THIS COLLECTION OF essays is the result of a series of meetings and workshops that gathered together an interdisciplinary group of leading scholars, geographers, sociologists, urban theorists and Asian regional specialists interested in the global shift to service industries and the implications for urban growth and change within the Asia–Pacific region. The authors collectively contribute to an explanation of the increasingly central role and influence of service industries on the transformation of cities and city-regions within the Asia–Pacific region. Each essay addresses important developmental issues associated with the expansion of service industries and employment, and the consequent changes in the trajectories of city-regions in the Asia–Pacific.
The contributions to the volume are grouped into three major interrelated themes. The first part concerns the theory and context of services and urban development in the Asia–Pacific region. Chapter two seeks to place the development of the Asia–Pacific’s service industries, and its impact on the role and function of the region’s cities, within the wider economic context of trends in the global services economy. Chapter three highlights the critical role of development policy among the nations and city-regions of the Asia–Pacific, and presents a conceptual framework for strategic policy influences in the region since the 1980s. Chapter four investigates the socio-spatial structures that accompany the development of the urban service economy in global cities, while Chapter five addresses the sociology of the service economy and the implications of occupational change for identity, citizenship and politics. The problems associated with the “imposition” of advanced services trajectories upon cities in transition are examined in Chapter six.
Part II then looks at services and urban development in the Asia–Pacific from a sectoral perspective. Chapter seven examines foreign direct investment in professional business services with regard to the positionality of transnational corporations and local firms, as well as their impacts on the developing metropolitan economies of Southeast Asia. The case study of the Pearl Delta region of southern China is presented in Chapter eight to show the regional dynamics and industrial linkages of advanced producer services development in the Asia–Pacific context. Chapter nine investigates Hong Kong’s changing role as a global city through the study of Japanese logistics firms. Chapter ten looks into the globalization of higher education in relation to global city formation processes in Singapore, and Chapter 11 analyzes cargo services and related logistics as aspects of competitive advantage for manufacturing firms.
Part III presents several city case studies: In Chapter 12, the example of Melbourne focuses on the changing linkage patterns between the inner-city and the suburbs. Chapter 13 addresses the changes in the employment structure of the Seattle metropolitan region, emphasizing the role of service industries in the process. In Chapter 14, a case study of Guangzhou is used to explore critically the conceptual aspects of service industries and the transformation of city-regions. Finally, Chapter 15 examines the way the new post-1997 high-tech services and industrial clusters transcend localized effects to suggest far-reaching changes in Seoul’s development trajectory and space economy.
This book provides an opening statement on the dynamic process of service industries and urban development in the Asia–Pacific region that calls for continuing debates and exchanges on the implications of tertiarization in the region.