3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

The postwar era marked the rise of Asian cities. Not only do Asian cities host more than half of the world urban population, the majority of world megacities are also located in Asia. Notwithstanding its unprecedented scope and speed, an urbanizing Asia also offers fascinating alternative routes to prosperity outside the Western world. How did Tokyo rise from the ashes of war to be the global hub of trade and technology? How did Singapore and Hong Kong transform themselves from small towns to global metropolises? Why do we see fewer slums in Beijing than in New York? To engage these critical questions of cities, students in this course will pursue two modes of comparison: comparisons between newly-developed Asian cities and early capitalist cities in the West and comparisons among Asian cities. The material in this course will mainly discuss cities in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Nonetheless, students are welcome to draw examples from Western and Central Asia in discussions and assignments. Part I of the course introduces key concepts and major theories on cities and urbanization. Through problematizing familiar concepts like urbanism, urbanization, development, and slum, students will develop a critical understanding of concepts that might be taken for granted in everyday conversation. Part II moves to more empirically-grounded discussions of Asian cities. Each week, we will study a set of cities under a particular theme, where students will learn to apply but also challenge the concepts and theories that we learned in Part I. We will explore a wide range of topics that are central to development in Asian cities, including developmentalism, neoliberalism, city-states, authoritarianism, uneven development, and globalization.