Time to Change: Speculating on “Transition” in Yangon’s New City

Abstract

Time to Change: Speculating on “Transition” in Yangon’s New City describes the unequal burdens facing residents of Southwest Yangon, Myanmar, a peri-urban margin set to be transformed by the redevelopment of farmland into a sprawling “New Yangon City.” Through in-situ and digital ethnography conducted over 18 months, this dissertation follows residents of the 20,000-acre project area, asking how they pursued stable futures in a period defined by highly anticipated, if repeatedly deferred, transformation. State interventions such as the “New Yangon City” project have taken on significant symbolic weight in transition-era Myanmar, with the project’s progress seen by many as mirroring the state of democratization and post-socialist economic reform more broadly. In official compensation meetings and the offices of land brokers and real estate agents, across 2020, residents exchanged not only plots of land but also visions of the radically new futures they would build in the coming new city. Sky-high land prices and unchecked speculation offered residents the chance to secure the transformed futures promised by democratic reforms. But unimaginable returns came with extraordinary risk; even as some residents amassed great wealth from timely deals on the project’s constituent land, unanticipated crises—most notably, Myanmar’s 2021 military coup—meant others were left penniless. Spanning democratic optimism and authoritarian resurgence, this dissertation foregrounds interlinkages between political transition, everyday future-making, and the new forms of marginalization produced when promised futures go unrealized.