Professor of Geography and Urban Studies. Also Director of the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre. His research centres on the critical analysis of the political economy of urbanisation with particular attention to cities in Asian countries such as Vietnam, Singapore, South Korea and China. His research themes include the politics of displacement; gentrification; real estate speculation; the right to the city; mega-events as urban spectacles. His most recent project on circulating urbanism has also brought him to work on Ecuador. Visit http://urbancommune.net/bio for a more extended bio. Phone: +44 (0)20 7955 6383 Address: Department of Geography and Environment London School of Economics Houghton Street London WC2A 2AE United Kingdom
Considering Asian cities ranging from Taipei, Hong Kong and Bangkok to Hanoi, Nanjing and Seoul, ... more Considering Asian cities ranging from Taipei, Hong Kong and Bangkok to Hanoi, Nanjing and Seoul, this collection discusses the socio-political processes of how neoliberalization entwines with local political economies and legacies of ‘developmental’ or ‘socialist’ statism to produce urban contestations centered on housing. The book takes housing as a key entry point, given its prime position in the making of social and economic policies as well as the political legitimacy of Asian states. It examines urban policies related to housing in Asian economies in order to explore their continuing alterations and mutations, as they come into conflict and coalesce with neoliberal policies. In discussing the experience of each city, it takes into consideration the variegated relations between the state, the market and the society, and explores how the global pressure of neoliberalization has manifested in each country and has influenced the shaping of national housing questions.
This is the first book in Polity's new 'Urban Futures' series.
At the beginning of the twenty-fi... more This is the first book in Polity's new 'Urban Futures' series.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, proclamations rang out that gentrification had gone global. But what do we mean by 'gentrification' today? How can we compare 'gentrification' in New York and London with that in Shanghai, Johannesburg, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro? This book argues that gentrification is one of the most significant and socially unjust processes affecting cities worldwide today, and one that demands renewed critical assessment.
Drawing on the 'new' comparative urbanism and writings on planetary urbanization, the authors undertake a much-needed transurban analysis underpinned by a critical political economy approach. Looking beyond the usual gentrification suspects in Europe and North America to non-Western cases, from slum gentrification to mega-displacement, they show that gentrification has unfolded at a planetary scale, but it has not assumed a North to South or West to East trajectory the story is much more complex than that.
Rich with empirical detail, yet wide-ranging, Planetary Gentrification unhinges, unsettles and provincializes Western notions of urban development. It will be invaluable to students and scholars interested in the future of cities and the production of a truly global urban studies, and equally importantly to all those committed to social justice in cities.
Under contemporary capitalism the extraction of value from the built environment has escalated, w... more Under contemporary capitalism the extraction of value from the built environment has escalated, working in tandem with other urban processes to lay the foundations for the exploitative processes of gentrification world-wide. Global gentrifications: Uneven development and displacement critically assesses and tests the meaning and significance of gentrification in places outside the 'usual suspects' of the Global North. Informed by a rich array of case studies from cities in Asia, Latin America, Africa, Southern Europe, and beyond, the book (re)discovers the important generalities and geographical specificities associated with the uneven process of gentrification globally. It highlights intensifying global struggles over urban space and underlines gentrification as a growing and important battleground in the contemporary world. The book will be of value to students and academics, policy makers, planners and community organisations.
Geography and Environment Discussion Paper Series, 2020
The paper aims to investigate the relations between work and urban space, focusing on the
struggl... more The paper aims to investigate the relations between work and urban space, focusing on the struggles of street vendors for the “right to the city centre” in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. We join critical debates on Brazil’s internationally praised urban reform by focusing on informal workers. Beyond lacking the protection of labour laws, the “right to the city” (RttC) of such workers has been consistently denied through restrictive legislations and policies. In the context of the “crisis” of waged labour, we explore the increasing centrality of urban space for working-class political struggles. Looking at Belo Horizonte, the paper traces the relation between urban participatory democracy and the development of legal-institutional frameworks that restricted street vendors’ access to urban space in the city. In the context of an urban revitalisation policy implemented in 2017, we then explore the use of legal frameworks to remove street vendors from public areas of the city and the resulting political resistance movement. The discussion focuses on the emergence of the Vicentão Occupation, a building squatted by homeless families and street vendors in conflict with the local state. Though this case, we explore the radical potential of contemporary articulations of Henri Lefebvre’s framework emerging from the confluence of diverse local urban struggles for “the right to the city centre”. Ultimately we argue for an understanding of the RttC as a process and a site of continual struggle whose terrain is shaped, but cannot be replaced by, legal frameworks that need to be constantly contested and evolving to reflect the shifting socio-spatial relations.
CITY: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 2020
Compressed development experiences, especially in Asia, have translated into expectations for 'fa... more Compressed development experiences, especially in Asia, have translated into expectations for 'fast cities' where time and space are compressed to materialise 'real' Asia experiences. However, what does 'fast urbanism' mean for those who see Asian cites as reference points? Moreover, what does 'fast urbanism' mean for those who have living memories of such fast-paced development, and how might this be different for their future generations? This intervention addresses these two questions by reflecting on the politics of temporality, calling for critical attention to the ideological imposition of 'fast' development in Asia and beyond. We argue that the 'Asian speed' of development was enabled in specific historical and geographical conjunctures, which entailed the appropriation of individual and collective aspirations through the invention of a certain kind of futurity and in so doing, consolidated of local politico-economic structures that displace both the present and the future.
Annals of Association of American Geographers, 2020
In an effort to contribute to the contemporary debates on accumulation by dispossession (ABD), we... more In an effort to contribute to the contemporary debates on accumulation by dispossession (ABD), we argue for a closer attention to the link between the state and the ABD. We propose contextualizing ABD within the institutionalization of the process of replacing communal property rights with private property rights. In such institutionalization, the state plays a critical role as the final guarantor of property rights. As such, the socio-spatial specificities of the state would strongly influence how ABD unfolds and how it is understood. In the empirical part of this paper, we use this approach to focus on a specific type of capitalist state, that is, the developmental state, to examine the emergence of apartment-dominated residential landscapes in Gangnam District, Seoul, in the 1970s through the use of ABD.
Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia, 2019
The chapter discusses how important housing questions are for Asian cities and citizens in the co... more The chapter discusses how important housing questions are for Asian cities and citizens in the contemporary era of neoliberalization. It highlights the importance of understanding the path-dependent nature of neoliberalization especially in the context of Asia’s condensed development under the developmentalist states. It also shows how housing has been at the heart of urban contestations in Asian cities, especially given its significance for wealth generation and upward class mobility when the formation of middle classes would have been the state’s legitimacy project. The chapter concludes by providing a summary of each contributing chapter.
