Points of persuasion: Truth spots in future city development

Authors: Tim Bunnell, Maitrii Aung-Thwin, Jessica N. Clendenning, Daniel P. S. Goh, Nick R. Smith

Geographers and historians have contributed to a well-established literature on how places become repositories of inherited meanings and contested memories. Much less attention has been afforded to space and place as future-making resources. In this article, we consider how extant places feature in the imagination, planning, and development of ex novo cities. Focusing on three new administrative capitals in Southeast Asia – Putrajaya (in Malaysia), Naypyidaw (in Myanmar) and Nusantara (in Indonesia) – we show how places have been mobilized as points of persuasion, or what sociologist Thomas Gieryn has termed truth spots.

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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/02637758221133832