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| 1 |
ID:
182691
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| Summary/Abstract |
In terms of spatial imaginaries and as physical infrastructure, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) spurs new geographies of comparative urban study. Irrespective of whether it is the primary driver for developments carried out in its name, ‘the BRI’ is a label that serves to bring previously unassociated project sites and non-place-based infrastructural developments into comparative relation. This paper considers some of the possibilities presented by the BRI for comparative urban studies in – and from – Asia. Building upon insights from postcolonial urban studies, planetary urbanisation and inter-Asia cultural studies, I sketch two key possibilities of the BRI as (comparative urban) method. The first concerns the BRI as a series of openings to much (spatially) wider and historically deeper forms of comparison. Second, I argue that BRI as method impels forms of urban comparison beyond conventionally territorialised units of analysis at a variety of scales, including both the city and the (area studies) region.
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| 2 |
ID:
128521
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Asia is the most populous and rapidly urbanizing region in the world today and features 23 of the world's 40 biggest metropolitan areas. In many Asian countries, accelerated economic development, industrialization and urbanization have been accompanied by a growing acceptance that decentralization (the devolution of central state powers, responsibilities and resources to the sub-national scale)4 can lead to more effective and responsive governance in state, provincial, city and regency jurisdictions. This trend toward decentralized governance in Asia has often, but not always, been precipitated by a transition away from authoritarian regimes to more democratic forms of governance. Discourses about the desirability of democratic decentralization have typically emphasized the devolution of central state authority as the preferred means by which to empower communities and to increase the voice and participation of ordinary citizens in governmental decision-making processes that affect their lives and livelihoods. Thus, decentralization policies in urbanizing Asia have aimed to encourage the active involvement of urban residents in addressing shared dilemmas concerning issues such as environmental sustainability, public service delivery, community building and socio-political stability in often densely concentrated and ethnically diverse populations. At the same time, however, decentralization within the contexts of globalization and privatization may circumvent critical aspects of democratic procedure if sub-national government officials use their increased access to state power and resources to nurture clientelistic networks of patronage and/or to tap into wider circles of regional or global economic activity at the expense of local urban development.
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| 3 |
ID:
098377
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2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Rather than focusing on either bounded conceptions of migrant assimilation or unbounded transnational linkages, this paper situates migrant experiences in broader "routes of identity." In the case of Malay ex-seamen in Liverpool, UK, all of whom are now in their seventies or eighties, this has meant tracing life geographies extending back well over half a century. During the middle decades of the twentieth century when these men arrived in Liverpool, the city was a major seaport with longstanding maritime connections to Southeast Asia and across the Pacific. Drawing upon fieldwork carried out in Liverpool and Southeast Asia between 2003 and 2008, the paper gives attention to four geographical dimensions of the shifting identities of Liverpool-based Malay ex-seamen: (1) the always-already fluid and mobile nature of their identifications which preceded long-distance migration; (2) shifting political geographies of identity (re)formation, particularly the establishment of post-colonial national boundaries which cut across prior modes of identification; (3) historically variable constitutive geographies of long-distance interconnection, most notably the transition from maritime socioeconomic networks to a post-maritime period; and (4) social sites through which individual and collective identities are emplaced. The intention is to sketch these four different dimensions in such a way as to allow them to speak critically to issues of transnationalism and migrant identity beyond the specific case of Malays in Liverpool.
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| 4 |
ID:
128528
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The year 2011 marked the tenth anniversary of the implementation of Indonesia's regional autonomy laws. This paper considers implications of more than a decade of decentralized governance for urban development in Indonesia. After a brief historical overview and consideration of the rationale for political and administrative decentralization issue image_86_4_Bunnellin that national context, we examine a range of critical perspectives on policy outcomes. Both media coverage and academic analyses have overwhelmingly cast decentralized governance as it has been implemented in Indonesia in a negative light. As a corrective to this, we have sought to identify positive outcomes and possibilities associated with Indonesia's large-scale decentralization project. In particular, we detail the cases of two cities which have been cast in a variety of rankings and media representations as success stories of urban development through decentralized governance: Solo (or Surakarta as the city is also formally named) and Surabaya. In the final section of the paper, we critically evaluate these two cases and discuss their wider implications.
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