ABSTRACT
Cities in the Asia-Pacific region have undergone rapid and extensive transformations over the past few decades. These changes have been linked to regional and global economic flows (Lo and Yeung 1996). Flows of trade, investments, people and information have impacted urban environmental conditions as development trajectories have been substantially altered (see, e.g., Burgess et al. 1997; Lo and Marcotullio 2001). Globalization flows have been accompanied by rapid economic and population growth within cities of the region. Over the last 50 years, the AsiaPacific region has more than doubled the percentage of people living in cities from 17 to 38 per cent, meaning the addition of 1.15 billion people. Together these influences along with the rapid diffusion of new technologies have had dramatic impacts on the urban environmental conditions within the region.