The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies, 2019
*The author copy of the paper can be downloaded by following this link: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/... more *The author copy of the paper can be downloaded by following this link: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/91490/
This chapter on Asian urbanism begins by examining how Asian urbanism can be seen as both actually existing and imagined, taking into consideration the ways in which Asian urbanism has entailed the use of successful Asian cities as reference points for other cities in the Global South on the one hand, and how such referencing practices often entail the rendering of Asian urbanism as imagined models and ideologies that are detached from the realities of the receiving end of the model transfer on the other. The ensuing section examines how Asian urbanism can be situated in the context of state-society relations, with a particular emphasis on the role of the Asian states that exhibited developmental and/or authoritarian orientations in the late twentieth century. The penultimate section explores the socio-spatiality of Asian urbanism, summarising some salient characteristics of Asian urbanism. The final section concludes with an emphasis on the need of avoiding Asian exceptionalism, and also of having a pluralistic perspective on Asian urbanism.
We often hear the frustrations of villagers whose lands are violently taken away against their wi... more We often hear the frustrations of villagers whose lands are violently taken away against their will with no or poor compensations (e.g. Hoffman 2014; Johnson 2013; Pomfret 2013). Sargeson (2013) argues that violence is an integral element of China’s urbanisation project, authorising urban development. In this chapter, we show that such use of state violence goes hand in hand with another dimension of state action, that is co-optation of villagers (cf. Gramsci 1971) by the imposition of what Henri Lefebvre (2003) refers to as ‘official urbanism’. Drawing on Lefebvre’s critiques of urbanism, this chapter aims to reflect upon the use of official urbanism to advance China’s ‘urban age’, and addresses two analytical objectives by dissecting green belt policy in Beijing. First, we demonstrate China’s urbanism as an institution and an ideology is a state project: it is integrated with both economic and political practices, and plays a critical role in sustaining the state strategy of land-based accumulation. Second, we also illustrate that official urbanism, as an ideology, has been successfully instilled into the national ethos, imposing it upon the population (especially villagers) as a new and desirable way of life, which in turn supports the state’s project of urbanism. We conclude that urbanism is one and the same expression of politics of urban space, with the Party-state’s ideological, economic and political ambitions put at the centre. For this reason, any meaningful approach to critiquing existing sets of urban knowledge and practice that produces urban inequalities and injustice in contemporary China should start from negation of the ‘official urbanism’.
Despite significant contributions made to progressive urban politics, contemporary debates on cit... more Despite significant contributions made to progressive urban politics, contemporary debates on cities and social justice are in need of adequately capturing the local historical and socio-political processes of how people have come to perceive the concept of rights in their struggles against the hegemonic establishments. These limitations act as constraints on overcoming hegemony imposed by the ruling class on subordinate classes, and restrict a contextual understanding of such concepts as the right to the city in non-Western contexts, undermining the potential to produce locally tuned alternative strategies to build progressive and just cities. In this regard, this article discusses the evolving nature of urban rights discourses that were produced by urban protesters fighting redevelopment and displacement, paying particular attention to the experiences in Seoul that epitomised speculative urban accumulation under the (neoliberalizing) developmental state. Method-wise, the article makes use of archival records (protesters’ pamphlets and newsletters), photographs, and field research archives. The data are supplemented by the author’s in-depth interviews with former and current housing activists. The article argues that the urban poor have the capacity to challenge the state repression and hegemony of the ruling class ideology; that the urban movements such as the evictees’ struggles against redevelopment are to be placed in the broader contexts of social movements; that concepts such as the right to the city are to be understood against the rich history of place-specific evolution of urban rights discourses; that cross-class alliance is key to sustaining urban movements.
"...in this special feature we ask, if accumulation by dispossession has become a planetary condi... more "...in this special feature we ask, if accumulation by dispossession has become a planetary condition, what has been the role of urbanisation and particular cities in this process? In posing this question our intention is not merely to drag Harvey through various debates, or seek rapprochement by establishing some heterodox synthesis. Instead, what we suggest is that the critique of the impoverished spatial ontologies and over-expanded urban epistemologies diagnose a problem that is more than academic. The need to conceptualise the urban multiplication and planetary diversification of dispossessions is necessary to confront the shapeshifting apparatuses that reproduce capitalist power. Therefore, in this special feature, our primary aim is not to reject, defend or enlist certain positions and methods in relation to the ‘planetary’. Rather the following articles track the limits of theory when confronted with world-forming and world-destroying processes of accumulation by dispossession."
In this chapter, I discuss some of the salient issues that are at the centre of planetary thinkin... more In this chapter, I discuss some of the salient issues that are at the centre of planetary thinking of gentrification, examining how the inclusion of the urbanization experiences of non-usual suspects in the Global South helps us expand our horizon of gentrification research and reinterpret what has been learnt from the Global North. First, the chapter discusses how our understanding of displacement needs to actively take into consideration the temporality, spatial relations and subjectivity. Second, the chapter ascertains the importance of locating gentrification in broader urban processes and also in the context of uneven development. Third, the chapter argues that gentrification is to be treated as a political and ideological project of the state and the ruling class in addition to it being an economic project. The concluding section sums up the arguments and provides some reflections on what it means to do comparative research on global gentrifications from a planetary perspective.
In this chapter, we discuss what it means to study gentrification beyond the Anglo-American domai... more In this chapter, we discuss what it means to study gentrification beyond the Anglo-American domain, emphasising the possibility of gentrification mutating across time and space, in the same way any other social phenomena associated with the changing nature of capitalism goes through mutation. We also question here why academia should maintain the Anglo American cultural region as a necessary comparative framework to talk about gentrification elsewhere. Gentrification is now embedded in urbanisation processes that bring together politics, culture, society and ideology. Such urbanisation is uneven and place-specific, thus displaying multiple trajectories, hence there is a need to provincialise (c.f. Chakrabarty, 2000; cr Lees, 2012) gentrification as we know it (namely, the rise of gentrification in plural forms or in other words, provincial gentrifications). However, we argue this must be done without losing the most critical aspects of gentrification that need to be investigated, namely the class remaking of urban space. For us, gentrification is a reflection of broader political economic processes that result in the unequal and uneven production of urban(ising) space, entailing power struggles between haves and have-nots, be they disputes over the upgrading of small neighbourhoods or larger clashes related to social displacement experienced at the metropolitan or even regional scale.
