IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v40y2008i2p383-401.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The City and the Bottom Line: Urban Megaprojects and the Privatization of Planning in Southeast Asia

Author

Listed:
  • Gavin Shatkin

    (Urban Planning Program, University of Michigan, 2000 Bonisteel Boulevard, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA)

Abstract

Prevailing perspectives on the impacts of globalization on urban form in large, globalizing cities in Asia hold that these cities are experiencing an inexorable process of ‘Westernization’ or ‘Americanization’. Yet this focus on convergence distracts us from the task of analyzing urban change and its causes, leading to analytical muddiness and awkward planning and policy implications. The author presents an alternative framework that focuses on actor-centered analysis, and the importance of understanding historical context. This framework is employed in a case study of recent trends in urban development in Metro Manila, based on interviews, government, private sector, and nonprofit sector documents, and newspapers. It is concluded that, in Metro Manila, a defining characteristic of contemporary urban development is the unprecedented privatization of urban and regional planning. Large developers have conceived of urban development plans on a metrowide scale, and begun to implement these with the assistance of government. This phenomenon has its roots in the historical development of social groups in the Philippines and their shifting interests with the globalization of the Philippine economy. The author concludes that the privatization of planning raises distinct issues for urban planning theory and practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Gavin Shatkin, 2008. "The City and the Bottom Line: Urban Megaprojects and the Privatization of Planning in Southeast Asia," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 40(2), pages 383-401, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:40:y:2008:i:2:p:383-401
    DOI: 10.1068/a38439
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a38439
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/a38439?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Scott, Allen J. (ed.), 2001. "Global City-Regions: Trends, Theory, Policy," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198297994.
    2. Rodrigo Salcedo & Alvaro Torres, 2004. "Gated Communities in Santiago: Wall or Frontier?," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 27-44, March.
    3. Boris Graizbord & Allison Rowland & Adrian Guillermo Aguilar, 2003. "Mexico City as a peripheral global player: The two sides of the coin," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 37(3), pages 501-518, August.
    4. Ballesteros, Marife M., 2000. "Land Use Planning in Metro Manila and the Urban Fringe: Implications on the Land and Real Estate Market," Discussion Papers DP 2000-20, Philippine Institute for Development Studies.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sara Meerow, 2017. "Double exposure, infrastructure planning, and urban climate resilience in coastal megacities: A case study of Manila," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(11), pages 2649-2672, November.
    2. Claire W. Herbert & Martin J. Murray, 2015. "Building from Scratch: New Cities, Privatized Urbanism and the Spatial Restructuring of Johannesburg after Apartheid," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(3), pages 471-494, May.
    3. Jinhee Park, 2019. "Neoliberalism Meets “Gangnam Style”: Vernacular Private Sector and Large Urban Developments in Seoul," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(4), pages 62-72.
    4. Il Lee & Soe Won Hwang, 2018. "Urban Entertainment Center (UEC) as a Redevelopment Strategy for Large-Scale Post-Industrial Sites in Seoul: Between Public Policy and Privatization of Planning," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-17, October.
    5. Eran Weinberg & Nir Cohen & Orit Rotem-Mindali, 2019. "LUD as an Instrument for (Sub)Metropolitanization: The 1000-District in Rishon-Lezion, Israel as a Case Study," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(4), pages 18-30.
    6. Lukas, Michael & López-Morales, Ernesto, 2018. "Real estate production, geographies of mobility and spatial contestation: A two-case study in Santiago de Chile," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 92-101.
    7. Katherine E. Laycock & Carrie L. Mitchell, 2019. "Social capital and incremental transformative change: responding to climate change experts in Metro Manila," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 152(1), pages 47-66, January.
    8. Koki Seki, 2015. "Capitalizing on Desire: Reconfiguring ‘the Social’ and the Government of Poverty in the Philippines," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 46(6), pages 1253-1276, November.
    9. Gabriel Fauveaud, 2016. "Residential Enclosure, Power and Relationality: Rethinking Sociopolitical Relations in Southeast Asian Cities," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(4), pages 849-865, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jonathan Pratschke & Enrica Morlicchio, 2012. "Social Polarisation, the Labour Market and Economic Restructuring in Europe: An Urban Perspective," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 49(9), pages 1891-1907, July.
    2. Gavin Shatkin, 2004. "Planning to Forget: Informal Settlements as 'Forgotten Places' in Globalising Metro Manila," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 41(12), pages 2469-2484, November.
    3. Constance Carr & Markus Hesse, 2020. "When Alphabet Inc. Plans Toronto’s Waterfront: New Post-Political Modes of Urban Governance," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(1), pages 69-83.
    4. Mace, Alan & Holman, Nancy & Paccoud, Antoine & Sundaresan, Jayaraj, 2015. "Coordinating density; working through conviction, suspicion and pragmatism," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 56768, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Riccardo Crescenzi, 2008. "Mountains in a flat world: why proximity still matters for the location of economic activity," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 1(3), pages 371-388.
    6. Jennifer Robinson, 2011. "Cities in a World of Cities: The Comparative Gesture," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(1), pages 1-23, January.
    7. Bo Liu & Desheng Xue & Yiming Tan, 2019. "Deciphering the Manufacturing Production Space in Global City-Regions of Developing Countries—a Case of Pearl River Delta, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(23), pages 1-26, December.
    8. Alain Thierstein & Stefan Lüthi, 2012. "Interlocking Firm Networks in the German Knowledge Economy: The Case of the Emerging Mega-city Region of Munich," Chapters, in: Marina van Geenhuizen & Peter Nijkamp (ed.), Creative Knowledge Cities, chapter 13, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. John Parr, 2015. "The city and the region as contrasts in spatial organization," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 54(3), pages 797-817, May.
    10. HaeRan Shin & Quentin Stevens, 2013. "How Culture and Economy Meet in South Korea: The Politics of Cultural Economy in Culture-led Urban Regeneration," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(5), pages 1707-1723, September.
    11. Evert Meijers & Martijn Burger & Roberto Camagni & Roberta Capello & Andrea Caragliu, 2016. "Static vs. dynamic agglomeration economies. Spatial context and structural evolution behind urban growth," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 95(1), pages 133-158, March.
    12. Ballesteros, Marife M., 2001. "The Dynamics of Housing Demand in the Philippines: Income and Lifecycle Effects," Discussion Papers DP 2001-15, Philippine Institute for Development Studies.
    13. Anthony Goerzen & Michael Sartor & Kristin Brandl & Stacey Fitzsimmons, 2023. "Widening the lens: Multilevel drivers of firm corporate social performance," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 54(1), pages 42-60, February.
    14. Vicente Romero de à vila Serrano, 2019. "The Intrametropolitan Geography of Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS): A Comparative Analysis of Six European and U.S. City-Regions," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 33(4), pages 279-295, November.
    15. Yujuico, Emmanuel, 2015. "Considerations in the diffusion of a public traffic app for Metro Manila," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 48-56.
    16. Michael Neuman & Angela Hull, 2009. "The Futures of the City Region," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(6), pages 777-787.
    17. Joe Painter, 2013. "Regional Biopolitics," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(8), pages 1235-1248, September.
    18. Peter Karl Kresl (ed.), 2010. "Economic Strategies for Mature Industrial Economies," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14116.
    19. Robert R. Hewitt, 2014. "Globalization and Landscape Architecture," SAGE Open, , vol. 4(1), pages 21582440135, February.
    20. Dasgupta,Basab & Lall,Somik V. & Lozano Gracia,Nancy, 2014. "Urbanization and housing investment," Policy Research Working Paper Series 115004, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:40:y:2008:i:2:p:383-401. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.