ABSTRACT
The rich and diverse literature on urban change in the Asia-Pacific has correctly identified new urban forms taking shape in the region and explained these forms with reference to both Asia’s material conditions and discursive practices. In the theatre of global capital accumulation or the orbit of the new international division of labour, the Asia-Pacific was understood as a region that
functioned as a new ‘workshop to the world’ specializing in manufacturing (Frobel et al., 1980; Massey, 1984; Armstrong and McGee, 1985). Surprisingly, nowhere in this large body of literature can we find any serious and systematic articulation of the growth dynamics of the new services that are often located in large cities and the impacts that service industries have had on the transformation of mega-cities or mega-urban regions in the continent. The consequences of services growth did not seemingly garner sufficient consideration in major theoretical formulation that dealt with the up and down of the ‘Asian miracles’ or the rise and fall of the ‘Asia-Pacific Century’ (Linder, 1986; Borthwick, 1992; Palat, 1993; Dixon and Drakakis-Smith, 1993; Krugman, 1994; Lingle, 1997).