Urbanization in China has been a political and economic project during the period of economic ref... more Urbanization in China has been a political and economic project during the period of economic reform. Using the case study of Guangzhou in south China, this paper aims to examine the process of transformation of Chinese cities into cities of capital, and scrutinise how this transformation entails the dispossession of urban inhabitants’ rights by the state in order to secure land assets to facilitate urban accumulation. Land expropriation and urban redevelopment serve the function of erasing multiple layers of socialist relations and rights that used to be associated with inherited properties from the planned economy era. Dispossession facilitates capital accumulation and helps local governments realise their developmental aspiration, functioning as a sophisticated political project in China’s urbanization process.
This special issue, a collection of papers presented and debated at an Urban Studies Foundation- ... more This special issue, a collection of papers presented and debated at an Urban Studies Foundation- funded workshop on Global Gentrification in London in 2012, attempts to problematise contemporary understandings of gentrification, which is all too often confined to the experiences of the so-called Global North, and sometimes too narrowly understood as classic gentrification. Instead of simply confirming the rise of gentrification in places outside of the usual suspects of North America and Western Europe, a more open-minded approach is advocated so as not to over- generalise distinctive urban processes under the label of gentrification, thus understanding gentrification as constitutive of diverse urban processes at work. This requires a careful attention to the complexity of property rights and tenure relations, and calls for a dialogue between gentrification and non-gentrification researchers to understand how gentrification communicates with other theories to capture the full dynamics of urban transformation. Papers in this special issue have made great strides towards these goals, namely theorising, distorting, mutating and bringing into question the concept of gentrification itself, as seen from the perspective of the Global East, a label that we have deliberately given in order to problematise the existing common practices of grouping all regions other than Western European and North American ones into the Global South.
What does gentrification mean under speculative urbanisation led by a strong developmental state?... more What does gentrification mean under speculative urbanisation led by a strong developmental state? This paper analyses the contemporary history of Seoul’s urban redevelopment, arguing that new-build gentrification is an endogenous process embedded in Korea’s highly speculative urban development processes from the 1980s. Property owners, construction firms and local/central governments coalesce, facilitating the extraction of exchange value by closing the rent gap. Displacement of poorer owner-occupiers and tenants was requisite for the success of speculative accumulation. Furthermore, the paper also contends that Korea’s speculative urbanisation under the strong developmental (and later (neo-)liberalising) state has rendered popular resistance to displacement ineffective despite its initial success in securing state concessions. Examining the experience of Seoul in times of condensed industrialisation and speculative urbanisation helps inform the existing literature on gentrification by resorting to non-Western empirics.
Gentrification requires properties to be available for investment through market transactions. In... more Gentrification requires properties to be available for investment through market transactions. In mainland China which has gone through transition from a planned to a market economy, it is necessary to unleash decommodified real estate properties and make them amenable to investment. This entails inhabitants’ dispossession to dissociate them from claiming their rights to the properties and to their neighbourhoods. This paper argues that while China’s urban accumulation may have produced new-build gentrification, redevelopment projects have been targeting dilapidated urban spaces that are yet to be fully converted into commodities. This means that dispossession is a precursor to gentrification. Dispossession occurs through both coercion and co-optation, and reflects the pathdependency of China’s socialist legacy. The findings contribute to the debates on contextualising the workings of gentrification in the global South, and highlight the importance of identifying multiple urban processes at work to produce gentrification and speculative urban accumulation.
Currently Latin American cities are seeing simultaneous processes of reinvestment and redevelopme... more Currently Latin American cities are seeing simultaneous processes of reinvestment and redevelopment in their historic central areas. These are not just mega scale interventions like Porto Maravilha in Rio or Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires or the luxury renovations seen in Santa Fé or Nueva Polanco in Mexico City, they include state-led, piecemeal, high-rise interventions in Santiago, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Panamá, and Bogotá, all of which are causing the displacement of original populations and thus are forms of gentrification. Until very recently, these processes have been under conceptualized and little critiqued in Latin America, but they deserve careful scrutiny, along with new forms of neighbourhood organisation, activism and resistance. In this introduction, we begin that task, drawing on the work begun in an Urban Studies Foundation-funded workshop on Global Gentrification held in Santiago, Chile in 2012. Our aim is not just to understand these urban changes and conflicts as gentrification, but to empirically test the applicability of a generic understanding of gentrification beyond the usual narratives of/from the global north. From this investigation we hope to nurture new critical narratives, be sensitive enough to engage with indigenous theoretical narratives, and understand the dialectical interplay between state policies, financial markets, local politics and people. The papers in this special issue deal with the core issues of state power, urban policies (exerted at metropolitan and neighbourhood levels), an enormous influx of financial investment in derelict neighbourhoods, which produces exclusion and segregation, significant loss of urban heritage from rapidly 'renewing' neighbourhoods, and even some institutional arrangements that make possible anti-displacement activism and self-managed social housing production.
"...젠트리피케이션에 따른 폐해가 날로 증가하는 상황에서 어떻게 젠트리피케이션에 효과적으로 저항할 것인가? 젠트리피케이션에 대한 저항은 자본 성격의 이해, 그리고 젠트리피케... more "...젠트리피케이션에 따른 폐해가 날로 증가하는 상황에서 어떻게 젠트리피케이션에 효과적으로 저항할 것인가? 젠트리피케이션에 대한 저항은 자본 성격의 이해, 그리고 젠트리피케이션을 둘러싼 사회관계의 이해, 지배 이데올로기에 대한 대항 이데올로기의 생산 등을 요구받는다. 근래 들어 주목받고 있는 상업 젠트리피케이션은 주로 건물주와 임차인의 갈등으로 드러나고, 종종 ‘갑질’이라고 지칭되는 건물주의 재산권 행사를(명도소송에 이은 강제집행을) 보장하는 사유화된 권력과 공권력의 개입, 그리고 이에 저항하는 임차인 ‘을’의 갈등으로 드러난다. 젠트리피케이션에 대한 관심이 높아진 것과 비례해서 이에 대한 소개글과 연구성과 발표가 늘어나고 있지만,4) 젠트리피케이션이라는 도시 과정에 저항하고자 하는 실천, 그리고 이러한 실천이 한국 사회에서 갖는 의미에 대한 학술적 논의는 여전히 부족하며,5) 이러한 논의를 활성화하는 데 보탬이 되고자 이번 ≪공간과 사회≫ 특집호가 ‘발전주의 도시화와 젠트리피케이션’이라는 주제로 기획되었다."
