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Between Water and Land: Urban and Rural Settlement Forms in Cambodia with Special Reference to Phnom Penh

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Between Water and Land: Urban and Rural Settlement Forms in Cambodia with Special Reference to Phnom Penh Between water and land: urban and rural settlement forms in Cambodia with special reference to Phnom Penh Thomas Kolnberger Identités. Politiques, Sociétés, Espaces (IPSE), Université du Luxembourg, Campus Belval, Maison des Sciences Humaines, 11, Porte des Sciences, L-4366 Esch/Alzette, Luxembourg. E-mail: [email protected] Revised version received 19 May 2015 Abstract. 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. Keywords: Cambodia, Phnom Penh, rural morphology, urban morphology, plot form The shapes of plots have become a significant, plain, made lowland living sustainable, albeit not widely studied, aspect of both urban allowed the population to expand and rendered and rural settlement morphology. However, empire building possible. This explains why much of the attention given to this topic the lowlands have been the demographic and hitherto has focused on Europe. This paper economic core area of polities since the Khmer examines urban and rural settlement form, realm of Angkor (ninth to fifteenth centuries) especially the relationship between rural and and its successor kingdoms up to the French urban plots, in a very different environment – colonial era (1863-1953) and the period of the core area of Cambodia – giving particular independence. attention to the capital city of Phnom Penh. After an introduction to Cambodian Phnom Penh is situated in the lower research, in which the approach adopted and Mekong region. This low-lying central basin, characteristics of urban development in this surrounded by uplands and mountains, forms geographical area are outlined, traditional modern Cambodia’s densely populated heart- Khmer plot forms and the persistence of rural land. It attracted permanent human settlement forms in the urban context of Phnom Penh are only at a relatively late stage when local investigated. hunter-gatherer groups extended their settle- ment area to the lowlands between the third and possibly the fourth millennium BCE. To Urban research between Angkor Wat and early settlers the highlands (and some coastal modern Phnom Penh areas) offered a more diversified range of natural resources and a healthier environment. Research on Cambodia’s urban history and However, the spread of wet rice cultivation, development has prioritized two periods: the adapted to the ecological conditions of the glorious past of the Khmer Empire of Angkor Urban Morphology (2015) 19(2), 135-44 © International Seminar on Urban Form, 2015 ISSN 1027-4278 136 Between water and land: urban and rural settlement forms in Cambodia and contemporary Phnom Penh. First, there The latter has been discussed in Vann Moly- was the ‘discovery’ of the spectacular ruins of vann’s monograph on Khmer cities (Moly- Angkor in the 1860s and their initial arch- vann, 2003) and by Celine Pierdet in her aeological exploration by the French: this led analysis of Phnom Penh’s water management, to the incorporation of the temples into a larger past and present (Pierdet, 2008). Studies of colonial-political agenda of Khmer and French Cambodia’s colonial urban history, however, cultural heritage (Edwards, 2007). Secondly, have two methodological and conceptual there was the attraction of wider research flaws. First, they uncritically consider the interest in Phnom Penh, the capital and centre paperwork of the French colonial admini- of economic and political power since colonial stration as an objective source and thus tend to times. This was associated with the reopening view the French colonial period as one of of the country in the 1990s S after the end of purely top-down management of Phnom the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, the Penh’s development. Secondly, they overlook communist regime that had been established the influence and persistence of rural plot after the fall of the Khmer Rouge. This mainly forms for spontaneous urban development. ad hoc research on urbanization has been dominated by non-governmental organizations and the international donor community. It Sources and methods focuses on common challenges of cities in the ‘Global South’: land grabbing, the urban poor The French colonial regime left an extensive and good urban governance. The colonial past photographic and paper heritage, which is meanwhile has been reviewed from the archived in the National Archives of perspective of French national heritage Cambodia (NAC) in Phnom