M+ / Design Trust Research Fellowship Public Talk: Shanzhai Culture and Southeast Asia’s Smart Cities was held on March 9th 2024 from Jason Lau and the team of Farzin Lotfi-Jam and Mark Wasiuta at M+ Museum. The fellows presented their research findings followed by dialogues with local and regional researchers as a conclusion of their fellowship.
The team of Farzin Lotfi-Jam and Mark Wasiuta examined computational and data-driven development in Southeast Asia. Through global investment, the attention of international consultancy firms, and the formation of the ASEAN Smart City Network, Southeast Asia has become a testing ground for smart city pilot projects. Following this current pattern of investment, the team critically assessed how cities in Southeast Asia are increasingly subject to a new technological paradigm that has reshaped urban environments, spatial politics, and architectural imaginaries, where smart urban technologies are both adapting to and automating strikingly different city and state structures, and express complex city, regional, and international development agendas.