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From the late 1980s urbanization in East Asia has been proceeding under historically new dynamics that are rapidly transforming urban spaces and city life. One of the key drivers is the emergence of an affluent middle class that is simultaneously pushing for political reform while also encouraging a shift in land-uses toward global consumption. The...
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... they had withstood demolition in the developmental city, as globopolis emerged with the bubble economy of the 1990s, traditional Korean houses began to be torn down very rapidly and on a large scale as land values skyrocketed and multi-unit apartments began to replace them rapidly and on a very large scale. Bukchon and Insadong areas near Gyeongbuk Palace were targeted as the areas where most hanok still existed and were worthy of preservation not only as houses but also as neighborhoods (Figure 4). 8 7 According to Kim Jin-ae, an urban planner, the attitude about not including existing merchants results from the government's current "luxury craze" in contemporary public architecture that, in this case results in "wasteful and shallow design" that "does not convey the life of the stadium," but "instead makes us bleak and pathetic," with the city more interested in world design than civic identity or the restoration of historical places such as the ancient fortress at the site (Park 2008). ...
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A growing number of political scientists have recently advocated the theses that democracy has emerged as a universal value and that it is also becoming the universally preferred system of government. Do most people in East Asia prefer democracy to nondemocratic systems, as advocates of these Western theses claim? Do they embrace liberal democracy...
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... The concept itself provokes contrasting views among scholars: some celebrate cosmopolitanism as a supreme moral model for peaceful coexistence in ethnically diverse places (Safier 1996;Sandercock 2006) or prefer it as a more positive rendition of a globalized city (Douglass 2009); others reject the concept for its close association with the elites (Robbins 1998;Skrbis and Woodward 2007) or Eurocentrism (Jazeel 2011), and prefer to replace it with 'superdiversity' (Vertovec 2007), a term which has gained considerable traction as well as critique recently. In this issue, we opt for a more empirical approach to cosmopolitanism by heeding calls for more work on 'grounded cosmopolitanism' (Lejeune et al. 2021;Skrbis, Kendall, and Woodward 2016). ...
This Special Feature reflects on how cosmopolitanism is inscribed and refracted in non-western cities with global city ambitions. We focus on Asia and the Gulf to provide a counter-reading of cosmopolitanism from various cities with both unstated or explicit non-integration policies, ranging from metropoles where migrants and foreigners correspond to a small minority (such as Tokyo and Seoul), to globalizing cities where migrants constitute a substantial minority (such as Singapore) or to cities where they constitute a large majority (such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha). The papers explore how cosmopolitanism works in situations strongly marked by racial, ethnic, social, and gender hierarchies, in cities characterized variously between the two extreme poles of ‘mixing’ and ‘segregation’, and reflecting on different ways of managing diversity. They examine how categories of difference are constructed, not only by the state (cosmopolitanism from above), but also by migrants themselves (cosmopolitanism from below). The papers examine how different categories of ‘migrants’—from highly skilled professionals to low-skilled, and middle-class migrants, and from students to ‘second generations’—strive to be part of the city while negotiating opportunities and constraints emanating from the envisioned cosmopolitanism of the global city. Taking the perspective that cosmopolitan urbanism goes beyond notions of a ‘melting pot’, métissage, or integration, we instead focus on the politics of inclusion and exclusion that shape the juxtapositions and encounters between different social groups. In this spirit, this Special Feature revisits cosmopolitanism through non-western cities to reconceptualize cosmopolitan urbanism outside the prevailing western paradigm of integration.
... of mutual accommodation but also of urban vitality through participatory governance processes (Sandercock, 1998(Sandercock, , 2003Douglass, 2009). ...