Penh and in overseas and the preservation of historical France’s overseas archives S the Archives monuments and buildings. France, especially Nationales d’Outre-Mer (ANOM) S in Aix-en- the government agency Atelier Parisien Provence. These archives contain numerous d’Urbanisme (APUR), initiated surveys, plans, cadastral maps and photographs, which building documentation and urban provide detailed insight into the chronology of development plans in the 1990s and early the physical development of Phnom Penh and 2000s, which are exemplary in quality. In other Cambodian towns. A micro-analytical addition, the rediscovery and reappraisal of a approach allows assessment of these plans as genuine Khmer modern architecture of the first tools for implementing colonial rule and as Sihanouk era (or Sangkum, 1955-70) is colonial representations of the area. It is noteworthy, particularly with regard to the evident that the colonial regime frequently had largely forgotten contribution of Cambodian to change its plans: compromises had to be architects to the International Style and made, notably with influential individuals of Critical Regionalism. Damage caused by rapid the old Khmer regime – mostly local Chinese urban growth and speculation menaces this investors. This historico-geographical inter- national heritage as well as the colonial legacy pretation of visual sources can be comple- (Grant Ross and Collins, 2006). mented by critical analysis of corresponding In comparison, 400 years of post-Angkorian written sources, such as protocols and minutes. urban history continues to be neglected. It is However, colonial sources tend to be biased. virtually non-existent, though a notable By reading ‘against the grain’, one may hear exception is the work of Mikaelian (2009). the ‘voices’ of the indigenous population and Similarly little research has been undertaken reconstruct their interests where no other on urban development during the period of the evidence exists. French Protectorate. Gregor Muller (2006) has In this paper two perspectives are adopted critically investigated aspects of the social on what, following Henri Lefebvre (1991), history of colonial Phnom Penh, but without might be termed the ‘co-production of colonial referring to town building or urban planning. urban form’. First, there is the potential for Between water and land: urban and rural settlement forms in Cambodia 137 ‘equifinality’ of urban forms. In both the could become the political gravitation point of traditional cosmic geometries of the Khmers the entire state. This ‘galactic’ or ‘solar polity’ and in rational French planning there was (Tambiah, 1977) depicted the geometric preference for straight lines and grids in the connection between the microcosm (city, structure of their urban settlements: these two temple, home) and the macrocosm (the eternal) principles, with very different historical in cardinal orthogonality. Space, especially backgrounds, produced in Phnom Penh a form urban form, was designed to mimic the cosmos that was neither fully French nor fully Khmer as a hierarchical example for the secular order but ‘equifinal’ (Kolnberger, 2014b). The on earth (Malville and Gujral, 2000; Népote, second perspective relates to the persistence of 1973, 2003, 2004). rural village forms: in Cambodia the When the Khmer kings decided to move emergence of rural and urban forms cannot be their residence from the north-east of the Great separated. Lake to the south-western end of it, they reproduced this cosmic geography, but at a much smaller scale. At its peak Greater A historical perspective on Phnom Penh’s Angkor had been ‘the world’s most extensive urban development preindustrial low-density urban complex … a cumulative settlement palimpsest, with an In Khmer history, houses, villages, even an organic and polynuclear form arising from entire city, could be ‘mobile’ and subject to social and environmental processes operating planned relocations. During the fifteenth over more than half a millennium’ (Evans et century the Khmer kings left the Angkor al., 2007, pp. 1479-80), its central sector region for political as well as economic covering 900-1000 km². reasons and founded new capitals farther The relocation of the capital resulted in south-east. Basan (Charktomuk or ‘Les quatre modification of its function. Greater Angkor bras’ in French) was the capital between 1432 had been a ‘hydraulic city’ designed to attract and 1525/30), followed by Longvek (1525/30- as many settlers as possible by extensive 1593), Srei Santhor (1594-1620) and Oudong irrigation works that would enable production twice (1620-58 and 1794-1863/65). Phnom of an
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