Urban development falling into the gutter: sanitation planning and ‘anti-politics’ in Myanmar

Jérémie Sanchez

Third World Quarterly, 2019, vol. 40, issue 12, 2228-2245

Abstract: Urban development, and particularly the improvement of basic services delivery, is still approached in mostly technical terms by international development actors and municipalities of the Global South. Sanitation planning, for instance, remains the realm of engineers despite decades of evidence that conventional approaches focusing on infrastructure upgrading have failed to tackle socio-environmental challenges. Against this background, this paper explores sanitation planning in Mandalay, the second largest city of Myanmar. Here, the Asian Development Bank and a French consulting firm have seized the opportunity created by the country’s recent opening to embark with the municipality on a multi-million dollar scheme: the Mandalay Urban Services Improvement Project (MUSIP). Drawing upon insights from critical development studies, the paper argues that the MUSIP can be interpreted as an ‘anti-politics machine’ that ignored local needs and proposed disputable solutions to local sanitation challenges. The paper further explores how this machine jeopardised urban development in Mandalay more generally, and was eventually challenged by the municipality. The paper concludes that the case is not unique and illustrates how urban development is today being reshaped throughout Myanmar, while it also shows the continued relevance of the ‘anti-politics’ framework to understand contemporary urban development assistance projects.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2019.1636641 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:40:y:2019:i:12:p:2228-2245

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ctwq20

DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2019.1636641

Access Statistics for this article

Third World Quarterly is currently edited by Shahid Qadir

More articles in Third World Quarterly from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().