An Evolving Understanding of Tropical Urbanism(s): Moving Beyond Climate Adaptation

Before the trip, the word tropical conjured up images of lush greenery and abundant rain—landscapes akin to rainforests. I associated the tropics with overflowing natural resources, particularly water, and with the infrastructural demands of managing year-round rainfall in hot and humid climates.

This led me to ask:

• How can “tropical” be integrated into urban life, when it evokes a strong connection to nature?

• How do people in tropical cities adapt their behaviors to intense heat and humidity?

Do they prefer cold drinks as a default? What hours of the day do they choose to venture outside? These reflections seemed especially timely as heatwaves become more common globally—suggesting that tropical cities may already hold a wealth of lived wisdom for climate-adaptive urban living. The Chinese proverb “心靜自然涼” (calmness and tranquility keep you cool) may only scratch the surface of this knowledge.

The Way of Water: How Water Shapes Our Sense of Place

The ever flowing nature of water captures the beauty of Chiang Mai and how its development is shaped by nature. At Wat Phra Lat, I witnessed the seasonal difference in the scenery and how water flows faster during the “wet” season compared to the dry season:

The rapid flow triggered a sense of danger in me and I did not step onto nor dip my hands into water like I had during my last visit in the dry season. This reminded me of the discussion led by Jaibaan Studio: locals have begun to fear rivers due to the increasing frequency and severity of floods. This fear saddened me. Water—so vital to life—should be a treasured resource, not a threat.

This raised critical questions:

• How might we design our cities in a way that we can utilize this blessing from nature while respecting its power?

• Apart from the lens of “management”, which suggests a desire to be controlled by humans, could we work our ways around the water instead?

Towards Plural Urbanisms: How can cities be understood and designed through alternative and plural lenses?

The For Cities team had curated a public talk to explore alternative ways of understanding cities, featuring architects Ko Nakamura and Achariyar “Sai” Rojanapirom. Leveraging experiences from Bangkok and Chiang Mai, the talk started with Nakamura-san’s research on street market culture but had evolved into a discussion about street life, mall cultures, the blurring lines between the two and the underlying power dynamics.

Rethinking spontaneity and order through Asian street market cultures

Spontaneity and its acceptance stood out as a defining characteristic of the urban life in Chiang Mai and Bangkok. Architect Nakamura-san shared his observations on night markets across Asia: vendors begin setting up stalls at sunset without official demarcation, and yet an organic order emerges. These temporary markets like Chiang Mai’s Wua Lai Walking Street create vibrant spaces without leaving a trace the next day. Information about these markets often travels through word of mouth, forming a kind of colloquial city knowledge that resists digitization.

Food truck urbanism, as Nakamura-san has put it, is highly mobile and can be seen as a symbol of the city’s vibrancy, where people (and the businesses) are always on the move. It also embodies an independent spirit, where shops are often owned by a sole proprietor. On the other hand, food truck urbanism has been appropriated by the government as a strategy to boost tourism in Hong Kong. The mobility highlighted by Nakamura-san had been outlawed; food hawkers have been required to have a fixed operation address since the 1970s. In 2017, food trucks were launched by the government as a “pilot scheme” in which the successful bidders would need to park their trucks in designated areas that are in proximity to tourist spots such as Disneyland Hong Kong and the West Kowloon Cultural District. Other than the food trucks, the only licensed mobile trucks are Mister Softee ice cream trucks; due to current regulations that have restricted the number of operation licenses, its operation can never scale up. The Food Truck pilot scheme ended in 2022, with most operators participating in the scheme went out of business except a few that were allowed to continue their operations at the West Kowloon Cultural District, at the discretion of the District’s operating authority (a quasi-government body). What made the food truck (re)trial in Hong Kong wobble? It is hard to blame the truck vendors themselves when they were unable to move to other spots more frequented by locals during the pandemic. By positioning the food trucks as a “tourist” offering, they were essentially othered from the community even when the borders were closed off. The revelation from Hong Kong’s food truck experiment is, therefore, the importance of mobility and spontaneity in hawker culture. It is this spirit of ad hocness that keeps the flame alive; can we find a balance between regulations/formality and spontaneity on the streets?

Blurring the Line Between Indoors and Outdoors

Another defining trait of tropical urbanism is the hybridization of indoor and outdoor spaces. In Chiang Mai, I observed buildings with large balconies or open corridors that provided natural shade while allowing airflow—creating semi-public zones of comfort and interaction.

Bangkok cafes often offer both indoor and outdoor seating, while Hong Kong’s historical shophouses also reflect this layered approach to space. However, many of Hong Kong’s newer commercial buildings—clad in reflective glass and dependent on centralized air conditioning—have lost this spatial permeability. These sealed environments reflect heat back onto the street, intensifying discomfort and separating users from the public realm.

These blurring lines between indoors and outdoors are nowhere to be found in glass-walled commercial buildings that were built in recent decades. With an air-conditioned air quality management system in place, we enjoy the constant cool temperature and be shielded from the scoutching 35 degrees Celsius heat. Yet this glass wall also separates us from the outside, while the glass reflects even more heat onto the seat that is right next to the window and the shining beam starts to hurt your eyes a little, prompting you to roll down the window shields. In malls, outdoors areas are to be avoided for most as they are likely to be designated as smoking areas, except a few shopping malls that have designed their outdoor areas with recreational programmes and facilities, such as K11 MUSEA, Citywalk, and Hysan Place. Indoor malls also sit at a debatable position with the vibrant street activities that are often outdoors. Are indoor malls an inevitable response to the warming climate, and are they a threat to streets where ownership is dispersed? Sai offered a refreshing take with her shopping mall experience in Bangkok: shopping malls are recreating indoor street markets, giving an improved dining experience for diners seeking to taste the diversity of Thai cuisine in an air-conditioned environment. This way, diversity and vibrancy of street culture is preserved, and malls and streets do not necessarily have to be viewed with a dichotomic lens.

Making more space for hybridity and spontaneity to happen is a key takeaway for urban futures as we seek to develop a harmonious relationship with nature, as climate change will only result in more extreme and harsh weather conditions for humans. Singapore, another tropical city, has offered some of the experimental solutions - for example, the indoor waterfall at Changi Jewel has recreated the “outdoor” in an “indoor” environment. As someone working in the community relations space, these might be physical design features that sit outside of personal day-to-day remit; instead, community programming that enables residents to develop a different appreciation to nature and understand how nature and daily life intersect can be a potential direction to go for.