ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book illustrates the numerous policy challenges and opportunities facing Asia’s cities, as expressed through a variety of contexts, policy domains, and normative perspectives. It presents an argument about the potential ability of public policy to manage complexity and disruption. The book considers the logic of knowledge creation and the missed opportunities to precipitate a paradigm shift in the epistemic foundations of public policy itself. Understanding how external pressures visit disruption and contradiction on policy systems begins by accounting for path dependencies in the evolution of urban governance. Two related phenomena –globalization and neoliberalism – have precipitated this disruption and contradiction. Issues concerning the scale of governance – including the well-embraced idea that “all politics is local” –underscore the potential of cities to rectify governance failings.
