“Urban studies is marked by an ingrained tendency to consider cities in Western Europe and North America as the leading edge of global urban change. This important book draws attention to ways in which cities in Asia are experimenting with ways of being global which do not necessarily refer back to antecedents in the North Atlantic world. The book should be read not only by Asianists but by anyone who is interested in the dynamics of urban change globally.”
―Tim Bunnell, National University of Singapore
“The contributors to Worlding Cities bring new ethnographic attention to urban sites of innovation, cultural connections, and potentially transformative aspirations. They connect what is happening in cities to the ways changing relations among cities are remaking connections across national boundaries. And in the process they help to remake social science with new connections among anthropologists, geographers, and urban planners. Focused mainly on Asia, this is work that matters globally.”
―Craig Calhoun, President, Social Science Research Council
“A refreshing and wide-ranging volume that makes a timely contribution to debates in urban studies, geography, and planning. Rather than attempt to identify the features of a ‘global’ city or trace the reproduction of ‘Western’ forms in Asian cities, this collection examines how projects of ‘worlding’ are actively assembled and urban futures envisaged. It uncovers diverse routes through which cities inter-reference one another and are produced as distinctive spaces of experimentation and aspiration in contexts of uncertainty and inequality.”
―Colin McFarlane, Durham University, UK
From the Inside Flap
From Dubai to Delhi and from Singapore to Shanghai, cities across Asia are sites of intense experiments with different ways of being global. This book intervenes in urban theory focused on established global cities, and instead argues that the urban globality is something that is continually being imagined, assembled, and contested. Greater Asia is a region of vibrant innovations in urban design, built forms, governance, aesthetics, and politics. Worlding Cities draws attention to diverse projects of ‘worlding’ and reworlding that draw upon local and transnational relationships. Alternative ways of being global are instantiated through practices of mobility, modeling, and speculation that inter-reference other Asian sites. As many of the essays in this book illustrate, different Asian futures are being shaped in cities, from green governmentality to eco-city, from corporate speculations to political contestations over urban development, from world-class city branding to demands for world-class services, and from sky-high hopes to dashed dreams on the ground for city-dwellers and migrants. This inter-generation and interdisciplinary group of authors offers the first serious examination of diverse actors, energies, and conditions at play in defining new worlds of inter-Asian urbanism.
From the Back Cover
From Dubai to Delhi and from Singapore to Shanghai, cities across Asia are sites of intense experiments with different ways of being global. This book intervenes in urban theory focused on established global cities, and instead argues that the urban globality is something that is continually being imagined, assembled, and contested. Greater Asia is a region of vibrant innovations in urban design, built forms, governance, aesthetics, and politics. Worlding Cities draws attention to diverse projects of ‘worlding’ and “reworlding” that draw upon local and transnational relationships. Alternative ways of being global are instantiated through practices of mobility, modeling, and speculation that inter-reference other Asian sites. As many of the essays in this book illustrate, different Asian futures are being shaped in cities, from green governmentality to eco-city, from corporate speculations to political contestations over urban development, from “world-class” city branding to demands for “world-class” services, and from sky-high hopes to dashed dreams on the ground for city-dwellers and migrants. This inter-generation and interdisciplinary group of authors offers the first serious examination of diverse actors, energies, and conditions at play in defining new worlds of inter-Asian urbanism.
About the Author
Ananya Roy is Professor of City and Regional Planning and Co-Director of Global Metropolitan Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her most recent book is Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development (2010).
Aihwa Ong is Professor of Socio-cultural Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her most recent publications are Privatizing China, Socialism from Afar (2008) and Asian Biotech: Ethics and Communities of Fate (2010).
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