“World city formation on the Asia Pacific Rim: poverty, ‘everyday’ forms of civil society and environmental management”

Isolating three themes–globalization, localization, and community empowerment–Douglass examines the new forms of community politics that are emerging in the rapidly changing metropolises of East Asia. Focusing on diverse state-civil society relations in various East Asian developmental states, Douglass concludes that the project of empowering the urban poor remains extraordinarily difficult in the context of economic globalization and entrenched political authoritarianism. The appearance of “world city” as the new shibboleth of global achievement has not been missed by governments in Pacific Asia. The increasing strength of labor in these economies has shifted their comparative advantage away from labor-intensive manufacturing and towards higher-order production and service industries, including global information and control functions. Although variations are significant, if poverty is seen a condition of low levels of social, economic and political power, the globally attached processes of urban spatial restructuring and environmental deterioration have been a major contributor to it.