ABSTRACT
Asian cities have a distinctive socio-economic history that is salient in understanding the development of urban economies. Throughout history, Asian cities have remained the premier location choice for a wide variety of activities. Korff (1996) notes that Southeast Asian capital cities have a high concentration of elites and a monopoly on the institutions of modernization. Political elite concentration makes city building a national project (Therborn and Ho, 2009). Thus, the notion of primate cities remains very much the norm for Asia, perhaps with the exception of China (where Shanghai is economically more important than Beijing the political centre) and Vietnam (where the economic heart of the country resides in Ho Chi Minh city rather than Hanoi, its capital city).
