ABSTRACT
As Pacific Asia enters its first urban century, the forces of globalization are radically restructuring cities as they intersect with local histories and shifting constellations of power. Two contradictory outcomes are readily observed in this local-global process: the rise of civil society and the yielding of urban spaces to the logic of global accumulation. The rise of civil society is manifested in at least two ways: first, the increasing pressure for more livable cities that provide spaces for everyday forms of social engagement away from state and corporate control and, second, insurgent occupation of urban spaces to push the agenda for political reform. In contrast, the logic of global accumulation pits city against city in a hyper-competitive game to build urban landscapes that facilitate the increasing velocity of the global circulation of capital: through the capture and commodification of space, the shift from public to private ownership and control, and the conversion of community and cultural spaces into simulated “world city” spaces for global service functions and localized segments of transnational value-added chains.
