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“Mid-century buildings survived the Khmer Rouge only to be endangered now by the short-sighted development of HE,” Molyvann reads. He pushes aside the book. “Everything now is completely freehand.”

Throughout the city, historically significant buildings are being torn down in order to make way for new shops, offices and houses. Even the National Sports Complex, which Molyvann considers to be his greatest accomplishment, was leased to a Taiwanese firm in 2000. Most of its sprawling grounds are now being readied for a large commercial and residential development, and in the process, the main stadium’s Angkor-inspired drainage system has been filled with cement, causing the area around it to become swamped in the rainy season.

“The history of Phnom Penh,” Molyvann says, “is working with and fighting against water.”

The city, he says, has now expanded well beyond a concentric ring of dykes that was commissioned more than four decades ago. Compounding this, Phnom Penh’s few remaining lakes, which act as natural storm-water reservoirs, are in the process of being filled as a matter of real estate speculation. Throw inept drains into the mix, and Phnom Penh has become incredibly vulnerable to flooding. A major tropical storm, Molyvann says, could absolutely devastate the city.

“We would fill lakes too, but we would do it precisely,” Molyvann says. Those that remained, he claims, were purposefully left to collect floodwater. “Prime Minister HE rejects all of the plans that have been designed.” When I ask him why, his answer is simple: “To sell the land.”

The Add Jay wrote:Im cool with any form of urban planning as long as it doesnt include the following:

1. Sustainable
2. Walkable
3. master plan
4. brain drain
5. smart growth
6. Transit oriented
7. Agrarian Urbanism