The Global Economy and Urban Society in Pacific Asia

Abstract

The economic growth in Pacific Asia is a result of the integration of various countries into the global economy. This integration is however disproportionate, impacting on major cities rather than intermediate cities and rural areas. The result is that as metropolitan economies expand, new migrants and foreign workers add to an urban cultural mosaic that is already complicated by new gender and class divisions. While urban societies in Pacific Asia have varying configurations, broad features can be discerned. One key force is the growing middle class and the new urban and suburban landscape of consumption, which coexist amidst the neighbourhoods of the urban proletariat and the squalor of the urban poor. The social and economic diversity implies new challenges for governments which have to balance growing urban aspirations against the interests of larger society as they walk the tightrope between harnessing the rewards of economic integration and attempting to shield society from the inequalities and instabilities created by the capitalist global economy.