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This paper engages with debates about tropical cities and climate responsive design to consider the emergence of two local government master plans and one planning scheme provision explicitly addressing the tropical climate in Cairns, Australia. The undergirding concept of these initiatives is a terminology of Tropical Urbanism, a simultaneously environmental and social/cultural term that captures issues such as climate, lifestyle and identity in the constitution of the urban fabric. Through a detailed reading of the documents, combined with interviews with local architects and planners, this paper positions Tropical Urbanism as an environmentally aware version of New Urbanism and as a distinctive language of urban design emerging in the regional context of tropical Australia. Place-based initiatives such as these are important to improving the design outcomes and sustainability of regional cities, and we suggest Tropical Urbanism could be further reinforced by the social/cultural and political nuances of a more progressive Critical Regionalist approach.

A decade and a half after Cosgrove and Jackson (1987) wrote their seminal piece on 'new' cultural geography, the discipline of geography has experienced a 'cultural' turn. Economic geography, for instance, has been infleected through perspectives that take on board cultural retheorisations (see Thrift and Olds, 1996; Thrift, 2000). Within urban studies, the acknowledgement of culture's powers is not new (see, for example, Agnew et al., 1984). Yet, geographers scrutinising urban landscapes have moved the field, using some of the retheorised perspectives that Cosgrove and Jackson (1987) encapsulated. Of most pertinence to this volume is the retheorised notion of culture which takes into consideration contestations between groups, evident in city contexts—for example, in the imposition and demolition of monuments, the struggle for public space and its meanings, and the appropriation and transformation of landscapes and significations from the dominant culture by subordinate groups as forms of resistance. A body of writings has since developed which acknowledges that cultures and landscapes (including urban landscapes) are politically contested.

"Southeast Asia is one of the most diverse regions in the world, hosting a wide range of languages, ethnicities, religions, economies, ecosystems, and political systems. Amidst this diversity however has been a common desire to develop. This provides a uniting theme across landscapes of difference. This Handbook traces the uneven experiences that have accompanied development in Southeast Asia. The region is often considered to be a development success story; however, it is increasingly recognized that growth underpinning this development has been accompanied by patterns of inequality, violence, environmental degradation, and cultural loss. In 30 chapters, written by established and emerging experts of the region, the handbook examines development encounters through four thematic sections: Approaching Southeast Asian Development; Institutions and Economies of Development; People and Development; Environment and Development. The authors draw from national or sub-national case studies to consider regional scale processes of development--tracing the uneven distribution of costs, risks and benefits. Core themes include the ongoing neoliberalisation of development, issues of social and environmental justice, and questions of agency and empowerment"--

This Handbook traces the uneven experiences that have accompanied development in Southeast Asia. The region is often considered to be a development success story; however, it is increasingly recognized that growth underpinning this development has been accompanied by patterns of inequality, violence, environmental degradation and cultural loss. In 30 chapters, written by established and emerging experts of the region, the Handbook examines development encounters through four thematic sections: • Approaching Southeast Asian development, • Institutions and economies of development, • People and development and • Environment and development. The authors draw from national or sub-national case studies to consider regional scale processes of development – tracing the uneven distribution of costs, risks and benefits. Core themes include the ongoing neoliberalization of development, issues of social and environmental justice and questions of agency and empowerment. This important reference work provides rich insights into the diverse impacts of current patterns of development and in doing so raises questions and challenges for realizing more equitable alternatives. It will be of value to students and scholars of Asian Studies, Development Studies, Human Geography, Political Ecology and Asian Politics.

The paper is an overview of English language publications that discuss what might be considered 'social' and 'cultural' geographies in Southeast Asia over the past two decades. We have strategically chosen two major themes that help us shape the mass of material into digestible strands: (1) the politics of social and cultural change; and (2) constructing identities. The former addresses various politics: the politics of nationhood; the politics of national development; the politics of cultural sites; the politics of urban change; and the politics of the global-local.

In contrast to existing literature on transnational elites which has stereotypically identified the migrant as an individual careerist, usually white, middle-aged and male, this paper gives attention to aspects of skilled transmigration beyond the productive sphere by bringing into play questions concerning the "family" and "family relations." We suggest that even in situations where different family members do not move as a unit, the "family" and "family relations" continue to be constructed, sustained and reshaped in grounded ways, as signalled by new family forms such as "astronaut husbands" and "parachute kids." Indeed, hyper-mobilities among global elites often lead to families being "lived" and "sustained" transnationally. Using a two-pronged approach that combines a questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews, the paper is based on a study of Chinese-Malaysian professionals who have been accorded expatriate or permanent resident status in Singapore. The study focused on their transmigratory experience and how they negotiate crucial issues relating to the "family." Chinese-Malaysian transmigrants maintain very strong social networks linking them to their dispersed family members, creating new geographies of households. New household strategies and social practices such as transnational marriage, parenting and caring for elderly parents have since evolved to cope with the dispersion of family members across borders.

[Extract:] In their agenda-setting book on the future of Australia cities, Weller and Bolleter (2013) contemplated Australia's rapid and continual growth and its implications for the future Australian landscape. Setting views about a Big Australia to one side, these trends present Australian cities with some immutable challenges. Will Australians have to adapt to a deteriorating quality of life as cities accommodate this growth? Will the extra accommodation be built in the precincts where jobs are concentrated? Can cities grow to quarter more and more people without losing their liveability? Are there any special issues to consider in tropical Australia, a region that has experienced high population growth over the past decade and where the government has earmarked future development (Australian Government, 2014)?

The 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami caused massive human and economic destruction. In this paper we argue that the international response to the tsunami exemplifies a shift in the way humanitarian aid is sourced and delivered, and tease out a framework for understanding the continuities and discontinuities that led to differential distribution across a range of sites in southern Thailand. On the one hand we examine the degree to which we can understand differential aid distribution in terms of persistent characteristics in the political economy, such as lack of transparency and corruption . We also consider the importance of 'traditional' structures, networks and resiliences and their role in influencing aid distribution. But these sorts of explanations must be nuanced in light of the emergence of new aid linkages and networks, particularly the move from formal organizations to individualized and direct donations. We suggest these patterns reflect new abilities of communities to mobilize trans-national networks, a more participatory approach to aid donation and an opportunity to re-map the multi-scalar politics of aid.