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During the 1980s, refugee camps along the Thai–Cambodian border constituted the power base for the civil war parties opposing the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK, 1979–91). Politics of accommodation and basic services also played a key role in the ‘original accumulation’ of political power by the new regime in Phnom Penh. The resettlement process of Cambodia's deserted cities developed into a major playground for clientelism, the foundation of Cambodia's state-building process after the Khmer Rouge. Focusing on the archival heritage of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) 1992–93, a spatial analysis of Phnom Penh's political geography from the late 1970s to the late 1990s will be provided. This paper argues that the UNTAC time marked a watershed, whose impact has been underrated for Cambodia's political future: the transition in the accommodation policy of a besieged regime. UNTAC did not end the civil war, but changed the political economy of the country. As the need to ‘camp-in’ and share billeted living space gradually diminished, the socialist ‘moral economy’ mutated into quick money politics and political family business to ensure the hegemonic status of Cambodia's ruling party further.

Research in urban morphology rarely takes account of the specific forms of burial grounds. This paper offers a synthesis of how Christian cities of the dead mirror the cities of the living, and provides an overview of different Western European ‘funeral epochs’. The shifting location of burial grounds relates to major changes in town planning and building. Adopting a historico-geographical approach, micro-morphological transformations of grave-plot forms and their cardinal orientations and accessibility are explored in the context of changing religious beliefs, rules on hygiene, and practical and aesthetic considerations. The role of cemeteries in fringe-belt development is presented, using Vienna as a historical case study.

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In explaining urban form in Cambodia, morphological continuity between rural and urban forms is examined. Environment and agrarian land use are decisive factors in the location and shape of plots in the countryside. Under conditions of higher population density, urban plots tend to be compressed versions of rural ones. Adopting a historico-geographical approach, the development of the form of Phnom Penh as a colonial city and capital of a French protectorate is explored as an example of the persistence of a rural settlement pattern in a specific urban context.