Mega events and Globalization: Capital and Spectacle in a Changing World Order (URL: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138805613/), Oct 19, 2015
By juxtaposing the experiences of Guangzhou and Incheon in their preparation for the Asian Games,... more By juxtaposing the experiences of Guangzhou and Incheon in their preparation for the Asian Games, this chapter aims to show how both cities attempted, sometimes successfully and at other times unsuccessfully, to make use of the Asian Games to realise their developmental aspirations by investing heavily in the built environment. These attempts included fast-tracking the development process by launching ambitious mega-projects as part of channeling capital into the secondary circuit of the built environment (Harvey, 1978; see also Shin, 2012). As the chapter shows, these efforts were unfortunately speculative and debt-driven, placing a heavy burden on each city’s future developmental prospects.
Considering Asian cities ranging from Taipei, Hong Kong and Bangkok to Hanoi, Nanjing and Seoul, ... more Considering Asian cities ranging from Taipei, Hong Kong and Bangkok to Hanoi, Nanjing and Seoul, this collection discusses the socio-political processes of how neoliberalization entwines with local political economies and legacies of ‘developmental’ or ‘socialist’ statism to produce urban contestations centered on housing. The book takes housing as a key entry point, given its prime position in the making of social and economic policies as well as the political legitimacy of Asian states. It examines urban policies related to housing in Asian economies in order to explore their continuing alterations and mutations, as they come into conflict and coalesce with neoliberal policies. In discussing the experience of each city, it takes into consideration the variegated relations between the state, the market and the society, and explores how the global pressure of neoliberalization has manifested in each country and has influenced the shaping of national housing questions.
This is the first book in Polity's new 'Urban Futures' series.
At the beginning of the twenty-fi... more This is the first book in Polity's new 'Urban Futures' series.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, proclamations rang out that gentrification had gone global. But what do we mean by 'gentrification' today? How can we compare 'gentrification' in New York and London with that in Shanghai, Johannesburg, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro? This book argues that gentrification is one of the most significant and socially unjust processes affecting cities worldwide today, and one that demands renewed critical assessment.
Drawing on the 'new' comparative urbanism and writings on planetary urbanization, the authors undertake a much-needed transurban analysis underpinned by a critical political economy approach. Looking beyond the usual gentrification suspects in Europe and North America to non-Western cases, from slum gentrification to mega-displacement, they show that gentrification has unfolded at a planetary scale, but it has not assumed a North to South or West to East trajectory the story is much more complex than that.
Rich with empirical detail, yet wide-ranging, Planetary Gentrification unhinges, unsettles and provincializes Western notions of urban development. It will be invaluable to students and scholars interested in the future of cities and the production of a truly global urban studies, and equally importantly to all those committed to social justice in cities.
Under contemporary capitalism the extraction of value from the built environment has escalated, w... more Under contemporary capitalism the extraction of value from the built environment has escalated, working in tandem with other urban processes to lay the foundations for the exploitative processes of gentrification world-wide. Global gentrifications: Uneven development and displacement critically assesses and tests the meaning and significance of gentrification in places outside the 'usual suspects' of the Global North. Informed by a rich array of case studies from cities in Asia, Latin America, Africa, Southern Europe, and beyond, the book (re)discovers the important generalities and geographical specificities associated with the uneven process of gentrification globally. It highlights intensifying global struggles over urban space and underlines gentrification as a growing and important battleground in the contemporary world. The book will be of value to students and academics, policy makers, planners and community organisations.
Geography and Environment Discussion Paper Series, 2020
The paper aims to investigate the relations between work and urban space, focusing on the
struggl... more The paper aims to investigate the relations between work and urban space, focusing on the struggles of street vendors for the “right to the city centre” in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. We join critical debates on Brazil’s internationally praised urban reform by focusing on informal workers. Beyond lacking the protection of labour laws, the “right to the city” (RttC) of such workers has been consistently denied through restrictive legislations and policies. In the context of the “crisis” of waged labour, we explore the increasing centrality of urban space for working-class political struggles. Looking at Belo Horizonte, the paper traces the relation between urban participatory democracy and the development of legal-institutional frameworks that restricted street vendors’ access to urban space in the city. In the context of an urban revitalisation policy implemented in 2017, we then explore the use of legal frameworks to remove street vendors from public areas of the city and the resulting political resistance movement. The discussion focuses on the emergence of the Vicentão Occupation, a building squatted by homeless families and street vendors in conflict with the local state. Though this case, we explore the radical potential of contemporary articulations of Henri Lefebvre’s framework emerging from the confluence of diverse local urban struggles for “the right to the city centre”. Ultimately we argue for an understanding of the RttC as a process and a site of continual struggle whose terrain is shaped, but cannot be replaced by, legal frameworks that need to be constantly contested and evolving to reflect the shifting socio-spatial relations.
CITY: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 2020
Compressed development experiences, especially in Asia, have translated into expectations for 'fa... more Compressed development experiences, especially in Asia, have translated into expectations for 'fast cities' where time and space are compressed to materialise 'real' Asia experiences. However, what does 'fast urbanism' mean for those who see Asian cites as reference points? Moreover, what does 'fast urbanism' mean for those who have living memories of such fast-paced development, and how might this be different for their future generations? This intervention addresses these two questions by reflecting on the politics of temporality, calling for critical attention to the ideological imposition of 'fast' development in Asia and beyond. We argue that the 'Asian speed' of development was enabled in specific historical and geographical conjunctures, which entailed the appropriation of individual and collective aspirations through the invention of a certain kind of futurity and in so doing, consolidated of local politico-economic structures that displace both the present and the future.
Annals of Association of American Geographers, 2020
In an effort to contribute to the contemporary debates on accumulation by dispossession (ABD), we... more In an effort to contribute to the contemporary debates on accumulation by dispossession (ABD), we argue for a closer attention to the link between the state and the ABD. We propose contextualizing ABD within the institutionalization of the process of replacing communal property rights with private property rights. In such institutionalization, the state plays a critical role as the final guarantor of property rights. As such, the socio-spatial specificities of the state would strongly influence how ABD unfolds and how it is understood. In the empirical part of this paper, we use this approach to focus on a specific type of capitalist state, that is, the developmental state, to examine the emergence of apartment-dominated residential landscapes in Gangnam District, Seoul, in the 1970s through the use of ABD.
Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia, 2019
The chapter discusses how important housing questions are for Asian cities and citizens in the co... more The chapter discusses how important housing questions are for Asian cities and citizens in the contemporary era of neoliberalization. It highlights the importance of understanding the path-dependent nature of neoliberalization especially in the context of Asia’s condensed development under the developmentalist states. It also shows how housing has been at the heart of urban contestations in Asian cities, especially given its significance for wealth generation and upward class mobility when the formation of middle classes would have been the state’s legitimacy project. The chapter concludes by providing a summary of each contributing chapter.
