Annette Miae Kim, “Sidewalk City: Remapping Public Space in Ho Chi Minh City” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)

Sidewalk City: Remapping Public Space in Ho Chi Minh City (University of Chicago Press, 2015) is a remarkable book about overlooked yet ubiquitous urban spaces, and the people and things that occupy them. Drawing on the resources of property rights theory, spatial ethnography and critical cartography Annette Miae Kim rethinks public space and re-maps the sidewalks of Vietnam’s southern metropolis. Combining a powerful aesthetic sensibility with excellent scholarship, her book is of rare quality: beautifully written, visually compelling, and passionately argued.

Annette Miae Kim joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss sidewalk symbols and vendors, the regulation of public space old and new, the right to the city, pushing the boundaries of the map, and the passing of time along the streets and alleyways of Ho Chi Minh City.

To download and view a space-time map and a narrative map from Sidewalk City click here, hereand here. Thank you to the University of Chicago Press for permission to reproduce these maps on the New Books Network websites. More maps, and more on the book, are available on the Spatial Analysis Lab website.

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