The rise of progressive cities is an invitation to understand the conditions that enable progressive modes of participatory governance that expand the right to the city in the pursuit of social justice. The focus on progressive cities is essential as cities are rapidly becoming key sites of policy-making in the contemporary world. In contrast to national levels, governance at city scales can more readily foster democratic and vital day-to-day links between government, civil society, and business interests. We stress the different paths taken toward progressive governance, paths marked by democratizing national politics in East Asia and long-standing local democratic participation in Europe. As the studies show, cities are found to be progressive in different ways, and some are experiencing serious junctures that are impeding the gains they have made. The chapter concludes by showing how the 13 city studies of the book are organized along three themes. Theme 1 incorporates the overviews, conceptualizations, and practices in the making of progressive cities. Theme 2 includes chapters that examine specific urban policies focused on inclusion and distributive justice. The authors of chapters brought together in theme 3 explore the idea of conviviality and the associational life of city residents and nonresidents at community and city scales. Discussions of the urban commons, vernacular heritage, and relations with the natural environment are included to show how motives other than those for material gain also arise from grassroots mobilizations and local governance politics aimed at enhancing of urban lifeworlds. The chapters in this book provide hopeful as well as cautionary tales about struggles for progressive cities. Our intention is not to prove that a given city is progressive in any absolute way. It instead uses the lens of our concept of progressive cities to comparatively assess processes of urban governance in the world today and, in so doing, contribute to shifting the discourse on cities toward ideas of human flourishing.
... With the influx of this foreign population, 30 places with concentrations of foreign dwellers, called 'mini global villages', have emerged across Seoul. Thus, Seoul is now attaining a new metropolitan character that goes beyond a globopolis-a place characterized by global neoliberalism that makes it exclusive, homogenous, and focussed on global consumption and the economy-to a cosmopolis: a place characterized by democratization and an increased role for the civil society in governance, which makes it an inclusive, diverse, and convivial space (Douglass 2008). Seoul's cosmopolitanism is expressed through a mosaic of diverse ethnic enclaves or foreign residential communities. ...
... In other words, from a statistical definition of urban places as having high densities of non-agricultural employment, the world is urbanizing very rapidly, but from the point of view of the city as a polis of social and political engagement, the urbanization process can be seen as planetary urbanization without cities. The production of urban space is now dedicated to making Globopolis, which can be described as spatial assemblages of desocialized and depoliticized corporate projects dedicated to global accumulation (Douglass 2009, Gleeson 2006, González 2009, Shatkin 2011, Chang and Huang 2008, Graham and Marvin 2001. ...
... The city government had already experienced several years of popular opposition to its financing of unprecedented scales of mega-projects aimed at lifting Seoul to presumed global city status. These included plans for a 152-story building as the centre of a panoply of projects anointed as the "Han River Renaissance" and Seoul as "International Design City" that resulted in the destruction of one of the city's most vital small-scale shop districts in favor of a gigantic Design Plaza by Zaha Hadid, among many projects that had tripled the city's debt (Douglass 2009(Douglass , 2016b. By 2010 protests had reached a level at which City Hall was often ringed by police buses converted into mobile holding cells, and militarized police forces using water cannons created human walls to prevent protestors from reaching it. ...
Corporatization of the production of urban space is the principal thrust of planetary urbanization taking place in the 21st century. As a process, corporatization subverts the historic meaning of the city as a theater of social action by displacing the smaller spaces of associational life in lanes, neighborhoods, public spaces, open markets, and locally owned shops. In other words, corporatization is dedicated to making Globopolis, which can be described as spatial assemblages of desocialized and depoliticized corporate projects dedicated to global accumulation. To counter this trend, progressive city governments are emerging throughout the world. As forms of participatory governance rising from grassroots mobilizations seeking inclusion, social justice, conviviality, and environmental well-being, progressive city movements
can be understood as the collective expression of aspirations for “another city” oriented toward human flourishing. Political transformations in the governance of Seoul, South Korea, from 2011 are traced to illuminate the interplay between the globalization of urbanization and the deeply contextual characteristics of the shift from Globopolis to progressive cities.
... However, starting in the late 1980s, state-led developmentalism began to encounter tremendous pressure for fundamental change. This pressure came from the emerging, affluent middle class that demanded political reform, and also from the dynamic competitive tension associated with globalisation, along with neoliberal policy regimes aimed at privatising urban spaces and substantially reducing the public sector's role in all aspects of the economy (Douglass 2009). As a result, urbanisation in East Asia has been proceeding under increasingly complicated stratification of social, economic, and political dynamics that are rapidly transforming urban spaces and city life . ...
... This awakened the desire for a new paradigm in society based on an alternative, more sustainable lifestyle, which contributed to the increased interest in neighbourhood planning and local communities. Douglass (2009) had implied the possibility of an alternative future for city life, which might emerge 'after the developmental city', based on an inclusive, diverse cosmo polis that embraces differences and where all residents play a role in making their city. This entails a need to have mechanisms in place for a more participatory process with regard to building cities. ...
