work in Cambodia has been on the kind of human connection that our individual and collective presence created (or failed to create) with the people in the field. It is still not the rule to include, or more so — give an assigned place to this kind of phenomenological reflection in the mainstream academic and ‘professional’ sphere. That is why I appreciated that, before the field trip, that this course introduced us to the reflection of where one stands in relation to “the other” in the research through the terminology of positionality. It is a term that allows us as researchers and humans to appreciate subjectivity as vital process for finding of self within social constructs (power structures, knowledge production, identity, viewpoints, etc.). 

What do I mean when I say ‘human connection’ and how does that relate to positionality? During our work on the field, there were many instances in which our methodological approach to work naturally exposed our ethnic, religious, gendered, physical, cultural, classist, and knowledge background. The example that comes to mind is our groups’ tendency to choose to start our interaction with the residents of the settlements with asking many questions, rather than with simply spending time on socializing. That time to socialize, and to allow trust to permeate between us and the community residents, was the crucial missing component in my field experience. During the community walks, I was aware of the fact that, more than “researchers and subjects of the research”, we are people and in that moment - strangers. It would have been essential to allow time to acknowledge that, and to give people more chance to see where we are all coming from, before throwing on them many, and mostly qualitative questions. Before coming to Cambodia, in our BU2 class we have read and discussed a substantial amount on humanising the approach of conducting surveys within participatory design processes. However, in the field, I felt challenged to break away from the mainstream positionality of the Western-style research, where asking questions, and using the a language particular to a certain type of knowledge only distanced me from having a clearer communication and a more human relationship with the community. 

We left London hoping to find those missing elements. Three very different sites were waiting to be explored and analyzed by us. Aside from all the problematics and issues, we found that there were people willing to be part of the transformation and become active leading actors; spaces that even if built as a result of informal urbanization processes, had the richness,deepness and complexity to form the bases of and spatial and social transformation; and couple of new laws and policies that even if not perfect, do provide a framework to work with. All those elements are part of this incremental, flexible and collective process that we call transformation. What is needed is the will to transform all those opportunities into projects able to have an impact in the realities of all cambodian citizens.

For over century Cambodia has been caught in the middle of power disputes and due to that factor has been the scenario of a series of social experiments and unfortunate events that have shaped the way in which the actual social, economic and political dynamics work. Before landing in Cambodia our work focused on building an understanding of those dynamics and their relations. Soon it became clear that  this re-emerging country was in a state of transition, defined by us as  “a period of time that covers the change from one reality to another, and that provides an enabling space of transformation”. Although the elements enabling  that space of transformation were clear, what was not evident from London was how that transformation would look and who would be involved.

David McEwen

Landing in Phnom Penh, I was very excited to get to work on the field: to absorb as much information as I could, to look for opportunities wherever I could, and to have fun. I was especially excited to try some of the people-driven methods we had studied about, but only had the chance to experience so far in theory. This was of a particular interest as my previous experience working in a community in South Africa could very much be seen as a singular, top-down process, involving very little participation from the community I was working with, and developing almost entirely from a select few people. This was an opportunity to try something else.

Moving from the wide scope that we had been conducting from a distance to a narrow one once we arrived at Beoung Chuk Meanchey Thmey II, the community where we’d be working, was welcome. We suddenly had the ability to engage first hand with the people we would be trying to assist and blurry, abstract concepts grew clearer. It also became more fun. Receiving guided tours of the community, and then being able to conduct detailed surveys and mapping exercises of each of the houses within BCMT II afforded us the chance to investigate and collate a rich well of information, impossible to do from a distance. Immediately it was clear that this was a two-way exchange, not simply one of us arriving, surveying and then leaving. This became more apparent during the number of exercises we conducted with members of the community.

In addition to individual house surveys, we experimented with variations of typical community exercises: we created a model in which we first asked participants to identify their houses and make them ‘their own’, customising the model accordingly; secondly we prompted members to begin playing with the model to create dream scenarios. This we completed in three separate groups, choosing to join the three towards the end to have a group discussion about the results. The calmness and control which we had experienced when working in smaller groups descended somewhat into chaos when everything was brought together. This was an important reminder that behind the playfulness with which we had conducted the first exercise, our silly foam representations were reflective of significant, life-altering issues, principally land tenure security, poor living conditions and a concern with plot sizes. While as a practitioner there to facilitate, the exercise felt like a failure, though simultaneously it revealed a new set of dynamics between members and allowed us to learn of new worries not communicated through the first exercise.

