ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses six major policy issues that confront planners concerned with placing their cities in the top rank of the world hierarchy: spatial organization, regional governance, social and environmental sustainability, migrant workers, the rise of civil society, and intercity networks. It reviews the geography of global capitalism, because the ‘regional level’ to which A. J. Scott refers is precisely the level of world city formation. The chief sources of demographic growth for the mega-city regions come from rural migration and international migration, though Asian world cities are beginning to experience international migration as well. Rural households in world city regions are tightly integrated with an urban economy that is grounded in manufacturing and business services. The hyper-urbanizing cities of Asia are thus drawing on the so-called surplus population of rural and small town areas within their own country, although migrant workers are beginning to arrive in larger numbers also from abroad.
