Directors of Urban Change in Asia

Peter J.M. Nas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780415350891
• eBook ISBN: 9781134267361
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

Bringing together a group of international scholars, Directors of Urban Change in Asia examines who the 'directors' for urban change are in an eclectic mix of Asian cities. The books discusses how, in the majority of cases, urban change has come about primarily as the result of visionary leaders, on national, regional and local levels. It also makes clear that the less successful cities have tended to lack such leaders.

1
Introduction

Directors of urban change

Peter J.M.Nas

Questions¹

Cities are the future and Asian cities hold the future. Notwithstanding relatively moderate levels of urbanization in many Asian countries, with an average of 47 per cent of the population living in cities, urban areas in this part of the world have acquired tremendous magnitudes. And the growth of these agglomerations will continue with projections for 2015 reaching population numbers of more than 26 million in Tokyo and Mumbai (Bombay) not far ahead of 21 million in Dhaka, 19 million in Karachi and 17 million in Calcutta and Jakarta. No wonder the concept of mega-city was introduced to refer to this relatively new phenomenon in the world. World cities are places of hope and despair, of wealth and poverty, of progress and tradition, in all possible configurations and shades, but indubitably steadily leading to the total urbanization of the world. This process is estimated to reach the 50 per cent milestone in the near future, about 53 per cent in 2015, 60 per cent in 2030, and subsequently continuing to about 80 per cent at a maximum somewhat later; a situation that many present-day young students and scholars of urbanization will live through. The implication is that in 2030 about 4.9 billion persons will already reside in urban and 3.2 billion in rural areas (United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, 2001). Under these conditions cities should be considered not only as local entities on their own with a configuration of social communities displaying a local identity, but also as focal points in urban networks constituting the infrastructure for flows of people, goods and ideas over the world. Cities are the urban theatres where the two worlds, the local and the global, meet and intertwine, and where agglomerated effects of many individual decisions operate but where the influence of strong leaders is also felt, persons in this book classified as ‘directors of urban change’.

The city is ‘an act of will’, and in addition to being the result of cumulative small individual and group actions, it may also be the product of important policy and decision makers, that is directors of urban change, who in their drive to transform and improve the city also create influential representations of urban space. These professional urbanites have visionary ideas about urban form and city life. They negotiate how urban space should be shaped and try to appropriate this space, literally or figuratively. However, in current scholarly social science literature on cities and urbanization, these directors of urban change have not yet acquired a prominent place. In pursuit of the urban ecological approach of the Chicago School and notwithstanding criticism and later theoretical developments, urban sociology, anthropology and geography have preserved a strong emphasis on aggregate social processes determining the structure, development and even the planning of cities. In other words their approach is essentially based on the cumulative effects of a multitude of impersonal social acts in the city. That is why ‘bringing individual man back in’ to replace structural societal processes can be considered the theme of this book, not in the sense that the urban studies do not deal with human beings, but in the sense that they strongly ignore the role of particular, important individuals in the shaping of cities. So, ‘bringing directors back in‘will be the motto and aim of this work, as current urban social science research often neglects the role of a generally limited number of persons decisive for urban change and advancement. An inspection of some introductions, handbooks and major works in urban anthropology and sociology² clearly proves that this view is generally true, but for a few exceptions. So, the names of Baron Haussemann for the Grand Manner interventions in Paris and Ebenezer Howard for the Garden City Movement are regularly mentioned, while occasionally in relation to particular cities like Singapore, Brasília, Chandigarh and Isfahan those of Sir Stanford Raffles, President Juscelino Kubitschek, Le Corbusier and Sultan Abbas are given. Even so, these rare exceptions cannot conceal the existing emphasis on impersonal aggregative social processes as the main determinants of urban structure and change. And to a certain extent that may be correct, as not all cities are strongly influenced by one or more directors of urban change when the context allows the manifold piecemeal decisions of large numbers of inhabitants to be carried through. Yet, this role of directors of urban change must be considered in more depth and that is the main aim of this collection of case studies of Asian cities, although these case studies should also be seen in their own right as more or less elaborate depictions of one and, in one study, of two cities.

