Phnom Penh: a city without a centre?

By Matthew Robinson

Matthew is a British-Cambodian TV and film producer, director and writer. In this article, he explores the elusive concept of a ‘town centre’ in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s bustling capital. Taking us on a lively and insightful journey through monuments, markets and riversides, he reflects on why this rapidly expanding city defies conventional urban definitions — and why its true structure may lie in its enduring village roots.

Location of Cambodia (Creative Commons image cropped – linked to licence – original by Addicted04)

This article — about Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, and written for a series on ‘Town Centres’ —  is a double impostor. For whatever it is, Phnom Penh is not a town in any sense of the word. Neither does it have a centre — insofar as you could stand in a single place and say “Here I am, in the centre of what used to be known, in the 1920s, as The Pearl of Asia” —  a soubriquet describing Phnom Penh, apparently dreamt up by a Scottish visitor charmed by the city’s French architectural beauty then present in many buildings.

So, though not a town, Phnom Penh is certainly a "city" insofar as, including the outlying areas, its population is between two and three million. It was also granted "city" status in 1434 by King Ponhea Yat who, lock, stock and barrel, moved the Khmer capital from northern Angkor Thom to the south. The monarch sensibly chose his new location at the convergence of four rivers: the mighty Mekong originating in China; the internal rivers of Tonle Sap and Bassac; and the Mekong’s outflow to the sea through Vietnam. This watery confluence, around which Phnom Penh grew, has been known for centuries as "Chaktomuk" meaning "Four Faces".

You might reasonably imagine that the site would be the centre of the capital’s present urban sprawl. Indeed, an iconic fan-shaped building, The Chaktomuk Theatre, stands steadfastly on the edge of the four-river confluence. Designed by Cambodia’s most renowned architect Vann Molyvann (1926-2017), it was built in 1961 to celebrate the country’s independence from France eight years earlier. Now used as a conference centre hosting ceremonies for foreign dignitaries, film festivals and Apsara dance performances, Molyvann’s design combined traditional Khmer architecture with more than slight nods to modernity.

But centre of Phnom Penh it is not. Where should we look to find such a place — if it can be found?

Without doubt the city’s most striking edifice is Independence Monument erected in 1958. Designed by indefatigable Vann Molyvann — under the firm direction of Prince Norodom Sihanouk (who as a 30-year-old King surprised the world by persuading the French to hand control of the country over to him), it sits — at thirty-seven metres tall — in the middle of a vast roundabout connecting two huge boulevards that dissect the city. These are named, perhaps unsurprisingly, Norodom Boulevard and Sihanouk Boulevard.

Circulated all day — and most of the night — by articulated lorries, buses, vans, cars and motorbikes, together with humble tuk-tuks, cyclos and bicycles, few denizens will brave the rush of traffic to cross to the lotus-shaped stupa in order to marvel at the modernistic version of the country’s ancient temples.

However, during national celebrations, the monument does become a centre of activity. Traffic is halted for half a day by police (or the army), an interior ceremonial flame is lit by a high official, and the country’s VIPs gather to ask Buddha to allow Cambodia’s good fortune to continue.

Independence Monument has two other features of note. The first is a nearby immaculate wide length of grass stretching for over a kilometre. It’s bordered by smooth paving stones along which families walk together at weekends, their offspring skateboarding alongside them. The second, overlooking both monument and grass, is the sumptuous house of former Prime Minister, Hun Sen, now President of the Senate. Its surrounding walls are so high — for security reasons — that Samdech Akka Moha Sena Padei Techo Hun Sen (his full title) can surely only enjoy the views from the upper windows which, may or may not look out from some of his bedrooms.

I suppose that if the Samdech, as Senate President, one day announced that Independence Monument and his residence were in fact the city’s centre then that is what they would become. Hun Sen, as effective leader of Cambodia (despite his capable son’s recent ascension to the office of Prime Minister) can do such things. In 2004 when Prime Minister himself, he issued an edict — unopposed in the National Assembly or the Senate, despite the doubts of conservationists — that removed height restrictions on new buildings within Phnom Penh’s municipality. For decades, centuries even, buildings could not exceed the modest height of the Royal Palace meaning nothing was ever constructed of more than four storeys.

Hun Sen declared to the National Assembly: “From today, we must run up to the sky. To whoever will build tall, we will give a medal.” He noted that many of the world’s developing countries prided themselves on their tall buildings.

Within two years, the city’s landscape was transformed with an explosion of construction cranes erected alongside rapidly-rising blocks of offices, apartments, shopping malls, hospitals, banks. The first skyscraper was completed in 2010. The first casino (of 10 storeys) appeared two years later, though Cambodians — in theory — are not allowed to enter. Strangely, they may work as croupiers.

