Modernity and governance in four East Asian metropolises

Since 2010, more than half of world's urban population resides in Asian cities, and this proportion is expected to keep increasing for the next thirty years.  With another 600 million newborns and migrants likely to join the ranks of Asian city dwellers in the next fifteen years, Asian metropolises and megaurban regions will certainly continue to dominate world rankings in terms of sheer size.  Large East Asian cities also seem to be among the major beneficiaries of the newest wave of global integration.  They are in the most dynamic region of the world economy, benefitting from large pools of migrant labor and with fewer legacy issues to deal with than their western counterparts.  There should be little surprise then that instead of catching-up gradually, major East Asian metropolises often seem to have leapfrogged over the competition.  They steal the spotlight not only by having the tallest skyscrapers, fastest trains, busiest airports, and longest bridges, but also the best schools and hospitals, avant-garde architecture, and the ability to stage spectacular events.  Moreover, as the protagonists of the new polycentric, post-western modernity they are increasingly in position, for the first time ever, to define the standards and visions of what it means to be modern. 

This paper draws on preliminary results from a multidisciplinary project on "Asian Cities as Centers of Global Modernity" and analyzes the relations between city makers, their visions of modernity, and the resulting styles of governance in four major Asian metropolises: Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore.  The focus is on the proliferation of city makers and the process through which they articulate their respective agendas into practical aspects of urban planning and management.  The conclusion draws general implications for the twin questions of "who do the global cities belong to?" and "how are they to be governed?"