Bak Kut Teh, which means “meat bone tea” in Chinese, is one of the most famous soup dishes in Malaysia. The origin of this cuisine reflects a marvellous story on ethical supply chains – how the tin mine owners became concerned and responsible about the health of Chinese Malaysian tin miners, who suffered a lot because of the humidity and darkness deep down the mines. Restrained by limited budget (since the British were only paying a limited amount for tin ores), one of the Chinese mine owners chose the ingredients from ancient Chinese medicine and invented the meat bone soup as the workers’ lunch meal – which tackled the challenges of both hunger and health.
One of the deserted tin mines in the west region of Kuala Lumpur was purchased by a businessman, who later on made vast investments and built a satellite city called Sunway. From the beginning, the city was designed with visions of inclusiveness, walkability and sustainability. So far Sunway has grown into an integrated urban system with shopping malls, communities, colleges, and public transportation. On 1st-4th Nov 2017, a group of Lancaster researchers, including myself from Pentland Centre, got together with South East Asian (SEA) organizations and researchers, mainly from Sunway University, to brainstorm ideas and interdisciplinary research opportunities within the topic of “Cities of the future”. Through a series of highly intensive and interactive workshops, the researchers became familiar with the key research interests of each other and teamed up to design and pitch innovative research projects that have potential to generate a Global Challenge Research Fund (GCRF) application in the next few months.
As one of the lead researchers among those projects, I was the first to notice the future of SEA cities would be inevitably tied to the digital economy models that are no longer dominated by Silicon Valley, but also China’s digital giants, thriving in SEA regions thanks to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Huawei and XiaoMi have become two of the most popular smartphones in Malaysia; the online/mobile payment platform Alipay developed by Alibaba has just launched in Kuala Lumpur. The food order & delivery systems (Uber Eat, Meituan, etc.) and Shared Bikes have been reshaping the way people live and convey. Will local digital start-ups be stimulated or disrupted by such external power? How would disruptive digital economy influence urban life? What are the socio-economical as well as environmental impacts of emerging digital economy? Working with Dr David Tyfield from Lancaster Environment Centre, we put up a team with eight researchers – four from Lancaster and four from SEA regions, looking into the digital disruptive impacts on the industries, infrastructure and innovations of SEA regions and cities, namely Malaysia, Cambodia and Indonesia. We won £5,000 as seed corn budget to gather preliminary data, engage with a wider research and business community and make the research ideas more clear and concrete for a potential GCRF bid.