... Since the late 1980s, fundamental political reforms have substantially expanded communities' potential to organise, and for intermediary bodies to flourish. Along with democratic reform, community and non-governmental organisations have emerged in Korea, especially in Seoul (Douglass 2009), and a more participatory approach to urban planning began to surface from the late 1990s (City of Seoul 2015). ...
With Asia’s cities undergoing unprecedented growth in the 21st century, lauded the ‘urban century’ by many, Sustainable Cities in Asia provides a timely examination of the challenges facing cities across the continent including some of the projects, approaches and solutions that are currently being tested.
This book uses numerous case studies, analysing topical issues ranging from city cycling in India, to green spaces in China, to the use of community-led energy generation projects in post-Fukushima Japan. Containing contributions from an international team of scholars, it also takes a multi-disciplinary approach and draws on examples from a wide range of countries, including China, India, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. Ultimately, by providing a comprehensive discussion of the broader debates around the shape of sustainable urbanism, it demonstrates that Asia is one of the most active regions in terms of the development of sustainable city strategies.
Tackling the contemporary issues of key importance for sustainability, such as property markets, migration and transport, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Urban Geography, Sustainability, Environmental Studies and Asian studies.
... Promoted and enforced by powerful international lenders such as the World Bank, IMF and the Asia Development Bank, corporatization of government began to substantially limit the scope of government in pursuing remedies to social concerns. Deregulation of control over urban land development, accelerating privatize public spaces, and blurring corporate-government lines through "publicprivate partnerships" all contributed to a new era of corporatization of cities that proceeded without political accounting (Flyvbjerg et al. 2003, Douglass 2009). Corporatization recast the city as an ultra-competitive engine of growth socially justified by a simplified version of trickle-down economics (EIU 2012). ...
... While Brenner and Schmid (2014) proclaim that we have entered an era of planetary urbanization that incorporates every corner of the world into a global urban matrix, inspection on the ground reveals the paradox that corporatization is not producing cities as historically understood to be spheres of social and political action. Many scholars have coined terms for this condition: geographies of nowhere (Kunstler 1994), the city as a theme park (Sorkin 1992), secessionary urban spaces (Graham and Marvin 2001), de-socialized spaces (Gleeson 2006), non-places (Augé 1992), "globopolis" (Douglass 2009), and dystopia (Pinder 2002). This is the context in which in some instances grassroots mobilizations are capturing urban government to reclaim cities as progressive theaters of social and political action. ...
The corporatization of urban space is folding Asia's contemporary urban transition into a broader process of planetary urbanization without cities. Understood as theaters of social life and public decisionmaking, cities are witnessing rapid dissolution into urban fields of corporate mega-projects and private enclaves that fragment, desocialize, and remove citymaking from the public domain.
... However, such acceptance is at odds with the realities of Seoul in the 2002-2011 Lee and Oh years when massive protests were so common that the center of the city was under a nearly continual state of militarized control with busses converted into mobile holding cells for arrested protestors surrounding the City Hall and its adjacent people's park (Douglass 2009). Mass rallies covered a wide spectrum of discontents that were national as well as Seoul directed, but among them were many that focused on the disruptions of mega-projects and the continual "redevelopment-induced gentrification" through dispossessions of residents in lower-income neighborhoods that was endemic to chaebol driven housing and building construction (Shin, 2009:906). ...
... Seoul Capital Region has continued to increase its share of national population into the 21 st century (Douglass 2009). One of the more surprising features of the Saemaul Undong and all of the agriculture support policies that went with it was that farm sizes stayed relatively constant, neither increasing nor decreasing significantly over the course of the 1970s and 1980s. ...
Initiated by the government of President Park Chung-hee in 1970, the Saemaul Undong (New Village Movement) became a nationwide program of rural development that by the end of the decade had spread to cities as a national symbol of the Korean way of government-guided participatory development. Originating as village modernization projects based on materials provided by the government and village self-help cooperation, it was subsequently linked with the advent of the Green Revolution in rice production. The successes attributed to the Saemaul Undong are manifold. Village upgrading and heavily subsidized rice production together raised rural household living standards and incomes to the level of urban households. South Korea also approached selfsufficiency in rice production. Village projects had a snowball effect, with one success encouraging another, leading to substantial village improvements in a relatively short period of time. Local-level officials became more efficient in implementing public programs and were better able to support village and agricultural needs. As a source of unity and national identity, the Saemaul Undong also became a prominent slogan and symbol of a Korean way of development.
