Books

  • Lee, Kah-Wee. Casino Urbanisms: Monopoly and Extraterritoriality in Post-Millennial Asia. In progress.
  • Lee, Kah-Wee. 2019. Las Vegas in Singapore: Violence, Progress and the Crisis of Nationalist Modernity. Singapore: NUS Press. DOI
    • Reviewed in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Planning Theory & Practice, Pacific Affairs, Sojourn, Critical Gambling Studies, Planning Perspectives and Fabrications, among others.
  • Al, Stefan, Nicolas Echeverri and Kah-Wee Lee, eds. 2018. Macau and the Casino Complex. Reno: University of Nevada Press. Winner, Gourmand Awards, Macau International Book Fair (2019).

Journal articles

Forthcoming

  • Lee, Kah-Wee. “Temporal Abstractions of Land: Making Plans and Selling Land in a Property State.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Accepted.
  • Goh, Daniel, Tim Bunnell, Kah-Wee Lee and Nick Smith. “Promissory Urbanisms: Place, Power, Possibilities.” Cities. Accepted.

Published

  • Nainani, Dhiraj, Kah-Wee Lee and Maitrii Aung-Thwin. 2026. “Introducing Law and Geography in Urban Asia.” Asian Journal of Law and Society. DOI
  • Lee, Kah-Wee. 2023. “A Pedagogy of Anachronism: Learning through a Misfit between Theory and Practice.” City 27 (5–6): 740–58. DOI
  • Hua, Xia and Kah-Wee Lee. 2023. “Architecture, Tactics and Mobility: Appropriating Space at a Transport Hub in Shanghai.” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 41 (3): 466–84. DOI
  • Lee, Kah-Wee. 2022. “The Myth of the ‘Integrated Resort’: Selective History, Retrospective Branding, Fungible Assets.” Critical Gambling Studies 3 (2): 174–84. DOI
  • Lee, Kah-Wee and Lawrence Chua. 2020. “Modernity’s Other: Disclosing Southeast Asia’s Built Environment across the Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds.” Introduction to special section. South East Asia Research 28 (2): 111–19. DOI
  • Lee, Kah-Wee. 2018. “Planning as State-Effect: Calculation, Historicity and Imagination at Marina Bay, Singapore.” Planning Theory & Practice 19 (4): 477–95. DOI
  • Lee, Kah-Wee. 2015. “Technical Frames of Affect: Design-Work and Brand-Work in a Shopping Mall.” Geoforum 65: 403–12. DOI
  • Lee, Kah-Wee. 2014. “Transforming Macau: Planning as Institutionalized Informality and the Spatial Dynamics of Hypercompetition.” Environment and Planning A 46 (11): 2622–37. DOI
  • Lee, Kah-Wee. 2014. “Feeling like a State: Design Guidelines and the Legibility of ‘Urban Experience’ in Singapore.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38 (1): 138–54. DOI
  • Lee, Kah-Wee. 2010. “Regulating Design in Singapore: A Survey of the Government Land Sales (GLS) Programme.” Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 28 (1): 145–64. DOI

Book chapters

  • Lee, Kah-Wee. 2018. “Planning as Institutionalized Informality: State, Casino Capitalists and the Production of Space in Macau.” In Developmentalist Cities? Interrogating Urban Developmentalism in East Asia, edited by Jamie Doucette and Bae-Gyoon Park. Leiden: Brill. DOI
  • Lee, Kah-Wee. 2018. “Critical Reflections on the Myth of the Chinese Gambler.” In Macau and the Casino Complex, edited by Stefan Al, Nicolas Echeverri and Kah-Wee Lee. Reno: University of Nevada Press.
  • Lee, Kah-Wee. 2017. “Have We Always Said ‘No’ to the Casino? Rethinking the Myth of Progress in Singapore.” In Living with Myths in Singapore, edited by Loh Kah Seng, Thum Ping Tjin and Jack Meng-Tat Chia. Singapore: Ethos Books.
  • Lee, Kah-Wee. 2015. “Gambling, City, Nation: Popular Illegality and Nation-Building in Singapore, 1950s–80s.” In Asian Cities: Colonial to Global, edited by Gregory Bracken. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. DOI
  • Lee, Kah-Wee. 2013. “Containment and Virtualization: Slot Technology and the Remaking of the Casino Industry.” In Frontiers in Chance: Papers Presented at UNLV’s Center for Gaming Research, 187–210. Las Vegas: Center for Gaming Research, UNLV.

Reference works, reviews and other writings

  • Lee, Kah-Wee. 2025. “Casino.” Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press. DOI
  • Review of Tim Simpson, Betting on Macau: Casino Capitalism and China’s Consumer Revolution. Critical Gambling Studies 5 (1), 2024. DOI
  • Lee, Kah-Wee. 2020. “Connoisseurship and Genuflection: The Public Display of Private Wealth in the Casinos of Macau.” Platform. Link
  • Review of Belinda Yuen and Stephen Hamnett, eds., Planning Singapore: The Experimental City. Planning Theory & Practice 21 (2), 2020. DOI
  • Review of Haripriya Rangan et al., eds., Insurgencies and Revolutions: Reflections on John Friedmann’s Contributions to Planning Theory and Practice. Pacific Affairs 91 (2), 2018. DOI
  • Lee, Kah-Wee. 2017. “‘Modernity’s Other’: 2nd Southeast Asia Architecture Research Collaborative Symposium.” Fabrications 27 (2): 303–06. DOI
  • Review of James A. Warren, Gambling, the State and Society in Thailand, c. 1800–1945. TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia 3 (2), 2015. DOI
  • Review of Natasha Dow Schüll, Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas. Technology and Culture 55, 2014.