The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies, 2019
*The author copy of the paper can be downloaded by following this link: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/... more *The author copy of the paper can be downloaded by following this link: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/91490/
This chapter on Asian urbanism begins by examining how Asian urbanism can be seen as both actually existing and imagined, taking into consideration the ways in which Asian urbanism has entailed the use of successful Asian cities as reference points for other cities in the Global South on the one hand, and how such referencing practices often entail the rendering of Asian urbanism as imagined models and ideologies that are detached from the realities of the receiving end of the model transfer on the other. The ensuing section examines how Asian urbanism can be situated in the context of state-society relations, with a particular emphasis on the role of the Asian states that exhibited developmental and/or authoritarian orientations in the late twentieth century. The penultimate section explores the socio-spatiality of Asian urbanism, summarising some salient characteristics of Asian urbanism. The final section concludes with an emphasis on the need of avoiding Asian exceptionalism, and also of having a pluralistic perspective on Asian urbanism.
We often hear the frustrations of villagers whose lands are violently taken away against their wi... more We often hear the frustrations of villagers whose lands are violently taken away against their will with no or poor compensations (e.g. Hoffman 2014; Johnson 2013; Pomfret 2013). Sargeson (2013) argues that violence is an integral element of China’s urbanisation project, authorising urban development. In this chapter, we show that such use of state violence goes hand in hand with another dimension of state action, that is co-optation of villagers (cf. Gramsci 1971) by the imposition of what Henri Lefebvre (2003) refers to as ‘official urbanism’. Drawing on Lefebvre’s critiques of urbanism, this chapter aims to reflect upon the use of official urbanism to advance China’s ‘urban age’, and addresses two analytical objectives by dissecting green belt policy in Beijing. First, we demonstrate China’s urbanism as an institution and an ideology is a state project: it is integrated with both economic and political practices, and plays a critical role in sustaining the state strategy of land-based accumulation. Second, we also illustrate that official urbanism, as an ideology, has been successfully instilled into the national ethos, imposing it upon the population (especially villagers) as a new and desirable way of life, which in turn supports the state’s project of urbanism. We conclude that urbanism is one and the same expression of politics of urban space, with the Party-state’s ideological, economic and political ambitions put at the centre. For this reason, any meaningful approach to critiquing existing sets of urban knowledge and practice that produces urban inequalities and injustice in contemporary China should start from negation of the ‘official urbanism’.
Despite significant contributions made to progressive urban politics, contemporary debates on cit... more Despite significant contributions made to progressive urban politics, contemporary debates on cities and social justice are in need of adequately capturing the local historical and socio-political processes of how people have come to perceive the concept of rights in their struggles against the hegemonic establishments. These limitations act as constraints on overcoming hegemony imposed by the ruling class on subordinate classes, and restrict a contextual understanding of such concepts as the right to the city in non-Western contexts, undermining the potential to produce locally tuned alternative strategies to build progressive and just cities. In this regard, this article discusses the evolving nature of urban rights discourses that were produced by urban protesters fighting redevelopment and displacement, paying particular attention to the experiences in Seoul that epitomised speculative urban accumulation under the (neoliberalizing) developmental state. Method-wise, the article makes use of archival records (protesters’ pamphlets and newsletters), photographs, and field research archives. The data are supplemented by the author’s in-depth interviews with former and current housing activists. The article argues that the urban poor have the capacity to challenge the state repression and hegemony of the ruling class ideology; that the urban movements such as the evictees’ struggles against redevelopment are to be placed in the broader contexts of social movements; that concepts such as the right to the city are to be understood against the rich history of place-specific evolution of urban rights discourses; that cross-class alliance is key to sustaining urban movements.
"...in this special feature we ask, if accumulation by dispossession has become a planetary condi... more "...in this special feature we ask, if accumulation by dispossession has become a planetary condition, what has been the role of urbanisation and particular cities in this process? In posing this question our intention is not merely to drag Harvey through various debates, or seek rapprochement by establishing some heterodox synthesis. Instead, what we suggest is that the critique of the impoverished spatial ontologies and over-expanded urban epistemologies diagnose a problem that is more than academic. The need to conceptualise the urban multiplication and planetary diversification of dispossessions is necessary to confront the shapeshifting apparatuses that reproduce capitalist power. Therefore, in this special feature, our primary aim is not to reject, defend or enlist certain positions and methods in relation to the ‘planetary’. Rather the following articles track the limits of theory when confronted with world-forming and world-destroying processes of accumulation by dispossession."
In this chapter, I discuss some of the salient issues that are at the centre of planetary thinkin... more In this chapter, I discuss some of the salient issues that are at the centre of planetary thinking of gentrification, examining how the inclusion of the urbanization experiences of non-usual suspects in the Global South helps us expand our horizon of gentrification research and reinterpret what has been learnt from the Global North. First, the chapter discusses how our understanding of displacement needs to actively take into consideration the temporality, spatial relations and subjectivity. Second, the chapter ascertains the importance of locating gentrification in broader urban processes and also in the context of uneven development. Third, the chapter argues that gentrification is to be treated as a political and ideological project of the state and the ruling class in addition to it being an economic project. The concluding section sums up the arguments and provides some reflections on what it means to do comparative research on global gentrifications from a planetary perspective.
In this chapter, we discuss what it means to study gentrification beyond the Anglo-American domai... more In this chapter, we discuss what it means to study gentrification beyond the Anglo-American domain, emphasising the possibility of gentrification mutating across time and space, in the same way any other social phenomena associated with the changing nature of capitalism goes through mutation. We also question here why academia should maintain the Anglo American cultural region as a necessary comparative framework to talk about gentrification elsewhere. Gentrification is now embedded in urbanisation processes that bring together politics, culture, society and ideology. Such urbanisation is uneven and place-specific, thus displaying multiple trajectories, hence there is a need to provincialise (c.f. Chakrabarty, 2000; cr Lees, 2012) gentrification as we know it (namely, the rise of gentrification in plural forms or in other words, provincial gentrifications). However, we argue this must be done without losing the most critical aspects of gentrification that need to be investigated, namely the class remaking of urban space. For us, gentrification is a reflection of broader political economic processes that result in the unequal and uneven production of urban(ising) space, entailing power struggles between haves and have-nots, be they disputes over the upgrading of small neighbourhoods or larger clashes related to social displacement experienced at the metropolitan or even regional scale.
