ABSTRACT
The metropolis has been at the centre of both the economic growth and financial crisis that have characterised the Pacific Asian region in the 1990s. It has also occupied the centre stage of political events; been cultivated as home to the key symbols of nationhood; is disproportionately influential in the production and reproduction of culture; and embraces the tense social relations of modernising societies. Pacific Asian metropolises are, therefore, at the forefront of the globalisation process. The transparency of the urban landscape reveals the extent to which incorporation in a global economy, with its attendant cultural traits, value systems and routines of everyday life, sculptures that with which it intersects.
