Description
Book SynopsisWhat does it mean to design democratic cities and democratic citizens in a time of mass urbanization and volatile political transformation? Citizen Designsaddresses this question by exploring the ways that democratic urban planning projects intersect with emerging political aspirations among squatters living in the Thai city of Khon Kaen.
Trade ReviewCitizen Designs is a fascinating and detailed ethnographic account of the citizenship struggles and political engagements of residents living alongside the main state railway running through the city of Kohn Kaen, in the Isan region of Northeast Thailand. While most scholarship on urban evictions and dispossession tends to portray land struggles as a kind of Manichean battle between good (the residents) and evil (the dispossessors), Elinoff shows how every group of people itself contains multiple sub-groups, all coming at the matter with different agendas, ideas, political sympathies." - Erik Harms, Yale University