Urbanization in China has been a political and economic project during the period of economic ref... more Urbanization in China has been a political and economic project during the period of economic reform. Using the case study of Guangzhou in south China, this paper aims to examine the process of transformation of Chinese cities into cities of capital, and scrutinise how this transformation entails the dispossession of urban inhabitants’ rights by the state in order to secure land assets to facilitate urban accumulation. Land expropriation and urban redevelopment serve the function of erasing multiple layers of socialist relations and rights that used to be associated with inherited properties from the planned economy era. Dispossession facilitates capital accumulation and helps local governments realise their developmental aspiration, functioning as a sophisticated political project in China’s urbanization process.
This special issue, a collection of papers presented and debated at an Urban Studies Foundation- ... more This special issue, a collection of papers presented and debated at an Urban Studies Foundation- funded workshop on Global Gentrification in London in 2012, attempts to problematise contemporary understandings of gentrification, which is all too often confined to the experiences of the so-called Global North, and sometimes too narrowly understood as classic gentrification. Instead of simply confirming the rise of gentrification in places outside of the usual suspects of North America and Western Europe, a more open-minded approach is advocated so as not to over- generalise distinctive urban processes under the label of gentrification, thus understanding gentrification as constitutive of diverse urban processes at work. This requires a careful attention to the complexity of property rights and tenure relations, and calls for a dialogue between gentrification and non-gentrification researchers to understand how gentrification communicates with other theories to capture the full dynamics of urban transformation. Papers in this special issue have made great strides towards these goals, namely theorising, distorting, mutating and bringing into question the concept of gentrification itself, as seen from the perspective of the Global East, a label that we have deliberately given in order to problematise the existing common practices of grouping all regions other than Western European and North American ones into the Global South.
What does gentrification mean under speculative urbanisation led by a strong developmental state?... more What does gentrification mean under speculative urbanisation led by a strong developmental state? This paper analyses the contemporary history of Seoul’s urban redevelopment, arguing that new-build gentrification is an endogenous process embedded in Korea’s highly speculative urban development processes from the 1980s. Property owners, construction firms and local/central governments coalesce, facilitating the extraction of exchange value by closing the rent gap. Displacement of poorer owner-occupiers and tenants was requisite for the success of speculative accumulation. Furthermore, the paper also contends that Korea’s speculative urbanisation under the strong developmental (and later (neo-)liberalising) state has rendered popular resistance to displacement ineffective despite its initial success in securing state concessions. Examining the experience of Seoul in times of condensed industrialisation and speculative urbanisation helps inform the existing literature on gentrification by resorting to non-Western empirics.
Gentrification requires properties to be available for investment through market transactions. In... more Gentrification requires properties to be available for investment through market transactions. In mainland China which has gone through transition from a planned to a market economy, it is necessary to unleash decommodified real estate properties and make them amenable to investment. This entails inhabitants’ dispossession to dissociate them from claiming their rights to the properties and to their neighbourhoods. This paper argues that while China’s urban accumulation may have produced new-build gentrification, redevelopment projects have been targeting dilapidated urban spaces that are yet to be fully converted into commodities. This means that dispossession is a precursor to gentrification. Dispossession occurs through both coercion and co-optation, and reflects the pathdependency of China’s socialist legacy. The findings contribute to the debates on contextualising the workings of gentrification in the global South, and highlight the importance of identifying multiple urban processes at work to produce gentrification and speculative urban accumulation.
Currently Latin American cities are seeing simultaneous processes of reinvestment and redevelopme... more Currently Latin American cities are seeing simultaneous processes of reinvestment and redevelopment in their historic central areas. These are not just mega scale interventions like Porto Maravilha in Rio or Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires or the luxury renovations seen in Santa Fé or Nueva Polanco in Mexico City, they include state-led, piecemeal, high-rise interventions in Santiago, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Panamá, and Bogotá, all of which are causing the displacement of original populations and thus are forms of gentrification. Until very recently, these processes have been under conceptualized and little critiqued in Latin America, but they deserve careful scrutiny, along with new forms of neighbourhood organisation, activism and resistance. In this introduction, we begin that task, drawing on the work begun in an Urban Studies Foundation-funded workshop on Global Gentrification held in Santiago, Chile in 2012. Our aim is not just to understand these urban changes and conflicts as gentrification, but to empirically test the applicability of a generic understanding of gentrification beyond the usual narratives of/from the global north. From this investigation we hope to nurture new critical narratives, be sensitive enough to engage with indigenous theoretical narratives, and understand the dialectical interplay between state policies, financial markets, local politics and people. The papers in this special issue deal with the core issues of state power, urban policies (exerted at metropolitan and neighbourhood levels), an enormous influx of financial investment in derelict neighbourhoods, which produces exclusion and segregation, significant loss of urban heritage from rapidly 'renewing' neighbourhoods, and even some institutional arrangements that make possible anti-displacement activism and self-managed social housing production.
"...젠트리피케이션에 따른 폐해가 날로 증가하는 상황에서 어떻게 젠트리피케이션에 효과적으로 저항할 것인가? 젠트리피케이션에 대한 저항은 자본 성격의 이해, 그리고 젠트리피케... more "...젠트리피케이션에 따른 폐해가 날로 증가하는 상황에서 어떻게 젠트리피케이션에 효과적으로 저항할 것인가? 젠트리피케이션에 대한 저항은 자본 성격의 이해, 그리고 젠트리피케이션을 둘러싼 사회관계의 이해, 지배 이데올로기에 대한 대항 이데올로기의 생산 등을 요구받는다. 근래 들어 주목받고 있는 상업 젠트리피케이션은 주로 건물주와 임차인의 갈등으로 드러나고, 종종 ‘갑질’이라고 지칭되는 건물주의 재산권 행사를(명도소송에 이은 강제집행을) 보장하는 사유화된 권력과 공권력의 개입, 그리고 이에 저항하는 임차인 ‘을’의 갈등으로 드러난다. 젠트리피케이션에 대한 관심이 높아진 것과 비례해서 이에 대한 소개글과 연구성과 발표가 늘어나고 있지만,4) 젠트리피케이션이라는 도시 과정에 저항하고자 하는 실천, 그리고 이러한 실천이 한국 사회에서 갖는 의미에 대한 학술적 논의는 여전히 부족하며,5) 이러한 논의를 활성화하는 데 보탬이 되고자 이번 ≪공간과 사회≫ 특집호가 ‘발전주의 도시화와 젠트리피케이션’이라는 주제로 기획되었다."
