Developmentalist Cities? Interrogating Urban Developmentalism in East Asia: (130 Studies in Critical Social Sciences)

Developmentalist Cities addresses the missing urban story in research on East Asian developmentalism and the missing developmentalist story in studies of East Asian urbanization. It does so by promoting inter-disciplinary research into the subject of urban developmentalism: a term that editors Jamie Doucette and Bae-Gyoon Park use to highlight the particular nature of the urban as a site of and for developmentalist intervention. The contributors to this volume deepen this concept by examining the legacy of how Cold War and post-Cold War geopolitical economy, spaces of exception (from special zones to industrial districts), and diverse forms of expertise have helped produce urban space in East Asia.

Contributors: Carolyn Cartier, Christina Kim Chilcote, Young Jin Choi, Jamie Doucette, Eli Friedman, Jim Glassman, Heidi Gottfried, Laam Hae, Jinn-yuh Hsu, Iam Chong Ip, Jin-Bum Jang, Soo-Hyun Kim, Jana M. Kleibert, Kah Wee Lee, Seung-Ook Lee, Christina Moon, Bae-Gyoon Park, Hyun Bang Shin.

About the Author :
Jamie Doucette is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Manchester. His research interests concern the geographical political economy of developmentalism and democratization in Korea and East Asia. He publishes widely in geography, political economy, and Asian studies. Bae-Gyoon Park is a Professor of Geography in the College of Education at Seoul National University. His recent research focuses on border regions and (post) developmental urbanism in East Asia. He co-edited Locating Neoliberalism in East Asia (Blackwell 2012).

Review :
[...] [R]esulted from several years of interdisciplinary workshops and collaborative works, Developmental Cities? Interrogating Urban Developmentalism is a milestone for those who study East Asian cities or who are interested in the nexus between geopolitics and urban processes. After reading this book, one will acquire an in-depth understanding of the complex histories of cities in East Asia. Moreover, the volume also has the ability to expand the debate beyond East Asian cities, stimulating dialogue with cities in other regions in order to demonstrate how they are linked based on a complex of geopolitical relations. This process will help us to theorize the urban more from non-Western perspectives. Indeed, this is not a simple task and it requires continued efforts. This volume, however, is a valuable contribution toward these efforts.
— Do Young Oh , London School of Economics and Political Science, in: Urban Geography, 27 May 2019

"This original and provocative collection is the first critically to interrogate the nexus of urbanism and developmentalism in East Asia, mobilizing in the process the kaleidoscopic lens that is geopolitical economy. Highly recommended, the book inaugurates new ways of thinking about cities, urban theory, and (late) developmental states, both within the region and beyond."
— Jamie Peck, Canada Research Chair in Urban & Regional Political Economy and Professor of Geography, University of British Columbia

"While each chapter shows a distinctive urban process in the individual context of East Asian countries, this collection demonstrates the usefulness of urban developmentalism as a process that cannot be easily unpacked based on existing models of urbanization in Western countries. This book ultimately celebrates the vitality of scholarship that has called for methodological and conceptual innovation in order to understand East Asian cities as form, process, and imaginary."
— Choi, Byung-Doo, University of Daegu, Co-Founder of the East Asian Regional Conference on Alternative Geography

"Ranging in topic from the “Gangnam-ization” of Korean urban space to the management of migrant populations in China, each essay in this collection is a fascinating and insightful case study in its own right. Taken as a whole, Developmentalist Cities? breaks important new ground by connecting the afterlives of Cold War developmentalism to new forms of neoliberal urbanism in East Asia. As these rich, interdisciplinary essays demonstrate, we cannot understand our urban present without understanding the histories, political economies and contested practices of developmentalist cities. This book is a timely and significant intervention into today’s critical debates around urban growth and migration, gentrification and globalization, and the cities, zones and regions that mediate them."
— Jini Kim Watson, New York University, author of The New Asian City: Three Dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form