Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services

National Teachers College

Geography 3 - Urban Geography

Student’s Name: Degree Program:

Section: Mobile Number:

Professor Name: Email Address:

YOUR GOALS

Urban Geography is a branch of Human Geography that deals with various

aspects of cities from ancient to modern times. Through this module, you will
have a better appreciation of urban systems with reference to their geographical
environment. It will give you insights on urban development with population growth,
and the challenges that Asian cities are currently facing. Also, you will have a better
understanding about the urban development in the Philippines as well as its
challenges and opportunities, and how we can unlock the potential of creating more
globalized cities in the country.

At the end of this learning module, you are expected to demonstrate the
following competencies:
1. Understand the basic information about urbanization and its connection to
geographical set up of both ancient and modern-day cities around the world;
2. Analyze the impact of urban development in Asian cities and its underlying
problems; and
3. Create a critical analysis that will explain the key areas related to continuous
urban development in the country.

1
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

YOUR EXPERIENCE

Be guided by the following schedule that you can follow in order to manage
your learning experience well:

WEEK TASK OUTPUT

1 Essay on how Urban Geography became an important

discipline to the economic, political and social aspects of our
2 1
cities and how a city became a place of people with a similar
way of cultural preferences, political views, and lifestyle.

3 Create an infographic on the impact of urban development

2 in Asian cities and its underlying problems.
4

5 Critical analysis about the continuous urban development in

PROJECT the country.
6

There are required reading resources for this module. You are allowed to look for
other related resources if you have the means to do so. Note that our school library
has online resources that you can access.

TASK 1: Read the materials for this task and write an essay pertaining to Urban
Geography.

TASK INFORMATION: Please take note of the following in formulating your answer.

1. Read thoroughly the materials for this task.

2. Construct an essay on how Urban Geography became an important discipline
to the economic, political and social aspects of our cities and how a city
became a place of people with a similar way of cultural preferences, political
views, and lifestyle.
3. Your essay should be a minimum of 300 and a maximum of 500 words. The total
number of words should be written at the last page of your essay.

2
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

WRITING CONDITION: Take note of the following in crafting your essay.

1. Use the Answer sheet in writing your essay.
2. For computer-generated output, use the format (a) short bond paper, (b) font
style is Century Gothic, (c) font size is 12, (d) double spacing, and (e) justified.
3. The file must be submitted with the filename SURNAME_FIRSTNAME_SUBJEC
T_DATE SUBMITTED.

RUBRIC OF ASSESSMENT: Take time to review the rubric of evaluation which informs
you of how your Task 1 would be graded.
SKILLS Exemplary (5) Proficient (4) Satisfactory (3) Developing (2) Beginning ( 1 or 0)

Outcome Demonstrates Demonstrates a Demonstrates a Demonstrates a Demonstrates little or

mastery conscious and thoughtful basic awareness of limited awareness no awareness of the
thorough awareness of the some of the of one or two of knowledge and skills
understanding of knowledge and knowledge and skills the knowledge acquired for this
the knowledge and skills acquired for acquired for this and skills domain
skills acquired for this domain domain over acquired for this
this domain domain
Depth of Using student Using student Using student The written The written
reflection learning objectives learning learning objectives information either information provided
from course syllabi, objectives from from course syllabi, what they does not reference
the student course syllabi, the the student learned, how student learning
addresses what student addresses either they learned it, objectives from
they learned, how addresses what what they learned and/or what is course syllabi, and
they learned it, and they learned and or how they learned next, for this does not address
what is next with how they learned it for this domain, domain, but does what they learned,
regard to learning, it, for this domain, and does not not tie the how they learned it, or
for this domain but does not address plans for learning to what is next, for this
address plans for future learning objectives from domain
future learning course syllabi
Substantiatio Artifacts provide Artifacts provide Artifacts support Artifacts provide Artifacts do not
n of claims specific examples relevant most of the claims vague support to support the claims
to support claims examples to and some the claims and and interpretations
and interpretations support claims interpretations interpretations
and
interpretations
Writing Student Student Student Student Student demonstrates
conventions demonstrates use demonstrates use demonstrates use of demonstrates multiple errors so that
of sophisticated of sophisticated clear and frequent errors comprehension is
language with language with interpretable and use of almost
essentially no almost no language with unclear or
spelling or spelling or occasional spelling incomplete
grammatical errors grammatical and grammatical sentences so that
errors errors comprehension is
difficult

3
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

YOUR POINTS AND NOTES (to be accomplished by the teacher)

ANSWER SHEET: Place the content of your answers to the activity here.

4
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

5
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

6
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

READING MATERIAL NO. 1

An Overview of Urban Geography
by Amanda Briney
https://www.thoughtco.com/overview-of-urban-geography-1435803

Urban Geography
Urban geography is a branch of human geography concerned with various aspects of cities.
An urban geographer's main role is to emphasize location and space and study the spatial
processes that create patterns observed in urban areas. To do this, they study the site,
evolution and growth, and classification of villages, towns, and cities as well as their location
and importance in relation to different regions and cities. Economic, political and social
aspects within cities are also important in urban
geography.

In order to fully understand each of these aspects of a city, urban geography represents a
combination of many other fields within geography. Physical geography, for example, is
important in understanding why a city is located in a specific area as site and environmental
conditions play a large role in whether or not a city develops. Cultural geography can aid in
understanding various conditions related to an area's people, while economic geography
aids in understanding the types of economic activities and jobs available in an area. Fields
outside of geography such as resource management, anthropology, and urban sociology are
also important.