Mega events and Globalization: Capital and Spectacle in a Changing World Order (URL: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138805613/), Oct 19, 2015
By juxtaposing the experiences of Guangzhou and Incheon in their preparation for the Asian Games,... more By juxtaposing the experiences of Guangzhou and Incheon in their preparation for the Asian Games, this chapter aims to show how both cities attempted, sometimes successfully and at other times unsuccessfully, to make use of the Asian Games to realise their developmental aspirations by investing heavily in the built environment. These attempts included fast-tracking the development process by launching ambitious mega-projects as part of channeling capital into the secondary circuit of the built environment (Harvey, 1978; see also Shin, 2012). As the chapter shows, these efforts were unfortunately speculative and debt-driven, placing a heavy burden on each city’s future developmental prospects.
Datta, A. and Shaban, A. (Eds.) Mega-urbanization in the global south: Fast cities and new urban utopias of the postcolonial state, Jun 30, 2015
[Please note that the uploaded paper is a revised final version. Updated on 29 October 2015]
Th... more [Please note that the uploaded paper is a revised final version. Updated on 29 October 2015]
This chapter examines the experience of making Songdo City, a much discussed global model of eco- and smart urbanism in recent years. By examining the development history and the role of main stakeholders, the chapter ascertains that Songdo City represents the territorial manifestation of the legacy of the Korean developmental state that has been internalizing the neoliberal logics of capital accumulation. In Songdo City, green and smart urbanisms have conjoined to produce entrepreneurial and speculative urbanisation that centers on real estate speculation and state-led investment in the built environment, which are the key characteristics of developmentalist urbanisation in Korea. Songdo City presents a segregated and exclusive space, catering for the needs of the rich and the powerful and becoming their own version of an urban utopia. However, the heavy reliance of Songdo City on real estate investment would turn out to be its own weakness.
Global Gentrifications: Uneven Development and Displacement, Jan 26, 2015
[The first paragraph of this conclusion chapter is provided here] This edited collection has been... more [The first paragraph of this conclusion chapter is provided here] This edited collection has been like a leap onto a moving train, not quite knowing where it might lead, and having only a vague sense of where it has been. It has been exciting and we have learnt a lot.What the different chapters offer is a wider and deeper view of ‘gentrification’ from around the globe than has been managed to date. However, here, the editors and contributors have done more than merely offer a large number of empirical accounts of the diverse forms of gentrification (and its interaction with other urban processes) around the world. In this conclusion, drawing on Ward (2010), we conceptualise and theorise back from the different empirical cases in this book to reveal what we have learned from looking at gentrification globally,and from comparing beyond the usual suspects.
The thesis studies the dynamics of urban residential redevelopment programmes in Seoul and Beijin... more The thesis studies the dynamics of urban residential redevelopment programmes in Seoul and Beijing that have been effectively transforming dilapidated neighbourhoods in recent decades. The policy review shows that neighbourhood renewal programmes saw difficulties in ensuring cost-recovery and replicability in both cities, and that this has led to the formation of residential redevelopment programmes that depend heavily on the participation of real estate developers in spite of social, economic and political differences between the cities of Seoul and Beijing. Based on research data collected from a series of area-based field research visits in Seoul and Beijing between 2002 and 2003, the thesis examines how developer-led partnerships in urban redevelopment take place in different urban settings, what contributions are made by participating actors and how redevelopment benefits are shared among the existing and potential residents in redevelopment neighbourhoods. The main arguments in this thesis are as follows. Firstly, the emergence of profit-making opportunities in dilapidated neighbourhoods forms the basis of developer-led partnership among property-related interests that include the local government, professional developers and property owners. Poor owner-occupiers and tenants in both Seoul and Beijing assume a more passive role. Secondly, local authorities intervene to ensure that the partnership framework works, but this is carried out largely in favour of professional developers and absentee landlords whose material contributions are significant. Thirdly, redevelopment benefits are shared among existing residents in differentiated ways. The most affected in negative ways are the marginalised population whose social and economic status is increasingly threatened by the market risks in times of globalisation, urban growth and redevelopment in the 1990s. This thesis concludes that partnerships in neighbourhood redevelopment do not have benign outcomes for all. Stronger government intervention is necessary in order to safe-guard the interests of existing residents in dilapidated neighbourhoods, ensure their participation, and in particular, increase the protection of those increasingly marginalised by the process of redevelopment.
In this book Jie Chen explores attitudinal and behavioural orientation of China’s new middle clas... more In this book Jie Chen explores attitudinal and behavioural orientation of China’s new middle class to democracy and democratization. Hyun Bang Shin finds that this is a valuable addition to our understanding of the future of Chinese society and politics, and especially of the country’s future prospect of political reform that is perceived not to have progressed as much as the economic reform. It is strongly recommended to observers of China who may wish to find out more about the meaning of middle class expansion in contemporary China.
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Books by Hyun Bang Shin
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, proclamations rang out that gentrification had gone global. But what do we mean by 'gentrification' today? How can we compare 'gentrification' in New York and London with that in Shanghai, Johannesburg, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro? This book argues that gentrification is one of the most significant and socially unjust processes affecting cities worldwide today, and one that demands renewed critical assessment.
Drawing on the 'new' comparative urbanism and writings on planetary urbanization, the authors undertake a much-needed transurban analysis underpinned by a critical political economy approach. Looking beyond the usual gentrification suspects in Europe and North America to non-Western cases, from slum gentrification to mega-displacement, they show that gentrification has unfolded at a planetary scale, but it has not assumed a North to South or West to East trajectory the story is much more complex than that.
Rich with empirical detail, yet wide-ranging, Planetary Gentrification unhinges, unsettles and provincializes Western notions of urban development. It will be invaluable to students and scholars interested in the future of cities and the production of a truly global urban studies, and equally importantly to all those committed to social justice in cities.
Papers by Hyun Bang Shin
struggles of street vendors for the “right to the city centre” in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. We join
critical debates on Brazil’s internationally praised urban reform by focusing on informal
workers. Beyond lacking the protection of labour laws, the “right to the city” (RttC) of such
workers has been consistently denied through restrictive legislations and policies. In the context of the “crisis” of waged labour, we explore the increasing centrality of urban space for
working-class political struggles. Looking at Belo Horizonte, the paper traces the relation between urban participatory democracy and the development of legal-institutional frameworks
that restricted street vendors’ access to urban space in the city. In the context of an urban revitalisation policy implemented in 2017, we then explore the use of legal frameworks to remove street vendors from public areas of the city and the resulting political resistance movement. The discussion focuses on the emergence of the Vicentão Occupation, a building squatted by homeless families and street vendors in conflict with the local state. Though this case,
we explore the radical potential of contemporary articulations of Henri Lefebvre’s framework
emerging from the confluence of diverse local urban struggles for “the right to the city centre”. Ultimately we argue for an understanding of the RttC as a process and a site of continual
struggle whose terrain is shaped, but cannot be replaced by, legal frameworks that need to be
constantly contested and evolving to reflect the shifting socio-spatial relations.
