PHONM PENH: CHANGING URBAN FABRIC WITH DEMOGRAPHY – PAST AND FUTURE

Ankitha Veerepalli

Abstract: The fabric of a city flows and weaves itself from the people. Essentially, people make the city and so, their culture, traditions and practices create the spaces in a city/town. The rich relation between man and his cities can be seen in a number of modern day examples, such as Paris, Barcelona, Bangkok and many more. These cities show the myriad beauty in the mix of architecture in the urban fabric and how the natural development, with proper design can give rise to complex, yet organized developments. Phonm Penh, as a riverfront city and the capital city of Cambodia, offers fascinating architecture, vistas of mixed architectural styles and great scope for future architectural development. This paper is an attempt to understand and study the changing urban fabric of a city that has been the glorious historical epicenter of the Khmer kingdom, an ally, victim and refuge during the Vietnam War, a colony of the French and a genocide killing field. This paper is an effort to study factors affecting its urban fabric in the past and present and future scenarios and how this can be used in other mixed socio-cultural settings with a rich and diverse history.

Keywords: Urban fabric, architecture, History, development, socio-economy, future

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2015.0411030