The chapters in Developmentalist Cities attend to the ways in which “developmentalism” in East Asia is not simply a top-down political imperative, but a geopolitical economic process. While it is widely accepted that East Asian states are “developmentalist” due to their particular patterns of economic growth and industrialization under a strong central government, the authors in this edited volume collectively urge us to more carefully consider the interplay between developmentalism and urban space.
Editors Jamie Doucette and Bae-Gyoon Park identify three key themes that run throughout the chapters: geopolitical economies, spaces of exception, and networks of expertise. The chapters are not divided into sections, as these themes do not operate as discrete categories, but rather interact throughout the chapters to advance understanding of the complex connections between developmentalist policies and ideologies and urban space across East Asia. However, the first three chapters after the introduction engage most concretely with geopolitical economies, the next six chapters engage more or less with spaces of exception (particularly various kinds of “special economic zones”), and the last five with networks of expertise.
In terms of distribution by region, six of the fifteen chapters focus on North and South Korea, three on mainland China, one on Hong Kong, one on Macau, one on Taiwan, one on Japan (Tokyo), and one on the Philippines (Manila). The first chapter is an introduction by the editors. The interdisciplinarity of the book and overall theoretical richness should attract a wide readership, but those with geographical interest in the Koreas or China will find the most for them here. Disciplines represented range from geography to anthropology to cultural studies to sociology to urban planning. Despite disciplinary and regional diversity, the authors are in effective dialogue with one another, with no one chapter seeming out-of-place in the volume. A mild exception might be the chapter on Manila, as it is the only chapter on Southeast Asia; thematically, however, it fits.
The first three chapters most directly deal with the theme of “geopolitical economies” identified in the introductory chapter. In the first substantive chapter (chapter 2), Young-Jin Choi and Jim Glassman provide context to the common narrative of heavy industry development in South Korea during the industrializing era of the 1970s and 1980s. Although the common narrative is that heavy industry developed due to the strong central developmentalist government, the authors challenge this narrative by showing how extranational actors (namely Japan and the United States) influenced heavy industry development, and how in fact capitalists at the helm of companies such as Hyundai pushed back against state planners. Choi and Glassman use the example of Hyundai to illustrate that its success was not because of, but rather in spite of, state developmentalist intervention; they argue that Hyundai's success was due to the US-led Cold War alliance, and Hyundai's involvement in these geopolitical networks allowed it to succeed when other plants under the Four Core Plants plan failed. The chapter also describes the role of heavy industry development in the growth of “second-tier cities” (Ulsan, Pohang, etc.) in the southeast region of South Korea. The chapter constitutes a good first chapter to the volume due to its problematizing of the common narrative of the developmental state; the only downside is that it is rather dry relative to other chapters.
In chapter 3, Heidi Gottfried analyzes the rise and fall of Tokyo as a “global city,” arguing that, similar to that of South Korea, Japan's (and especially Tokyo's) postwar ascent was more dependent on geopolitics than a strong developmentalist state, even as the developmentalist state was strengthened by geopolitical forces. Several decades after the war, Japan's urban developmentalism undermined Tokyo's status as a “global city,” as it had pushed social reproduction and anti-migrant policies over infrastructure development.
In chapter 4, Eli Friedman examines the issue of surplus population in China and how migrants to Chinese cities are segmented—that is, how certain kinds of people are encouraged to move to certain kinds of Chinese cities. The bar is highest to move to megacities like Beijing and Shanghai, but even smaller cities implement points-based systems for allowing in migrants. As the earlier hukou (residence registration) system has shifted to a points-based hukou, nonlocal children have their access to public education (as opposed to lower-quality private education) restricted based on their parents’ social and cultural capital. Friedman's study of urban space and access in China ends with this ominous sentence: “In contrast to the 20th century Fordist city, a growing share of the workforce now has no value either as a consumer or citizen” (p. 88).
Chapter 5, by Jinn-yuh Hsu, kicks off an undifferentiated section of six chapters that directly and indirectly address the theme of “spaces of exception.” The chapter uses the Hsinchu Science-Based Industrial Park (HSIP) in Taiwan (and later Hsinchu Science City) as an example to suggest the need for more nuanced analyses of speculative urbanization. While the HSIP symbolized the possibility of a “Free China” in the 1990s when it was built and became linked with Taiwanese national identity and its investments in modern progress, conflicts emerged with the neighboring Hakka villagers, who felt that they had been left behind.