This chapter on Asian urbanism begins by examining how Asian urbanism can be seen as both actually existing and imagined, taking into consideration the ways in which Asian urbanism has entailed the use of successful Asian cities as reference points for other cities in the Global South on the one hand, and how such referencing practices often entail the rendering of Asian urbanism as imagined models and ideologies that are detached from the realities of the receiving end of the model transfer on the other. The ensuing section examines how Asian urbanism can be situated in the context of state-society relations, with a particular emphasis on the role of the Asian states that exhibited developmental and/or authoritarian orientations in the late twentieth century. The penultimate section explores the socio-spatiality of Asian urbanism, summarising some salient characteristics of Asian urbanism. The final section concludes with an emphasis on the need of avoiding Asian exceptionalism, and also of having a pluralistic perspective on Asian urbanism.
the shapeshifting apparatuses that reproduce capitalist power. Therefore, in this special feature, our primary aim is not to reject, defend or enlist certain positions and methods in relation to the ‘planetary’. Rather the following articles track the limits of theory when confronted with world-forming and world-destroying processes of accumulation by
dispossession."
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, proclamations rang out that gentrification had gone global. But what do we mean by 'gentrification' today? How can we compare 'gentrification' in New York and London with that in Shanghai, Johannesburg, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro? This book argues that gentrification is one of the most significant and socially unjust processes affecting cities worldwide today, and one that demands renewed critical assessment.
Drawing on the 'new' comparative urbanism and writings on planetary urbanization, the authors undertake a much-needed transurban analysis underpinned by a critical political economy approach. Looking beyond the usual gentrification suspects in Europe and North America to non-Western cases, from slum gentrification to mega-displacement, they show that gentrification has unfolded at a planetary scale, but it has not assumed a North to South or West to East trajectory the story is much more complex than that.
Rich with empirical detail, yet wide-ranging, Planetary Gentrification unhinges, unsettles and provincializes Western notions of urban development. It will be invaluable to students and scholars interested in the future of cities and the production of a truly global urban studies, and equally importantly to all those committed to social justice in cities.
struggles of street vendors for the “right to the city centre” in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. We join
critical debates on Brazil’s internationally praised urban reform by focusing on informal
workers. Beyond lacking the protection of labour laws, the “right to the city” (RttC) of such
workers has been consistently denied through restrictive legislations and policies. In the context of the “crisis” of waged labour, we explore the increasing centrality of urban space for
working-class political struggles. Looking at Belo Horizonte, the paper traces the relation between urban participatory democracy and the development of legal-institutional frameworks
that restricted street vendors’ access to urban space in the city. In the context of an urban revitalisation policy implemented in 2017, we then explore the use of legal frameworks to remove street vendors from public areas of the city and the resulting political resistance movement. The discussion focuses on the emergence of the Vicentão Occupation, a building squatted by homeless families and street vendors in conflict with the local state. Though this case,
we explore the radical potential of contemporary articulations of Henri Lefebvre’s framework
emerging from the confluence of diverse local urban struggles for “the right to the city centre”. Ultimately we argue for an understanding of the RttC as a process and a site of continual
struggle whose terrain is shaped, but cannot be replaced by, legal frameworks that need to be
constantly contested and evolving to reflect the shifting socio-spatial relations.
This chapter on Asian urbanism begins by examining how Asian urbanism can be seen as both actually existing and imagined, taking into consideration the ways in which Asian urbanism has entailed the use of successful Asian cities as reference points for other cities in the Global South on the one hand, and how such referencing practices often entail the rendering of Asian urbanism as imagined models and ideologies that are detached from the realities of the receiving end of the model transfer on the other. The ensuing section examines how Asian urbanism can be situated in the context of state-society relations, with a particular emphasis on the role of the Asian states that exhibited developmental and/or authoritarian orientations in the late twentieth century. The penultimate section explores the socio-spatiality of Asian urbanism, summarising some salient characteristics of Asian urbanism. The final section concludes with an emphasis on the need of avoiding Asian exceptionalism, and also of having a pluralistic perspective on Asian urbanism.
the shapeshifting apparatuses that reproduce capitalist power. Therefore, in this special feature, our primary aim is not to reject, defend or enlist certain positions and methods in relation to the ‘planetary’. Rather the following articles track the limits of theory when confronted with world-forming and world-destroying processes of accumulation by
dispossession."
This chapter examines the experience of making Songdo City, a much discussed global model of eco- and smart urbanism in recent years. By examining the development history and the role of main stakeholders, the chapter ascertains that Songdo City represents the territorial manifestation of the legacy of the Korean developmental state that has been internalizing the neoliberal logics of capital accumulation. In Songdo City, green and smart urbanisms have conjoined to produce entrepreneurial and speculative urbanisation that centers on real estate speculation and state-led investment in the built environment, which are the key characteristics of developmentalist urbanisation in Korea. Songdo City presents a segregated and exclusive space, catering for the needs of the rich and the powerful and becoming their own version of an urban utopia. However, the heavy reliance of Songdo City on real estate investment would turn out to be its own weakness.
The policy review shows that neighbourhood renewal programmes saw difficulties in ensuring cost-recovery and replicability in both cities, and that this has led to the formation of residential redevelopment programmes that depend heavily on the participation of real estate developers in spite of social, economic and political differences between the cities of Seoul and Beijing. Based on research data collected from a series of
area-based field research visits in Seoul and Beijing between 2002 and 2003, the thesis examines how developer-led partnerships in urban redevelopment take place in different urban settings, what contributions are made by participating actors and how redevelopment benefits are shared among the existing and potential residents in
redevelopment neighbourhoods.
The main arguments in this thesis are as follows. Firstly, the emergence of profit-making opportunities in dilapidated neighbourhoods forms the basis of developer-led partnership among property-related interests that include the local government, professional developers and property owners. Poor owner-occupiers and tenants in both Seoul and Beijing assume a more passive role. Secondly, local authorities intervene to ensure that the
partnership framework works, but this is carried out largely in favour of professional developers and absentee landlords whose material contributions are significant. Thirdly, redevelopment benefits are shared among existing residents in differentiated ways. The most affected in negative ways are the marginalised population whose social and economic status is increasingly threatened by the market risks in times of globalisation, urban growth and redevelopment in the 1990s.
This thesis concludes that partnerships in neighbourhood redevelopment do not have benign outcomes for all. Stronger government intervention is necessary in order to safe-guard the interests of existing residents in dilapidated neighbourhoods, ensure their participation, and in particular, increase the protection of those increasingly marginalised by the process of redevelopment.