Developmental State in Southeast Asia

Andrew Stokols is an urban planner, designer, and researcher. He is currently a Phd student at MIT in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, City Design and Development Group.

Andrew’s research explores varieties of digital urbanism emerging throughout the world, drawing on the perspectives of political science, science and technology studies (STS), and urban theory to explore the co-evolution of urban space and digital technologies, and the ways in which national governments increasingly use urban development to incubate new economic sectors and project national power. He has worked previously with Future Cities Lab Singapore, and World Resources Institute. He has a masters in urban planning from Harvard GSD and was a Fulbright Scholar to China.

In this podcast, Andrew explores whether the developmental state concept which was and remains a powerful framework for explaining the success of East Asian tigers and other countries, is still relevant in an age of digital development, compressed development, and geopolitical decoupling. He also discusses how U.S.-China geopolitical tension manifests in Southeast Asia in terms of state approaches to development, a region caught between the two powers but also with its own dynamic and rapidly expanding economies. He looks at spatial and urban policies in the countries he is studying, Singapore and Thailand, and examines how existing projects reflect prior legacies or historical approaches to development.