Urban Studies

Within the Asia-Pacific region, over the past few decades, cities have undergone massive transformations. These changes were underpinned by globalisation flows and new technologies and mediated by, inter alia, political institutions and policies. Given the seemingly ubiquitous nature and power of these influences, studies of emerging urban patterns within the region suggest that cities are growing more alike. At the same time, while cities articulated to the regional economic system are undergoing similar world city formation processes, they are also experiencing unique pressures. These influences are related to aspects of globalisation as well as to the 'nested' governmental policy responses to development pressures. Two differentiating globalisation-related pressures include the need for specialisation of functional roles within the competitive regional economic system and the rapid transfer of technologies and knowledge previously unavailable at lower income levels. The functional niche within the regional city system has forced cities to differentiate in terms of their economic activities, which has impacted their urban form. Transfers of technologies and information through trade and investment have benefited recipients and have also 'compressed' or 'telescoped' development, sped-up national urbanisation rates and created new types of environmental challenge through overlapping sets of environmental problems. Further, these impacts have been mediated differently by a variety of national and local policies. Together, this bundle of influences is creating an assortment of urban forms and environmental conditions within cities in the region. The results cast doubt on whether the physical forms of or environmental conditions within cities currently at different development levels are converging.

This paper analyses the relation between Tokyo and globalisation in the framework of regulation theory and attempts to draw theoretical implications for Tokyo's current urban development. Regulation theorists contend that globalisation, particularly global capital and finance mobility, has led to the crisis of regulatory institutions that sustained the post-war Fordist growth regime and that the new finance-market-centred growth regime emerging out of the crisis in the UK and the US is now challenging other capitalist societies. Tokyo's urban experience in the past decade conforms to and yet deviates from regulation theory. The paper argues that, although local and national politics have played the most important role in reshaping Tokyo's urban development, it is Japan's state-centred developmental, capitalist system that has enabled Tokyo to resist the new Anglo-American growth regime. Tokyo's growth strategy in the 1990s has instead re-emphasised manufacturing technology. The impact of the new finance-market-centred growth regime is exaggerated. Urban development in many cities of the world will continue to be far more influenced by local, national and regional politics and institutions than by the new finance market growth regime.

It is widely believed that the integration of the global economy and the development of information technology have led to the creation of the world city as a centre of command-and-control functions in the world economy. However, as each city is nested in its national and regional context, such a simple deterministic logic is not satisfactory. This article explores the world city formation of Tokyo by investigating the decision-making process of the Tokyo waterfront sub-centre, one of the flagship urban development projects. The author argues that the institutional relations among the national and local governments, and the business community in Tokyo were grounded in the country's unique tradition of a state-capital relationship which can be explained by capitalist developmental state theory.

The paper discusses Taipei's status as a regional global city within the context of the theoretical framework of Hill and Kim. The discussion is based on both theoretical and empirical considerations. On the one hand, theoretical discourses revolving around global cities tend to ignore the possible variations between global cities, so much so that the type based on New York has been regarded as a standard global city and the politico-economic peculiarities of Tokyo and Seoul have tended to be downplayed. On the other hand, Taipei, a Third World city that might gain the status of a regional global city, has not hitherto received extensive examination and observation. Resorting to the binary framework formulated by Hill and Kim to emphasise the salient features of Tokyo and Seoul, the author describes and underscores Taipei's development experiences.

This article compares the relationship between national embeddedness and metropolitan development in the Detroit and Nagoya auto regions. Based upon literature, descriptive data and in-depth interviews with 140 development officials in these 2 regions, it finds that, over the past 30 years, the US governmental system, its national approach to development and a lack of institutional support for metropolitan planning, have produced fiercely competitive interlocal relations. These elements have also exacerbated conditions of uneven metropolitan development in the Detroit auto region. Conversely, it argues that Japan's embedded autonomy has produced extremely co-operative intermunicipal relations and has helped to facilitate relatively balanced growth in the Nagoya auto region, during this same period. In other words, despite arguments against it, the spatial configurations of metropolitan areas in the US and Japan continue to be embedded or nested within their national (and sub-national) contexts.