The following 12 chapters describe 13 Asian cities, in alphabetical order: Colombo, Guangzhou, Hanoi, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Makassar, Manila, Nanjing, Semarang, Singapore, Surabaya, Tehran and Tokyo. For purposes of comparison, they cover a wide range from capital city to provincial centre, varying from mega-city to average urban agglomeration. In stressing their uniqueness, the case studies often consist of an overview of their particular historical background, sometimes rather general in character and at times quite specific because of the focus on the presence or absence of the directors of urban change or according to the special interest of the author.

These directors of urban change can be defined as actors with explicit ideas about city development who are in a position to formulate and influence future urban transformation. The main questions to be posed are: Who are the directors of urban change? What are their ideas on urban development and are these ideas compatible with those of other actors in the city as well as with local concepts of urbanization and the conditions of the present built environment? From what sources do the directors derive these ideas? And in what way and to what extent do they succeed in realizing them?

These directors do not constitute one uniform group, but a fragmented world with respect to organizational character, domain of interest and outlook. They may be individual thinkers, national and international professional firms, government officials, non-government organizations (NGOs), or grassroots groups and social movements. They may operate in the spheres of government, business, art or science. And they may be moral, legal, political, managerial, financial, military or artistic in outlook. The directors of urban change are urban planners, architects, roadbuilders, city administrators, real-estate developers, financiers, leaders of non-governmental organizations, scholars, and visual, performing and literary artists. They operate in networks at the local, national and international levels. The interplay between these levels is important and the foremost directors serve as nodes in the networks.

The ideas and visions of the directors may be relatively short- or longterm, with implications for the whole or part of the city, and for many or a limited number of inhabitants. They may constitute a fundamental and value-related view on city and society or be of a more partial nature, merely concerning the built environment. The ideas and visions of the directors are particularly important if they are actually realized in a specific city or when they are considered influential in a more general way.

It is important to elaborate on the balance of power between the various directors and the political games they play in their attempts to appropriate and mould urban space. This leads to the following questions. How are these directors linked through networks? To what extent do they manage to realize their visionary ideas? To what extent do they succeed in introducing institutional change, such as legal frameworks or training programmes, in order to increase the influence of their own faction on urban forms in the long run? Why are some directors more successful in conveying their views than others? What are the sources used to accomplish their ideas: political power, managerial skills, financial power, artistic insights or scientific knowledge?

The conditions under which the directors operate are of the utmost importance. The type of city involved is crucial as capital cities have an important role to play in nation-building, while provincial cities may just have ethnic, port towns international commercial and small towns local relevance. The overall political structure of the nation with democratic versus autocratic and disordered versus reliable governmental conditions cannot possibly be overlooked. Good governance versus corruption makes a difference. Planning organization based on the idea of blueprint planning or incremental planning shape the role of and the possibilities open to the directors. This also applies to the level of decentralization allowing more or less autonomy for local communities and governmental units.

In almost all cases the implementation of the ideas of the directors is a historical process resulting in partial and fragmented implementations. There are a few unique new towns, such as Brasília, and many new parts of town all over the world that were completely planned and realized, but even then, after completion, history begins to take its course. This means that in the end cities are always expressions of historical cumulative and aggregated interventions, albeit in a wide range from cities bearing the stamp of one hand to cities revealing so many influences that they show no stamp at all, though this does not mean that they necessarily lack character.

This process of fragmentation is also fostered by the fact that directors of urban change of all sorts, including the urban administration, the national government, real-estate developers, the president’s wife, and grassroots NGOs, often show no intention of cooperation. Their clashing visions, or indeed incomplete or sometimes even absence of vision of how to develop a city, generally result in a rather disorderly end product. More than anywhere else, perhaps, this is the case in cities situated in countries going through a phase of transition from a strict regime to a more liberal capitalist economy. Examples can be found in Nanjing, Guangzhou and Hanoi.