Could the largest of Phnom Penh’s many shopping malls (still being built despite many being sparsely patronised) be the city’s de facto centre? Could it be Sorya Mall? It’s air-conditioned, with criss-crossing escalators connecting the many floors that between them contain a giant supermarket, shops of every kind, restaurants, cafes, multi-cinema complex, a bowling alley and children’s amusement areas. Is Sorya really the city’s fulcrum? Unlikely: it is purely functional, hardly a beautiful building, and not a place where citizens gather to while away an hour or two for a good gossip.

View of Phnom Penh's Central Market from the 37th-floor sky bar of the Vattanac Capital Tower (18 September 2021) Image Rik Schuiling / TropCrop-TCS Creative Commons - linked to source

Nor do they gather in the over-patronised Phsar Thmey (‘New Market’), centrally situated alongside Sorya Mall. This 1937 French-built edifice is a world-famous Art Deco landmark. Bright yellow, its high central dome has four arched arms attached to it. Jam-packed with stalls offering ridiculously low-priced clothes, trinkets, watches, jewellery, toys, and everything else imaginable, it’s surrounded on the outside by food vendors dispensing steamed noodles covered in unidentifiable sauces, battered this and battered that including battered spiders. But Phsar Thmey — despite the six roads leading away from it into the depths of the city — should not be thought of as Phnom Penh’s actual centre. Shoppers want to quit its claustrophobic atmosphere the moment they’ve filled their bags or eaten their fill.

Let us now try the city’s spectacular riverfront running along several kilometres of the Tonle Sap river. Wide enough to separate it from a parallel busy road, it’s paved and lined with trees that offer shade from the tropical sun. Hundreds — at weekends, thousands — of strollers who, escaping the dense thickets of their dwellings, parade up and down for hours. They’re proud that their city has a facility to match walkways by the Seine in Paris or the Tiber in Rome. Well, almost. The authorities, whether at government or city level, have allowed the erection of monstrously garish adverts on the opposite side of the river, adverts moved upstream by a few hundred metres so that King Sihamoni, one of the late King Norodom’s fourteen children, wouldn’t have his view of the river spoiled from the Royal Palace.

That piece of vandalism alone disqualifies the riverfront from pride of place as Phnom Penh’s centre. In any case, its siting is not central; it runs quite a way from all those skyscrapers, high-rise blocks and construction cranes.

Wat Phnom (image by Khmerloy9, creative commons license linked to source)

Could the centre be the single piece of raised ground in a city built on completely level ground? More than just raised: "Phnom" in Khmer means hill, sometimes mountain. And there, at one end of Norodom Boulevard, is "Wat Phnom", not a mountain but certainly a very large hill on the top of which squats a Buddhist temple — a "Wat". This tourist attraction causes locals and foreigners alike to puff and pant as they climb the uneven steps to the place of worship looking out across the flat metropolis.

Local legend links the hill to the city’s founding and is still fondly told to school children. In the 14th century, one hundred years before King Ponhea Yat moved his capital to Chaktomuk, a mythical "Lady Penh" found four Buddha statues floating down the Mekong inside a koki tree. The statues, a divine sign of eternal fortune, needed to be housed in a special place. Thus Lady Penh enlisted many local villagers to first build the hill, then the temple on top. Lovely though the legend is, no one — not even the gullible who believe it — would describe Wat Phnom as the city’s centre.

So where is it, the centre? Perhaps the answer is that, even though unique human activity throbs throughout this city, there is no central place. Why? Because Phnom Penh is not truly a "city". It’s a conurbation, not of towns, but of villages — hundreds of them joined together giving the impression of a genuine city.

The roots of this phenomenon lie in Cambodia’s past. Over many centuries, before towns existed, let alone cities, the population lived in villages, often tiny and mostly far from each other. Each had its own customs and traditions. Each had its own "Village Chief" who headed its own small-scale administration.

The ways of village life, thoroughly ingrained into the Khmer psyche, have never gone away. Though Phnom Penh is divided into fourteen "Districts", further subdivided into dozens of "Sangkats", these are split into innumerable "Villages" headed by their innumerable "Chiefs".

In days gone by, the centres of such villages were always the houses of their Chiefs. Nowadays in Phnom Penh, made up of village after village, little has changed in that respect. You’ll be on Mission Impossible to find and stand in the city’s centre. The best you can hope for is to walk to a village, locate the Chief’s house, or office (they have those now) and shake him (or her) by the hand.

Then move on to another village and do the same thing, over and over and over again. Good luck!