The intensifying privatization and marketization of maritime spaces is transforming seascapes across Pacific Asia and much of the world. In particular, large-scale land reclamation projects are now proliferating across the region at increasingly larger scales, and often being privatized through development of self-contained urban enclaves (Shatkin, 2011). For example, cities on China's coast reclaimed an average of 700km2 of land (about the size of Singapore) from the sea every year from 2006 to 2010 for new houses, industrial zones and ports (Shepard, 2020). China is also financing reclamation projects in other parts of Asia as well, including Cambodia, as well as the controversial Forest City project located across from Singapore in southern Johor state (Malaysia); the Philippines is reclaiming 1,010 acres from the sea for its New Manila Bay (dubbed ‘City of Pearl’); Dubai is already world famous for its elaborate reclamation projects (such as the Palm), while Sri Lanka is building a new financial district on reclaimed land called Colombo International Financial City. Furthermore, land reclamation has been essential to the construction of modern Singapore, around a quarter of which was open ocean upon the city-state gained its independence in 1965 (see Connolly and Muzaini, 2021).

Despite this, as Grydehoj (2015: 99) has lamented, ‘land reclamation is rarely subject to social science urban development inquiries’, and its implications for public space are rarely discussed. Indeed, despite a proliferation of work on water in the UPE literature, there is very little on land reclamation. This is despite the fact that reclamation illustrates perfectly concepts of ‘urban metabolism’ and ‘planetary urbanisation’ which have been central issues in the UPE and urban studies literatures. As illustrated in the opening epigraph of a statement by Wu Hongbo – the Under-Secretary-General of United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) – healthy oceans are critical to social, environmental and economic sustainability.