New urban forms

5.3 New urban forms

The result of increasing domestic investment and the opening of the economy to foreign capital has been a profound spatial restructuring of the city. This can be seen in both the development of peri-urban areas and the city centre. The built-up area of Phnom Penh has expanded rapidly in the last decade, and now extends 20-30 km from the historic central point at Wat Phnom. Land that has previously used for rice farming has been bought for the development of a number of urban forms including industrial and residential land uses. As the city expands, there are considerable challenges to effective spatial planning, as is discussed in Chapter 7.

In terms of population growth, the outer khan all experienced huge growth in the decade from 1998, as highlighted in Table 5.2. Dangkor almost trebled in population size, while Meanchey more than doubled.

Meanwhile, all of the central districts except Tuol Kork saw a small decline in population. In-migration has occurred in two waves. In the early 1990s migrants to Phnom Penh arrived from the refugee camps, and more recently, labour migrants on a permanent and seasonal basis are moving to the city looking for opportunities to make a living. They generally work in garment factories, restaurants, and on construction sites (CDRI, 2007a).

Table 5.2 Population change by district⁸, 1998-2008

(Source: Municipality of Phnom Penh, 2011) municipality to encompass districts of Kandal province, in order to improve future urban planning (O’Toole, 2010). Land prices in peri-urban areas peaked in 2006-2008 at approximately $200-250 per square metre, while in 2011 the price had fallen to around half that figure (Phnom Penh Post, 2011c). Although this is still a big increase from a decade ago when land values were just a few dollars per square meter. The drivers of peri-urbanisation in Phnom Penh are clearly not dissimilar from other primary cities in the East Asian region: abundant land, unclear and weak spatial

8 Por Senchey district was created in 2012 from land formerly under Dangkor jurisdiction; Sensok district was created in 2009 from land formerly under Russei Keo jurisdiction.

planning policies, and lower land prices (Hudalah et al., 2007; D Webster, 2002).

Peri-urban development in Phnom Penh encompasses a number of urban forms. Firstly, peri-urban areas are the location for FDI in manufacturing, especially those producing garments and footwear. Garment manufacturing accounted for 16% of national GDP in 2007 (World Bank, 2009), and around a third of Phnom Penh’s economic output (ADB, 2006).

The majority of factories are situated in the south west of the city along the road to Kampong Saom deep-sea port, but close enough to Phnom Penh to draw on the concentration of related business services. In 2010 there were 236 garment factories (J J Lee, 2011), employing approximately 320,000 (largely female) workers (People’s Daily, 2010). Although many workers commute from nearby rural villages, for migrant workers from further afield there has been a growth in cheap rental accommodation surrounding the factories (Derks, 2008). A Special Economic Zone has also been established, and hosts a variety of factories for food production and motorbike assembly, among others. The periphery of the city now resembles a typical desakota situation, where globally oriented manufacturing is interspersed with agricultural rice-growing land (McGee, 1991) (Image 5.1). More manufacturing is likely in the future as the sector diversifies from garment manufacturing. Several types of large-scale residential development are also apparent. These include gated communities, shophouse developments, land sub-division projects, and satellite cities. These will be discussed in detail in the next chapter (Chapter 6).

There have been significant changes too in the urban fabric of the central city. The most prominent of these is the emergence of high-rise commercial and residential buildings. Whereas less than a decade ago the tallest building was the eight storeys Soriya shopping mall, there are currently at least seven buildings over 20 storeys completed or currently under construction (Table 5.3 and Map 5.3). Roughly half of these are commercial office buildings. High-rise commercial buildings are appearing along Monivong Boulevard, the main commercial road running north to

south through the city centre, particularly at the junction of Russian Boulevard, which is becoming an emergent central business district. For example, two buildings that have been completed at the time of writing are both commercial: Canadia Tower – Cambodia’s first skyscraper and ‘Grade A’ office building – built by OCIC and Phnom Penh Tower by Korean developer Hyundai Amco. Another, Vattanac Tower, is due to be completed in 2013. High-rise condominium apartments are being erected in popular residential districts, particularly in the districts of Tuol Kork and Boeung Keng Kang, and along the Bassac riverside in Chamkarmon.

Table 5.3 Major urban development projects proposed, completed, and

abandoned in the central city

(Source: various, including newspapers and project websites)

Project Timeframe Developer(s) Other information Canadia Tower 2010 OCIC

It is debatable whether many of these developments are suitable for Cambodia, both socially and environmentally. The soil in Phnom Penh is alluvial, making the foundations of tall buildings time-consuming and expensive to prepare. The high electricity demands of air-conditioning hermetically sealed buildings with large amounts of glazing in a tropical climate is very costly and energy inefficient. It is also questionable whether a true market exists for many of the residential projects. The prices are considerably higher than the vast majority of Cambodians can afford. They are aimed at the wealthiest one or two per cent of Cambodians, as well as for foreigners. City centre condominiums sell for at least $150,000 and in many cases considerably more. In comparison, a middle-class university educated Cambodian working in the private sector earns approximately

$300-400 per month, a mid-level civil servant can earn around $150-250 per month while 34% of the population lives under the poverty line (Khemro, 2006). Many properties are purchased for speculative purposes, which has made a few people very rich whilst pushing up prices to the point where housing is no longer affordable to the majority. Chapter 6 will look at the demand for satellite cities in more detail.

Another problem exacerbated by the recent boom in urban development is flooding during the rainy season, which spans July to November. Phnom Penh is situated on a natural flood plain. The banks of the river are built high, and behind were a series of low-lying rice fields and lakes (boeung). The city was created by filling in the lakes and building a series of dykes in concentric semi-circles to protect the city from being inundated with water (Ly & Muan, 2001). Despite attempts to improve the situation through drainage improvements, the underlying problem is that many of the original dykes in the city centre have been turned into major roads, and lakes have been filled in to create land for development. In peri-urban areas, land that was previously rice fields, and was therefore designed to flood during the rainy season, has been raised using sand dredged from the Mekong River. This has the effect of exacerbating flooding in surrounding areas.

According to Vann Molyvann, a prominent Cambodian architect and urbanist who served as Minister of Town Planning in the government of Norodom Sihanouk during the 1950s and 1960s, urban planners in Cambodia should learn from ancient Khmer civilisation (Vann, 2005). This means respecting the hydraulic system of land management where flood plains were managed through a system of dikes, lakes and canals.

Nonetheless, he argues that Phnom Penh cannot continue to expand by building further concentric dykes because the high public costs involved, and should respect the natural environment by retaining large bodies of water.

Unfortunately his insights are not readily taken on board by the current government because of his political association with what is now the opposition party.