In retrospect, this was one of the most enjoyable parts of the entire trip. We had thought of something, we had tried it and now we both had to reflect on what we had learnt and create a new strategy to address the shortcomings. The following day we stuck to smaller groups again, and in order to curtail some of the chaos from the previous day, and to encourage those quieter voices to contribute, we experimented with the idea of a ‘talking jacket’. The ‘talking jacket’ was essentially a yellow, fluorescent safety jacket I had brought with me from the UK for some reason, that granted only the person wearing it the ability to speak. The conversation flowed much smoother this time, and the community members appeared to enjoy the activity. It felt rewarding to be able to think of something, try it, and see it succeed, enabling different voices to be heard and to contribute to the exercise. This all assisted the creation of a new community master-plan and re-blocking proposal, with the exercises on various days permitting us to absorb and discuss with the community what they wanted, translate that information into a proposal, and then refine the design further. This process was a far cry from that I had undertaken in my previous experience in South Africa, where refinement of my idea came purely through discussions with a select few people, with hardly any meaningful input coming from the community.

When it came time to present the work completed to the khan on the final day of working with the community, the work felt very much collaborative, presented together, as opposed to simply shifted on to community members.

The video below provides a snapshot as to the actives we conducted and community response to them:

My personal interpretation of transformation is outcome of something change in either physically or internally but it still somewhat remain some essence of the former thing. Compared to transformation, transition for me is more embedded into time manner; that is like a consecutive snapshot of something is changing taken by seconds. Therefore, based on this interpretation, I hypothesized was in each transition phase we can find something like the essence which should be unchanged during the transformation.

Before I visited the field, we learned the history of Cambodia and I was somewhat shocked how Cambodia suffer lots of social turbulence and political change but still remain as one country, Cambodia. What I was interested in is that point, what has made it possible to remain this country as Cambodia. Probably, it is not the biggest factor but I personally felt people's adjustability and endurability would be somehow important.

The site I visited was small community in the small city in the province, and,  hence the wave of change would still smaller than the big city like Phnom Penh. However, as one of the community member said, land price has risen up more than double of before, and those economic change make it difficult for poor people to live in the city. However, people are wisely live on the canal with taking advantage of the surrounding for income generation, although the living condition is not so desirable.

Secondly, it would be universal but I strongly felt the power of children. They were very open to newness, and amazingly quick to learn. In the filed, their openness to ours definitely helped us to involve ourselves into the community, and some children selling fruits in the market can speak English quite well. They will grow up with learning lots of new things and at the same time succeed adjustability and endurability of their parents. Children are definitely important aspect of transformation of the country.

In the field, I had many occasions to see their adjustability and endurability. I felt these kinds of things on the ground may continuously crating the foundation of the transformation in Cambodia.

Transformation and transition for me is more interesting when I consider something continuing underneath the change not the change itself.

Working with the Boeung Veng Reik Chom Reoun Community in the city of Kampong Thom, Cambodia meant not only reconfirming that resilience is an innate quality in human beings. It meant acknowledging that the combination of it and other qualities like flexibility, incrementality and resourcefulness, form the bases of what is for me a good architecture. One that you can easily relate to, because it comes from the ground and brings with it all the effort put on it.  

From water recycling systems to the season proper cricket recollection objects, the living space is full of efforts to overcome the obstacles put to them by society, those efforts impregnate the environment and the space with inventive and extremely creative features.

Our time with the community translated in the realization that the world we call informal is full of learning opportunities waiting to expand and infuse the formal world with a dose of spontaneity.

Feasibility, Durability, and Sustainability

 After the lords of leaning about theBangkok case, we realized the difficulty to investigate the filed without visiting. Moreover, developing the intervention without the clients was quite awkward for me: For whom do we propose our plan? In this light, the experience in Brescia which was the first field-based research for us, raised me the significance of being aware of three notions as I put in the title. Who actually will implement the plan? Is the plan affordable for them in terms of financial and labourhood capacity? Is there enough incentive for actors to continue the plan?

 We were assigned to UISP's sports centre which is not well exploited despite the proximity to the city center. In developing the intervention, we had to deal with varying limitation such as financial capacity, labour resources, and any specific context in the field.  In order to make the sports centre more livable place as the hub connecting local neighbours and the refugees, we propose "Food Sagra", that is a kind of food festival involving refugees, local neighbours and local suppliers. Firstly, to make the plan feasible and durable, we took special care of reciprocal relationship among the actors. Even though the rationale of the intervention is great and justified enough, to some extent of incentive for all actors should be necessary to make the plan durable. We developed the reciprocal relationship between all actors as shown in the above diagram. For instance, firstly the refugees can expect to network them to other refugees by joining and cooking together in the Food Sagra. Creating network and sharing information are significantly important for themselves to reconstruct their life. In this meaning, joining Food Sagra can be the great incentive for the refugees.

