Abstract

The metropolises of Southeast Asia are part of highly diverse global, national and local processes. The question thus emerges, how these cities are integrating. Three main aspects are mentioned namely forms of urbanism as institutions of the meaning of city, public, and pattern of self-organisation. Under the conditions of either neo-liberal market fundamentalism or authoritarian regimes like in Thailand and increasingly as well in Indonesia and Vietnam or Cambodia, the cities gets ever more fragmented and the right to the city as a right to freedom is dissolved.