Beyond the Third World City: The New Urban Geography of South-east Asia

Scholars, as area specialists, have typified south-east Asian cities as Third World cities and emphasised their uniquely south-east Asian or even national characteristics. This paper will argue that the early decades of decolonisation which gave rise to this perspective were in fact a transitional phase. In the late colonial period south-east Asian cities were already becoming more like Western cities. Since the 1980s, in the era of globalisation, this process of convergence has re-emerged. Clearly, there should now be a single urban discourse. This is not to deny that south-east Asian (or Third World) cities have distinctive elements. The problem is the paradigm which shuts out First World elements.