Nathan Taylor-Goh (University of Cambridge)



This paper contends that the late eighteenth-century transformation of British cartography generated the silences through which the imperial imagination could construct Singapore as a projection of British governance ideals onto Southeast Asia. By examining the evolution of British maps of the region, it demonstrates that as mapmakers adopted a more scientific framework privileging empirical observation and verifiable European sources, they systematically excluded the Indigenous knowledge that had informed earlier mappings. In doing so, British cartography increasingly confined its precision to charting coastlines, producing a geography of apparent accuracy that concealed an absence of depth. The effect of this narrowing of knowledge recast the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula as a vacant space, stripped of its interior, its population, and detached from geographic, social, and imperial context. This apparent emptiness, though the product of methodological change rather than design, enabled the projection of the Singaporean colony as the ideal embodiment of British imperialism. Lieutenant Phillip Jackson’s Plan of the Town of Singapore (1822) solidified this vision. Through its linear order, clear demarcations, and calculated omissions, the plan projected an image of deliberate design where none had existed. This conception of Singapore proved enduring in the British imperial imagination, shaping the British portrayal of the colony well into the late nineteenth century.


The mapped, the unmapped and the mappable in Indian planning

Malini Krishnankutty (Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay)








Mumbai has been at the forefront of urban planning in India from colonial times. It is here that key institutions (like the Bombay Improvement Trust) and legal frameworks (like the first Town Planning Act) were introduced before being replicated across the country. Maps are the backbone of the statutory Development Plans (DP, or master plan) that are drawn up every twenty years by urban planners for Indian cities. Mumbai’s first DP was sanctioned in 1967 and it has since been revised twice, in 1991 and recently in 2014. The talk will focus on the maps that are part of DP 1967 and DP1991 to understand what was mapped (Existing Land Use, ELU), what was not mapped, and the relationship between the ELU and DP proposals. This is expected to provide insights into the ‘expert culture’ of planning practice, how it problematises the city, and what its underlying values are. Finally, the talk will reflect on how maps can redress the typical silences in master plans and enable a decolonial and relatively sustainable urban planning praxis. It will do so by drawing on the speaker’s experience of co-leading a participatory People’s Plan for Chittur Thathamangalam (CTM), a small municipality in Kerala, in southern India.