Megapolitan Explosions: Reworking Urban and Regional Metabolisms

Abstract

Chapter 3 analyses the spatial strategy for the George Town conurbation, which seeks to condense and centralise future urban development into the historic centres of George Town and Butterworth, on the mainland side of the state. The chapter adopts insights from ‘megapolitan’ political ecology approaches to examine the form of ‘regional urbanisation’ envisioned in this plan, and in doing so, facilitates dialogue between urban political ecology and ‘planetary urbanisation’ approaches to studying the contemporary explosion of urbanisation processes. The chapter thereby maintains that cities are not discrete entities, but rather deeply interconnected to surrounding metropolitan environments through large scale infrastructure networks, which are in turn promoted through state and nation making schemes. A further objective of the chapter is to highlight the discursive frameworks that have sought to develop new infrastructures, settlements, property markets and planning strategies to integrate — but also differentiate — communities within Penang's wider urban fabric.