... Encroachments into neighbourhoods, culturally vital sites and social spaces are justified for the sake of competitiveness and progress. Public spaces open to people from all walks of life are being lost to commercialised and privately controlled spaces, often in ever larger scales following successful political insurgencies or revolutions (Harvey, 1973;2006;Cuthbert and McKinnell, 1997;Douglass and Daniere, 2009;Douglass, 2009). As such, the very spaces needed for continuing public engagement in governance and city-making are disappearing even with the rise of insurgencies directed toward creating more inclusive public cities. ...
The increasing role of cyberspace in recent urban insurgencies calls for urban scholars to rethink notions of spatialities, public space and the public sphere. However, social movements in cyberspace cannot be the ends of insurgent actions. Hopes for reclaiming public space extend beyond demonstrations and mobilisations to include rebuilding a public city with long-term social impacts. Three themes that emerged in the midst of new media proliferation and Asia's rapid urbanisation include (1) corporatisation of urban space, (2) social media and the city and (3) insurgencies and the public city. Along these three themes, this Special Issue proposes three main issues for a research agenda aimed at analysing urban insurgencies: (1) the relationship between the power of digital media in insurgent mobilisation and the physical spaces of the city, (2) the materialisation of resistance movements in cyberspace and on the ground in the form of an authentic public city and (3) recognition of modest forms of change as results of everyday insurgencies.
... As with the progressive movement in the U.S. a century earlier, we can see the rise of progressive forces seeking to return the city from the gilded ideology of wealth for a few to the convivial city of human flourishing for all, including its social and cultural practices as well as material dimensions. These movements are manifested in insurgencies against the "globopolis" (Douglass 2009) rising from corporatization of the city. ...
... These distinctions between creative milieu as a social process and the creative city as commodity consumption process are of growing importance in Asia as higher income economies moved beyond labor-intensive manufacturing, which swiftly moved out of their cities in towns to special economic zones in Southeast Asia and China from the late 1980s, and are now engaged in a concerted search for ways to revitalize slumping urban economies by turning toward what is summarized as the "cultural economy" as a way to rejuvenate urban economies. This idea, along with creative cites and creative class are attached through neoliberal ideologies extolling the subordination of cities to endless competition through privatization and commodification of consumption, public-corporate partnerships, place marketing, and global city status (Douglass 2009). ...
... The attempt to save Miyashita Park from covert arrangements between the mayor and Nike Corporation is a recent example that failed even though it captured a worldwide audience. In Seoul bloody protests to stop the Second Miracle on the Han megaproject, which resulted in the deaths of nine people, not only failed but also led to the incarceration of besieged residents and awards to the special police team that put it down (Douglass 2009). In Indonesia protests against are appearing in many cities as the rapid proliferation of mini-marks, almost all of which are owned by three corporations, continues sweeping across the archipelago. ...
Along with democratization and the rise of civil society in Asia, grassroots organizations are appearing in neighborhoods and wider urban communities to protect and support living heritages and local cultural spaces as sites for vernacular placemaking, social redistribution and solidarity, and associational life. Many of these initiatives arise in lower-income neighborhoods, declining cities, and other sites of economic malaise where they are also seen as the means to creatively engage residents in revitalizing spaces for shared economic as well as social prosperity. At the same time, governments in Asia are facilitating the corporatization of urban heritage and culturally rich spaces as sites for a "cultural economy" to spur economic growth through mass tourism, commodification of cultural artifacts and practices, and city branding tools. The playing out of the resulting tension between grassroots revitalization and corporate appropriation of living heritage spaces can be seen in the cyclical rhythms of abandonment, devalorization and gentrification of urban space in cities in Asia and around the world. This paper has three purposes: (1) to put forth the case that vernacular cultural spaces created for their own sake can produce and sustain larger economic benefits to a city; (2) to show how successes in producing such spaces risk gentrification, appropriation and diminished capacities through corporatization; and (3) to put forth an agenda for collaborative research.
