ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two case studies, Karachi and Bangkok, to examine the particularities of urbanisation in Asia to discuss the potential of collective planning practices by the poor to challenge common held assumptions about what is sustainable and how environmental protection can be achieved together with wellbeing objectives. The challenge is how to capture both the socio-environmental flows and fixity of urban living and to enable forms of planning that address concerns of poverty alleviation and inequality alongside environmental imperatives. Urban practices transform cities and human activity in different ways and shape their ability to cope with current and future socio-environmental issues. Together, specific urban practices and structural drivers characterise particular socio-environmental trajectories of urban development. The chapter discusses the two case studies and demonstrates the tensions between powerful private sector interests and local collective action in the struggle for more socio-environmentally just urban trajectories.
