Globalization and Southeast Asian Urban Futures

Abstract

In July 2000, a group of urban studies scholars met in a conference orga nized by the National University of Singapore to discuss Southeast Asian Urban Futures. This meeting was convened for a number of reasons. As with the rest of the world, the rate of urbanization in Southeast Asian has been growing at a phenomenal rate. Forty years ago, societies in Southeast Asia were largely rural as the United Nations (2001:133) esti mated that only one in five persons in the developing economies of its ESCAP (Economic and Social Commission for Asia Pacific) region resided in urban areas. By 1980, one in four were residents, and by 2000, it was one in three. Table 1 provides more specific country and city data for two groups of countries in Southeast Asia: the ASEAN-5 comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand; and Indo-China com prising Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (see Column 1). Urbanization in Southeast Asia has been influenced by changing national economies. First, drawing on the work of Jones (1991, 1993), the share of primary industry in total output has declined, replaced by a ris ing manufacturing share that tends to have an urban bias. Second, as a result of globalization of the economic system, the presence of indigenous industry has been supplemented by the inflow of foreign direct investments in search of lower cost production sites and emerging markets. Such inflows increased in the 1980s and 1990s, initially from the U.S.A., Europe and Japan, and more recently from East Asia (Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong). Thus, although the processing of raw materials (food, beverages, tobacco) is the largest sub-sector of ASEAN manufacturing, Jones (1993:56) notes that its share has shown a clear decline in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. It is not a coincidence that these three countries are the ones receiving the largest foreign direct investments, and also enjoy the highest GNP per capita (see Table 1, Columns 2 and 3 respectively). While traditional cottage industries have been spread out over smaller cities and towns, this new pattern of economic growth is more likely to be located in larger metropolitan centres because of the need to coordinate production sched ules with subsidaries in other parts of the world. Fuchs and Pernia (1987) and Krongkaew (1996) show that the bulk of foreign direct investments into Southeast Asian countries has been siphoned off into metropolitan regions.