The ideas about and visions of urban development do not necessarily need to be unique to a particular city. These views may be floating around in networks of directors or even the general public. What types of networks? Of colleagues, scientists, politicians? Where do the directors meet each other? At congresses, regular meetings, personal encounters? What media do they use for inspiration? Scientific journals, research reports, general media?

In capital cities these ideas and visions may be very relevant to nationbuilding. In these and other cases they may also be used for the promotion of the city in the framework of the regional or worldwide urban hierarchy. Even then chains of influence may be discerned as the directors of urban change often aspire to follow the examples of cities higher in rank. So, urban administrators of small towns want to set up the same projects on a smaller scale as those being accomplished in the provincial or even national capital, while the administrators in the national capital look for inspiration at other capitals inside or outside the region. An example of such a ‘chain of aspirations’ is found in Indonesia, where the provincial capitals of Makassar and Surabaya copy models derived from the national capital. Meanwhile, Jakarta itself looks for ideas and visions to the smaller but far more modern Singapore, the water front development of Rotterdam and London, and the housing types in California. Singapore, in turn, is envious of Tokyo, the only large, modern city in the Pacific region according to Western standards.

The directors of urban change do not just influence each other but are in competition with each other to attract (international) investors to achieve employment opportunities for their cities. One way to catch the attention of the investors is by creating an imaginative, spectacular, yet functional cityscape. Urban administrators are locked in a paradox in this respect. On the one hand, when they join the global or regional competition for investors, they must comply with international standards of what is supposedly imaginative architecture. On the other hand, when they want to distinguish their city from others, they must propose something diverging from universal architecture. This national identity versus international competition paradox applies to city administrators and national governments making a showcase of their respective national capitals, and also to real-estate developers developing housing projects. This paradox also lies at the root of the chains of aspiration noted above.

We may finalize this section by stating that the cities in Asia are very important, all the more so because of the tremendous growth, which is turning them into mega-urban regions, the motors of future development. The processes of mega-urbanization are basically hybrid: partially spontaneous and partially planned. In addition they are paradox-ridden, as shown earlier. Scientific knowledge on the interplay of spontaneous growth and planned development as well as national identity and global competition in the context of current mega-urbanization is very limited. The role of directors of urban change has been especially underexposed. That is why further study of mega-city formation processes is of the utmost importance. And that is the rationale of the focus of this volume. But let us also be modest, as the book is not more than a first step in answering the host of questions posed. Even so, I hope that this collection of articles may function as an incentive for more widely supported research endeavours on the directors of urban change supplementing existing knowledge in urban studies.

Answers

After this description of the leading questions and supplementary theoretical reflections on the directors of urban change, I will now turn to the response to this and elaborations on the theme found in the contributions to this book, diversified as they may be. Because of this variety particularly, I will proceed with what may be called the ultra-case approach, choosing one extreme case as a starting point and continuing to search for the most opposite or divergent instance. This ultra-case approach can be considered holistic and contextual as emphasis is laid on the understanding of the total societal configuration of the city under inspection.

