This paper analyzes the politics of heritage in urban Cambodia. Focusing on the capital, Phnom Penh, we argue that urban heritage is shaped at the intersection of global doctrines and professional knowledge, socioeconomic strategies at the national and local scales, real estate developments, and contextual institutional practices. We propose the concept “atomization of heritage politics” to explain the fragmentary and tentacular power relations that determine how built heritage is managed or destroyed. Drawing on heritage literature on Southeast Asian cities, we first argue that academic writers underestimate the role of land issues and localized power relations in shaping urban heritage politics. We contextualize the rise of heritage concerns in Cambodia. Since colonial times heritage strategies have focused on the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Angkor, with urban heritage being of only peripheral concern. Second, we explain how proposals made by international development partners for an overall heritage policy failed, as they conflicted with the rationality of land and power relations, leaving foreign consultants to renegotiate their position in Cambodian politics. Finally, we explore two case studies—the National Stadium and the Renakse Hotel—at the center of virulent, long-lasting political clashes between various forces that took root during the reconstruction of the Cambodian state in the 1980s and 1990s. Together with powerful individuals, families, and companies, the competition and tactical alliances between these forces shape the contested politics of urban heritage in the Cambodian capital.

The arena of urban planning and the idea of the city 2.1 Everyone wants a slice of the pie 2.2 Planners as cultural brokers 2.3 Spatial layouts and ideas of the city 2.4 The buttresses of planning 2.5 Projects 2.6 The power of action and the power of ideas 3 The city as developers' playground 3.1 Our potential field is tourism 3.2 Reconnecting the disenfranchised links of the economic chain 3.3 An irrational property market 3.4 Negotiating the land laws 3.5 Invisible investment 3.6 A dismal attempt at beautification 3.7 Material effects: Processes and impacts of urban development 3.8 Urban transformation by the local people 3.9 The trajectory of Siem Reap's urban transition 4 The architectural space How contemporary design shapes urban identities and ideas of modernity 4.1 Angkor: From discovery to commodity 4.2 Emotional authenticity 4.3 Taming exoticism 4.4 Representing and planning the tourist space 4.5 All hotels want to be 'Grand' 4.6 The quest for the local 4.7 Spectacular heritage: The museums of Siem Reap 4.8 Thematizing urban heritage for consumption 4.9 Models and imitative trends: Towards a contemporary Cambodian architecture? Conclusion Heritage space and non-heritage space: A heuristic model The trajectories of the 'coloniality of power' The town, forgotten and yet central Bibliography Index

No abstract

No abstract

Urban heritage conservation has often been portrayed as a practice shaped by ‘authorised discourses’ which are produced by powerful actors including the state, international organisations and experts. But the literature has also paid attention to non-governmental actors who produce ‘unauthorised heritage discourses’ by calling for broader and more diversified heritage interpretations and practices. Using the case of Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, we argue that the dichotomy between authorised and unauthorised heritage has produced artificial boundaries between those legacies which have been (or should be) identified as heritage and the multiple remains of the past which nobody has ever attempted to define as such. Instead, we argue that multiple authorised discourses, circulating worldwide, generate a pervasive global hierarchy of value which relates to heritage. Various actors, including bilateral donors, states’ representatives, tycoons, owners and tenants, shape urban tactics which selectively appropriate components of this hierarchy and combine them with socio-political and economic rationalities in order to conserve Phnom Penh’s urban legacies. Taken together, these tactics shape what we name a ‘third space of heritage hybridity’ outside the scope of official agendas.