 Secondly, involving local neighbours and local suppliers would mean substantial not only making the intervention feasible but also encouraging social interaction between the refugees. For instance, local suppliers are expected to discount the price of ingredients in exchange of getting the place to sell their products during the Food Sagra and perhaps getting their potential customers. Moreover, inviting local stakeholders like suppliers and neighbours could become the great opportunity for them to understand the people who have totally different background like refugees.

Studying in the BUDD made me to rethink the actual role of an urban planner or designer comparing it in China. In China, the most important things in urban construction all base on the physical design. In the meanwhile, few urban construction projects in China were introduced the participatory process in processes. This pattern takes many benefits for China, such as  high efficiency construction speed and high efficiency economic development. It brought the mythic development speed both in the urban construction and economic development. However, It is dangerous to  sacrifice the social and ecological aspects to acquire the economic benefits. Many serious problems which this pattern brought have already appeared and destroyed the stabilization of China cities. (poor people burn themselves in slum regeneration to fight for their right, serious PM 2.5 in industrial cities) In the meanwhile, the urban designer and planner almost play the GOD role in urban issues which have made many  ridiculous projects that can not correct in a short time with affordable money. (community regeneration projects made the farmers whose land and houses are taken by the urban construction become the new group in bottom of society)

The three weeks' studying in BUDD made me realize the urban designer and planner should be connector to every interest groups with our knowledge and not a decision maker only using our knowledge without communication with the interest group (specially the weak interest group). in the group work, I was surprised that  every one put the social issues at the first aims. the physical design become a tool to achieve the social goals. It touch the essence of urban planning and design which I have not noticed in the past studying period. In the film I posted, it really can give me a light to discover my future career planning. However, I think BUDD may focus too narrow that most projects are relative to the slum. Development is not only for the slum and poor people, but also a lot of important issues should be added our projects. In my experience, urban agriculture is one great issues to link with our project. food (agriculture) always is the essential issue for the society. As the secondary and third industries development, the first industry have been the essential but weak aspect in the urban area. Food only is transported from the rural area which increase the Carbon release and price. For the poor people, they may have to cost most of their family income for the food. they have the ability to plant their food but no place and policies for them to plant in many countries.

At last, I would like to thanks for my team members for their great works and patience for my poor speaking.  

As BUDD students, we hope to have learned to address longer-term change in designing interventions, but still, we do so from a particular position as outsiders. During our field trip in Cambodia I began to wonder how design processes would look if I lived in one of those communities, or if members of the communities we collaborated with had access to the methodologies and experience (and education) that we had. What if every human being had access and such capabilities (to some extent) and was able to practise them in their environment? Rather than attempting to “solve” issues related to the built environment through external research and design processes, why not “solve” those same issue by investing in education of such processes at the grassroots? No doubt, this require a lot of further thought and field testing :)

Before the field trip, I was uncertain about the case and our altered dictionary understanding of the word “Transformation” as it was very difficult to ground it in the reality. The elements of Time, scale  and space within an process and also our report group themes, namely, Land Tenure, Catalyst for community Action, Transience and contested spaces.

However I raised some key questions, like what form of transformation, and transformation for who? given the vast interest groups (government, Ngo’s, local & international Private developers, Urban poor, middle class and add to this complexity the younger generation both learned and unlearned) and the different scenarios that where historically created, that continually are being generated and can possibly be generated from this transience in the subject(Cambodia's People).

Foucaults describes the transition of power from more physical forms to more subtle and unseen forms of power and this is the same transition that Cambodia went through as seen experience from the Khmer rouge till now . However the different social groups (academics, during these changes ‘’experienced” transience differently amongst the army, poor, the academics,the youth, politicians, farmers among others, as each group had its criteria. notwithstanding the physical realm of land in which this transition had an impact on Cambodia's physical environment as well. This impact creates new spaces of interaction socially, economically, politically and culturally. I believe this relates to Lefebre’s description of transformative potential which utters ‘a revolution that does not produce a new space has not realized its full potential’ thus Cambodia is still in a state of transformation for me and the continuous changes will realise different potentialities towards its growth and recovery.

overall my post field trip understanding of transformation is as a process resulting from multiple experiences at different scales happening in time which are infinite, and also it is manipulated by different actors; the political, community groups, economical, cultural and  external influences of Globalisation. This transformation happens in a space that is transient in nature both positively and negatively creating opportunities. These resulting opportunities created by this constant transition are the potentialities in the production of new spaces of contestation and interaction. For Cambodia to realise its true transformative potential these new spaces created have to be inclusive, just, and flexible for the people as it is shaped by them.

