A politics of density: Material provisions, the crowd, and dense living in urban Asia

Densification is often presented as a solution to urban challenges in Asia, from housing and infrastructure provision to climate change. These arguments however, are typically not informed by how different forms of high density are lived and politicised in the city. Drawing on research across a variety of cities in South, East and Southeast Asia, this paper develops a conception of density and its politics through two interrelated domains: material provisioning and urban crowds . The paper reflects on how these domains might serve as a conceptual provocation for understanding density in urban Asia today, which it short-hands as ‘dencity’. The paper contributes to critical urban studies by shifting attention from normative debates about whether density is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to a focus on the everyday practices, inequalities, and struggles through which dense urban life is produced and contested.