Sidewalk City

"The expose of Kim's proceedings with spatial ethnography and critical cartography can serve as an example and a manual for other researchers who are fascinated by aspects of Asian urban societies. They should certainly read her book, enjoy her careful way of presenting her research in an excellently brought out book."-- "New Books Asia" "Using critical cartography and spatial ethnography, Sidewalk City brings to life an unwritten realm of claims and practices. Kim brilliantly persuades us with her theoretical framework which identifies a particular type of rights not associated with shared sidewalks: property rights negotiated in public space."-- "Saskia Sassen, author of Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy" "This just-published work flips our usual understanding of public space--large communal swaths of green in the middle of a cityscape--and focuses on its most humble incarnation: the sidewalk. Sidewalk design isn't going to win any prizes. In fact, it is scarcely noticed. But more than ever, Kim suggests, in places of rising urban density, this is where people meet, loiter, exchange information, sell wares and stage neighborhood festivals. Sidewalks are also a kind of urban nervous system, wiring connective paths from one corner of the city to another. But this sort of public space also bumps up against property rights. Who ultimately has power over this public-private space? The beautifully designed Sidewalk City examines how this tension is negotiated day to day in Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City." -- "Next City" "Opening with an exciting ethnography of sidewalk life in Ho Chi Minh City, Kim goes on to unfurl a revolutionary collection of mapping subjects, techniques, and strategies that let her, as she says, map the unmapped. As Kevin Lynch did in 1960, Kim inaugurates an utterly new fork in the history of mapmaking, enabling her to return at book's end to the sidewalk both reconsidered and reimagined. Sidewalk City is essential reading!"-- "Denis Wood, author of Everything Sings: Maps for a Narrative Atlas" "Sidewalk City takes the reader on a journey throughout the author's framework analysis of public spaces--namely the sidewalk--from a historical and geopolitical contextualization, to a critical analysis of the results, to visual narratives and further applications. . . . As a final verdict, this book may become an essential reading when analyzing public spaces. Every chapter of the book introduces an important step for their analysis, whether the subject is sidewalk living areas or public spaces at another scale."-- "Cartographic Perspectives" "Sidewalk City is visually powerful, socially explanatory, and politically revealing. Kim delivers an exceptionally rich contribution to the emerging domain of urban humanities with her multilayered close analysis of a seemingly prosaic socio-spatial environment--the sidewalks of Ho Chi Minh City. As such, she provides as much creative clarity to those interested in photography, multi-media art, and critical cartography as she does to those who care about economic development, property rights, urban planning, public policy, and ethnographic method."-- "Lawrence J. Vale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of Purging the Poorest" "Sidewalk City is devoted to a part of the urban landscape that is often overlooked. The book details the multiple benefits of seeing a sidewalk as a mixed-use public space. Kim is interested in calling not just for new analytical lenses, but for ways to apply them to legitimizing sidewalk life. The example inSidewalk City is of the tourist path and map she and her colleagues proposed to local officials. Their idea was to use HCMC's inevitable tourism to guide recognition of sidewalk street vendors and promote pedestrianism. This tourist pedestrian path is an example of Kim's approach to scholarship

Annette Miae Kim is associate professor of public policy and the founding director of the Spatial Analysis Lab at the University of Southern California.