Introduction: Integrated mega-casinos and speculative urbanism in southeast Asia

In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, luxurious megacasino resorts have become spectacles of economic growth across diverse destinations in Asia. With its emphasis on large-scale integrated resorts (IR), the casino and leisure industry is a site of economic rejuvenation even as it offers spaces of moral corruption. Integrated mega-casinos are ambiguous projects of development, driving the speculative processes of place-making for accumulation, social control, and global competition. This editorial introduction focuses on three main themes. First, mega-IR projects show the historical and complicated relations between state power and the gambling economy. Second, Southeast Asia’s new mega-casinos are emblematic of speculative urbanism and its experiments. Third, casino-asdevelopment consolidates the differentiated treatment of citizen subjects and gives legitimacy to the biopolitical governance of citizen practices, claims, and urban participation.