ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is relatively straightforward-to bring questions of informality and informalization to bear upon the discussion of socio-economic change, particularly tertiarization, in the cities of Pacific Asia. Nonetheless, the path I will follow is somewhat circuitous. This is in part because of the contentious and convoluted state of discussions around the concept of informality, although it is complicated as well by the diversity of conditions and developmental experiences of the cities of Pacific Asia1 and the question of how, in particular, tertiarization may be interpreted in these varying contexts. One stream of thinking, which in some senses propels the main line of inquiry of this volume, is the question of how tertiarization, that is, the continuing growth and differentiation of service industries within the socioeconomic make-up of the city, is linked to patterns of progressive modernization. One line of argument from the study of informality and informalization brings a direct critique to bear upon the assumptions of stage-wise modernization, whereby societies progress from traditions of primary production, through the secondary sector of industrial manufacturing to higher value added-tertiary-forms of economic activity as characteristic of ‘post-industrial’ societies (see Chapter 3). Yet many cities of the world, particularly those of the erstwhile ‘third world’, have long been characterized by high levels of ter-tiarization-such as small-scale trading and services-despite the lack of a developed intermediary manufacturing phase, a phenomenon which the study of informality has sought to explain.