Transformation on the ground

To give a definition of transformation for Cambodia is a meaningful challenge for me, because the similar transformation is also happening in my home country, China. For me ,to grow up in China, leaning this course in the UK and have this field trip case in Cambodia, ia already a big transformation. Different background gave me variety of materials and let me think about the common and contrast of the understanding of transformation in these three countries. At the same time, the similar local context and political situation remains me of my own country and help me a lot on understanding the current issues.

The kmer rough period last only 5 years, but it brought a big negative influence to the economic development and the people’s mentality. Even from the now day Cambodia, I can see the sequel from that period. The sequel together with  the high population of Buddhism, which going along with the rapid urbanization, is bring the biggest ever transformation to this country. The political influence, religion influence and the external influence create a very interesting fusion itself. When we talk about transformation, we should not forget apart from the modern skyscrapers, transformation is also happening inside the political system and people’s minds. They are the driving core under the mechanical skin.

Of course, all the analysis above is my pre-understanding of Cambodia before I go there. They are gained from text book and internet, through leaning a theory of urbanization, they are unnecessary as same as what we see and experience in Cambodia. All the theoretical analysis with lose its power when disconnect on the process of grounding down. In fact, that is a big issue of the informal settlement in the city margin of Cambodia. Even the government notice the problem and try to come up with some solutions. But something really works is yet to come. That proves there is a gap between the upper and lower level on the way the policy is implementing. I want to take this as a entry point of the change.

Arriving in Cambodia:

We arrived in Cambodia with the pre understanding of transformation. The communities visiting in the first few days help us to find our position immediately. We apparently came with a too high theoretical analysis, which is not easy to apply right into what we saw. We then put away a bit of the theory and start our on field analysis base on more practical stuff. This was also helped by having the site group. By the starting time, I had a impression that we normally first see a country through its good side and later the bad side, but this time we choose to begin in a opposite way. Even though, it was not as tough as what I expected because of the local students. They helped me a lot on getting use to everything. Even some of them have never been to a informal settlement before either. (That also shows part of the economic inequality to me)

Site work：

The work we did on the site is a way to getting layer and layer into the core problem and understand the real perception of people. It was a practice of what we learn at school in the last 8 months. A the same time, working parallel with site and report group gave me a chance to see all the cases through a “transformative” lenses.   

For most of the communities, the urban transformation (city’s expending) is the reason of moving close to the city, because that means they are moving close to the infrastructure and work opportunities. Even though, the other transformation which driven by the new educated generation is giving them a chance to empower themselves. That’s also what I believe that transformation should be coming from both ways (Up to down and bottom up).

By communicating with the dwellers, I feel strongly the diligence and simplicity of them. That makes me criticize myself as a architect, what I can and should do for them? What’s my role in this big transformation? Because in different position, everyone has its own understanding of city, work and home. Even for them, what we understand as urban development could be very different from what they understand. But through these three-week’s working with all these people, I gradually find a balance point and some common aims.

  Site proposal：

For our site of Russey Keo, the massive size and its riverside context are most recognized. Especially the river, its richlyendowned, but its flooding at the same time. That’s why the dwellers loves it and hate it at the same time. The up-down policies has very limit seen result apart from the eviction threaten, which made a consequence of people’s reduction on community responsibility. That shows even the government have a plan of the riverside, the dwellers are unnecessary involved in the plan. Lack of community responsibility and solidarity made themselves Vulnerable. The only way to help the situation is unite themselves through the network that they already have: CDF.

That’s our final site proposal apart from the physical infrastructure upgrading and partnership finding on the river. Building up a younger election system for the CDF network in necessary. When the net work s strong, it is not only easier for them to control and upgrade the community. They will also feel more confident and responded when they facing the government. All of these do not sound like a quick job, but it is what I understand a real transformation should start form. It should start from the root, with people. CDF is a good link between the communities and the higher authorities.

About the way of working, I really enjoy the 5 days I spend on the site. Because smaller size of group gave everyone a chance to hold more information, and be more confident to share. That is actually very efficient.

This field trip to Cambodia is an introspection of both the case and myself. It is significance in every aspect. It is a real case of what we learn and when we left, people continue their life. That make me think of the meaning of my job as a architect and how does it fit into this global transformation.