Ultra-case I: a lack of vision

‘People make Tehran’ is the central argument of Soheila Shahshahani in her exposition of the capital of Iran. She has failed to encounter any vision that has specifically shaped this city. The concerns of everyday life have been too overwhelming to allow a special vision to be developed and implemented. Notwithstanding, some major urban plans and construction projects during the reigns of the Qajar and Pahlavi kings plus some directions laid down by the 1968 Tehran Comprehensive Plan and later by Imam Khomeini were implemented. The sequence of the destruction of the old fortifications, the influx of foreign-educated Iranian architects and the upsurge in illegal building activities has engendered many urban problems associated with housing, water distribution and earthquake prevention. What is more significant from the point of view of directors is they have created a non-structured urban environment, a city built without a vision. Soheila Shahshahani poses the question: Why is this so? Why is this cognitive system disregarding the rights of citizens and concealing harsh realities? At the beginning of the twenty-first century, she replies that urban development has been guided by the tension between rule of family and law and the priority given to special relationships. There were no clearly defined rights and responsibilities in the service of country and people, which would have left adequate room for urbanism and urban construction to take shape. So, Tehran, as analysed by Soheila Shahshahani, is on the extreme of having no, or almost no, directors of urban change. In her view this is the result of a number of special social factors. The primary societal tension between kinship and law has produced a city with splendid architecture, beautiful individual buildings, but no coherent urban structure based on a clear vision. Therefore, because of this extreme lack of pattern, Tehran functions as the first ultra-case to launch this presentation of the papers in this book. This lack of chief directors of urban change and a crystallized urban vision in Tehran stands in a sharp contrast to the conditions in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Surabaya and Colombo, which make up the second ultra-case.

Ultra-case II: strong directors

In Singapore and Malaysia, the prime ministers, respectively Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir, evidently without much opposition took the lead in urban development as is amply documented by Freek Colombijn. The fundamental tension underneath the developing paths—the directions of urban change—they have realized to a large extent in their capitals Singa-pore and Kuala Lumpur is made up by an admixture of national identity and globalization. Singapore constrained by its limited land area conceptualized the strategy of SIJORI or the Golden Triangle to enlarge its spatial sphere of influence. By means of the spectacular Petronas Twin Towers and the new town of Cyberjaya, Kuala Lumpur apparently aspires to rival Singapore, though it is still lagging behind in development level. Both capitals play a role in identity-building, albeit with a slight difference in emphasis. As a city full of skyscrapers, Singapore does not have a famous landmark like the Petronas Twin Towers. Because of its need to seek more space in Indonesia and Malaysia, it apparently prefers to keep a low profile. In contrast, Kuala Lumpur, not having reached the same level of international competitiveness as Singapore, is boosting its national identity. These cases clearly show that besides the ‘directors’ of urban change, the ‘directions’ of urban change have to be incorporated in the discussion.

Even more than in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, in Jakarta two post-revolution Presidents, Sukarno and Soeharto, used the urban space of the capital as a strategic instrument of nation-building by the instigation of ‘great works’ and the placement of conspicuous statues and monuments. These constructions mark the urban environment and form a symbolic layer in the city, neutralizing the colonial architecture of the past and fostering national identity. The main elements in the symbolic pattern of the city are the National Monument, the Istiqlal Mosque, the open-air museum Taman Mini, and an abundance of often colossal statues. The main instigator of these works was President Sukarno, who was an architect by training. Under Soeharto the city was also structured by the works of his wife and other family members who were involved in the construction of major shopping malls, the open-air museum, the system of toll roads and the redevelopment—aborted by the 1998 economic crisis—of the former inner city airport area of Kemayoran.

As in Tehran, the total societal constellation of Indonesia and Jakarta exposes strong traits of nepotism and familial relationships, an ineluctable part of prevailing crony capitalism. In contrast to Tehran, these do not have a rural and religious background, but function in an urban and military setting. A comparison of the cases of Tehran and Jakarta leads to the conclusion that similar societal conditions do not necessarily entail the same attitude towards urban structuring. The personal background of the directors seems to be of crucial importance. The leaders of the old royal dynasties in Tehran had a vision, but in contrast to Jakarta and its presidents, it is not clear what exactly their drive and argumentation was.

In Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, a mixture of nation-building and international competition is paramount. In Jakarta the architect President Sukarno had a vision of urban space and construction which was directed more towards nation-building. Without fostering his own visio...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Colombo
• 3 Guangzhou City
• 4 Hanoi
• 5 Jakarta
• 6 Kuala Lumpur and Singapore
• 7 Makassar
• 8 Metro Manila
• 9 Nanjing
• 10 Semarang
• 11 Surabaya
• 12 Tehran
• 13 Tokyo