Abstract:
For the past 15 years Kampong Ayer, Brunei's
famous water villages and former empire's
capital has been left to decay slowly. Debates
about its future are held far from its
inhabitants and away from Brunei's
population that all have their roots in it. This
paper attempts to show that this static phase
of the village history, with centralized external
forces holding its development and planning
its redevelopment, has not occurred during
1300 years of history. This does not follow the
traditional pattern of urban development of
the Vernacular Southeast Asian Coastal Cities
[VSEACC], thus any decision made with this
new process will dramatically change the face
of Kampong Ayer.
I argue that Kampong Ayer is an example of a
unique type of city that existed during the
historical period from the 7th century to the
end of the 20th century. The raison d'etre of
these cities were to be polities and trading
centres, connected with outside world, points
of exchange between people, goods, ideas,
between seas, rivers and land.
There is no research in the urban discipline
about the structure of the VSEACC, I propose
to use the anthropological model of urban
definition developed by 0'Connor(1983) as
framework of analysis of its structure and
evolution. As he postulates, in Southeast Asia,
urban fabrication is a corollary of social
structures. To describe the urban form it is
then necessary to understand these
structures and spatialise them. This will set
the background for a brief sketch of the
history of Brunei Kampong Ayer.