Chapter 6 by Jana Kleibert looks at the myriad luxury condos and shopping areas in Manila that have been denoted as “special economic zones” under the Philippines’ lax zoning laws, leading to “elite islands” in the otherwise “anti-development” state.
Chapters 7 and 8 examine two very different cultural and economic zones: the Gangnam neighborhood in Seoul and the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) in North Korea. Chapter 7, by Park and Jin-bum Jang, traces the “Gangnam-ization of Korean urban ideology,” drawing on interviews with residents in Gangnam and “Gangnam-ized” neighborhoods in the Seoul metropolitan area and further afield to determine what middle-class residents want out of their urban spaces. They find that the middle class wants “well-ordered space” and increasing property values but ask readers to reflect on what alternative urban planning that centers encounter and meeting spaces might look like.
Doucette and Seung-Ook Lee, in chapter 8, take up this idea of spaces of encounter, following the change in discourses surrounding the KIC from “reunification” to “economic cooperation.” Even now in a less idealistic “economic cooperation” paradigm, ads for the KIC highlight women factory workers’ labor as emotional labor to repair a divided country, illuminating “the zone's viability as a capitalist experiment but also its volatility” (p. 185), as it is not only an economic zone but a zone of encounter between the two Koreas.
In chapter 9, Carolyn Cartier, a geographer, provides a theoretical framework for understanding various levels of “zones” in China, from “sub-provincial-level-cities” to “special economic zones” to “enclaves,” and connects these with a Greater China political project for cultural expansion.
Christina Kim Chilcote, in chapter 10, gives readers a fascinating historical and ethnographic account of the Chinese city of Dandong's envisioning of North Korea as a “capitalist frontier,” where there are no traces of the disparaging remarks about North Korea's dysfunction heard elsewhere in China. Instead, residents of Dandong commemorate North Korea and China's close historical and political relationship at the same time that they anticipate the future prospects of the Dandong-Sinuiju region.
Chapters 11 through 15 all deal with networks of expertise and their connection to variations of urban developmentalism. In chapter 11, Hyun Bang Shin and Soo-Hyun Kim discuss an overall lack of concern with “gentrification” as a concept in South Korea, as “redevelopment” (jaegaebal) and “demolition” (cheolgeo) were accepted as unpleasant necessities in Korea's urbanization process. The authors trace how real estate speculation came to be seen as natural and muse that this may change with the current demographic crisis.
Iam-chong Ip, in chapter 12, looks at the very different case of gentrification in Hong Kong, where there is overall an anti-gentrification sentiment connected to Hong Kong's history (as a British crown colony and not a developmental state) and current relationship vis-à-vis China.
Chapters 13 and 14 are concerned with urban planning in Macau and South Korea, respectively. Kah-Wee Lee, in chapter 13, describes the unique urban space of Macau, which has a “specific mode of spatial production” (p. 293) as a former Portuguese colony and now a special zone of China. Macau is an “enclave of conspicuous consumption” with its urban planning marked, above all, by ambivalence and informality.
In chapter 14, Laam Hae explains how in South Korea urban planning in general and place-marketing in particular became characterized by “fast-policy” transfers intended to build regionally distinct cities with global competitiveness following the local autonomy policies of the mid-1990s.
The fifteenth and final chapter, by Christina Moon, ends the book on a decidedly transnational note. Moon investigates the evolving global garment industry, showing the key role of Korean garment workers in the New York fashion industry and going on to analyze the rise of the fashion industry in East Asia. She shows that while urban developmentalism may have grown the garment industry in places like Dongdaemun in Seoul, the industry has always been transnational and inter-Asian.
Developmentalist Cities will be valuable to an interdisciplinary readership, and it is innovative as the first book on urban developmentalism in East Asia. The book is long, but individual chapters would be well-received in university classrooms at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Above all, scholars of urban East Asia will appreciate the connections made between East Asian cities and the way the well-edited volume unsettles assumptions we may have about East Asian urban space and developmental states.
