With the specific ethnographic research conducted in two relocation sites (Borei Santepheap Pi and Oudong Moi) in the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the paper aims to contribute to the massive body of literature on urban displacement and to the current debate on Phnom Penh's fierce evictions and forced relocations. In so doing, we aim to offer an alternative vision that, deliberately, decides not to focus simply on the dynamics of socio-spatial segregation and exclusion intrinsic in the process of displacement: rather, the paper wants to reflect on the politics of designing displacement processes, on its discourses and practices. The current evidence allows us to say that relocation sites are configuring as big peripheral holes: giant planning and urban design failures where populations strive to survive or that decide to abandon to search for more secure livelihoods closer to the centre. Looking at two very different attempts to design relocation sites, from scratch, as new polities, the paper advocates for practices that could contest the current mode of urban development, and enable old and new urbanites to re-appropriate the act of designing, producing and governing their spaces.