Homeless people have increased and become visible socially in Japan since the mid 1990s. There has also been a corresponding increase in sociological studies of homelessness. These studies have sought to analyse the unique characteristics of homeless people: rough sleepers, ex-day-labourers, single men, the elderly and so on. The life conditions of homeless people have also been analysed: how they get jobs, foods and shelter; how they make networks among themselves; how they resist violence from the mainstream citizenry and so on. However, in order to understand the observed situations of homeless people correctly, the economic, institutional and structural backgrounds of homelessness in Japan must be analysed on a macro and historical level. To date, no such study has been undertaken. This paper seeks to fill that gap. It analyses the processes through which homelessness has appeared in Japan. It has three specific aims. The first is to analyse the economic background of homelessness by focusing on two phenomena brought by globalisation to Japan: deyosebisation, which means the gradual disappearance of day-labourers from yoseba (the day-labour market); and the disemployment of casually employed unskilled workers in the general labour market. The second is to analyse the institutional background of homelessness to regulate the homeless population, especially by focusing on social welfare. The third is to analyse the structural background of homelessness to regulate the homeless population by focusing on two affiliate groups: company and family/relatives. The research field of this paper is Metropolitan Osaka in the 1990s.

This paper compares Malaysia's Multimedia Super-corridor (MSC) and New York's Silicon Alley to assess whether state-led development of digital districts is a viable alternative to neo-liberal approaches. The changing nature of east Asia's developmental states as they adopt neo-liberal elements (such as venture capital) casts doubt on the idea that east Asian cities are `embedded' in developmental frameworks. Using actor-network theory to conceptualise the nesting of cities as processes of 'translation', the paper examines how state frameworks in the US and Malaysia shaped the respective efforts of district entrepreneurs to weave together ideas, resources and relationships. The findings confirm actor-network theory's claim that the significance of a particular element depends on the network it becomes enmeshed in. In the case of Silicon Alley, neo-liberal regimes did not directly participate but promoted devices (such as venture capital, options) that enabled venture capitalists to bring together myriad enterpreneurs. In contrast, the Malaysian state, which is deemed a 'developmental hybrid', devised a comprehensive plan for the MSC and itself used devices such as venture capital to enrol participants. While Silicon Alley was a temporary base for circulating capital, the MSC effort is creating an enduring foundation for digital industry.

Debates about the nature of globalisation have often taken a very abstract turn and have often failed to address the specificities of urban cultures and of the sociological as well as economic changes created by globalising forces. This paper examines the relationship between class, consumer culture and civil society in contemporary south-east Asian cities, particularly in the light of the region-wide economic crisis beginning in 1997. It attempts to place the relationship between class and civil society participation in the bigger framework of consumption behaviour, arguing that this both creates the primary cultural context in which the new middle classes in Asia operate and provides the linkage between globalisation and local urban cultures. In doing so, it attempts to provide a fresh perspective on south-east Asian urban social processes and to suggest an avenue for more accurately theorising the nature of urban social movements from a comparative perspective and specifically in the ethnically, religiously and culturally complex urban societies of contemporary Asia.

This paper takes a political economy approach in evaluating the state's role in investment promotion. Using the Asian financial crisis as an opportunity to study regulatory mechanisms, the paper examines both state-society relations as well as relations between Singapore and its neighbours, Indonesia and Malaysia. The difficult policies which Singapore enacted during the crisis-namely, a wage-cut as well as the drive to recruit foreign skilled labour in the midst of a depressed economy—cannot be understood except in terms of an institutional context involving agencies, interest-groups and segments of society and the state's continuing ideological work and, specifically, within an embedded autonomy position where the state was able to fend off lobbying efforts while at the same time using its position with the unions to push for wage-cuts and skilled foreign labour. Such embedding or nestedness was also apparent in Singapore's regional relations. The incorporation of the Riau islands in Indonesia in sub-regional production networks managed by Singapore led to consistent stances taken by Singapore and Indonesian regional authorities to protect investments, in the midst of inconsistent signals between the national governments of the two countries.