ABSTRACT

In a recent article, Yeung and Lin (2003:121) point to the rapid and dramatic transformations in the economic landscapes of Asia in recent decades as being the key impetus for a continuing interest among economic and urban geographers. This is also the central concern of this book. Service development trajectories in Asia-Pacific are not only dramatic but in many ways they are also quite different from those experienced earlier in Europe and North America. The unevenness of urban development in East and Southeast Asia means that service industries are likely to remain, at least for the foreseeable future, much more concentrated in the primate cities of these regions, compared with the relatively more dispersed distributions now typical in Europe and North America, even though certain world cities such as New York and London remain pre-eminent. As late-comers to development, many Asia-Pacific economies (especially those in Asia) have also been able to incorporate and tap into newer and more efficient information and telecommunications infrastructures in the major cities, with the result that the penetration of services, especially higher order activities such as producer services, has occurred at a much faster pace. This rapid absorption of services has also been facilitated by increasing attempts at deregulation, particularly within East Asia (notably Japan and South Korea).