Definition of a City
An essential component within urban geography is defining what a city or urban area
actually is. Although a difficult task, urban geographers generally define the city as a
concentration of people with a similar way of life-based on job type, cultural preferences,
political views, and lifestyle. Specialized land uses, a variety of different institutions, and use of
resources also help in distinguishing one city from another. In addition, urban geographers also
work to differentiate areas of different sizes. Because it is hard to find sharp distinctions
between areas of different sizes, urban geographers often use the rural-urban continuum to
guide their understanding and help classify areas. It takes into account hamlets and villages
which are generally considered rural and consist of small, dispersed populations, as well as
cities and metropolitan areas considered urban with concentrated, dense populations.

History of Urban Geography

The earliest studies of urban geography in the United States focused on site and situation. This
developed out of the man-land tradition of geography which focused on the impact of
nature on humans and vice versa. In the 1920s, Carl Sauer became influential in urban
geography as he motivated geographers to study a city's population and economic aspects
7
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

with regard to its physical location. In addition, central place theory and regional studies
focused on the hinterland (the rural outlying are supporting a city with agricultural products
and raw materials) and trade areas were also important to early urban geography.

Throughout the 1950s and 1970s, geography itself became focused on spatial analysis,
quantitative measurements and the use of the scientific method. At the same time, urban
geographers began quantitative information like census data to compare different urban
areas. Using this data allowed them to do comparative studies of different cities and develop
computer-based analysis out of those studies. By the 1970s, urban studies were the leading
form of geographic research. Shortly thereafter, behavioral studies began to grow within
geography and in urban geography. Proponents of behavioral studies believed that location
and spatial characteristics could not be held solely responsible for changes in a city. Instead,
changes in a city arise from decisions made by individuals and organizations within the city.

By the 1980s, urban geographers became largely concerned with structural aspects of the city
related to underlying social, political and economic structures. For example, urban
geographers at this time studied how capital investment could foster urban change in various
cities. Throughout the late 1980s until today, urban geographers have begun to differentiate
themselves from one another, therefore allowing the field to be filled with a number of
different viewpoints and focuses. For example, a city's site and situation is still regarded as
important to its growth, as is its history and relationship with its physical environment and
natural resources. People's interactions with each other and political and economic factors
are still studied as agents of urban change as well.

Themes of Urban Geography

Although urban geography has several different focuses and viewpoints, there are two major
themes that dominate its study today. The first of these is the study of problems relating to the
spatial distribution of cities and the patterns of movement and links that connect them across
space. This approach focuses on the city system. The second theme in urban geography
today is the study of patterns of distribution and interaction of people and businesses within
cities. This theme mainly looks at a city's inner structure and therefore focuses on the city as a
system.

In order to follow these themes and study cities, urban geographers often break down
their research into different levels of analysis. In focusing on the city system, urban geographers
must look at the city on the neighborhood and citywide level, as well as how it relates to other
cities on a regional, national and global level. To study the city as a system and its inner
structure as in the second approach, urban geographers are mainly concerned with the
neighborhood and city level.

8
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

Jobs in Urban Geography

Since urban geography is a varied branch of geography that requires a wealth of outside
knowledge and expertise on the city, it forms the theoretical basis for a growing number of
jobs. According to the Association of American Geographers, a background in urban
geography can prepare one for a career in such fields as urban
and transportation planning, site selection in business development and real estate
development.

READING MATERIAL NO. 2

Urban Morphology by K.D. Lilley
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/urban-morphology

A Historical Geography of Urban Morphology

Urban morphology has formed a part of Anglophone human geography since the early 1900s.
The aim here is to summarize its development since then, and to identify particular ‘schools’ or
traditions of urban morphology that emerged over this time.
These ‘schools’ are an important dimension of morphological study internationally and
reflect different strands of urban morphology as well as the influence of key thinkers at
particular times. The most thorough surveys of these schools and their development are those
by Whitehand. He divides urban morphology internationally into four main traditions,
comprising ‘morphogenetic geographers’, ‘Conzenian geographers’, ‘other English-speaking
geographers’, and ‘urban designers’. Since 1992, and thanks to the work of the International
Seminar on Urban Form (ISUF), greater recognition has emerged of the diverse research
traditions in urban morphology, especially those beyond the Anglophone world, summaries of
which appear in the journal Urban Morphology, itself a sign of greater international dialog
among urban morphologists of
different traditions.

As far as Anglophone urban morphology is concerned, its early influences came from
continental Europe, Germany, and Italy in particular, during the middle decades of the
twentieth century. The more dominant influence on those Anglophone urban morphologists
who were geographers (rather than architects) was Germanic (rather than Italian), and
derives from a strong tradition of settlement study and landscape morphology in central
European geography, beginning with the work of Schlüter in the 1890s at the University of
Hälle. This earliest work of German-speaking urban morphologists was characterized by a
concern for creating typologies of historic urban forms, especially medieval towns and cities of
continental Europe. For instance, a study of West German towns by Klaiber identified six plan
types, while Geisler attempted to classify all German town plans according to their street
systems in his book, Die Deutsche Stadt. By the 1940s, this ‘morphographic’, classificatory
approach was giving way to a ‘morphogenetic’ approach based upon principles of plan
9
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

analysis in which the period compositeness of town plans was recognized and put to use in
mapping out not typologies but histories of urban form. This had begun in the inter-war period
with studies by Dörries, Bobek, and Rörig, and developed through a series of German historic
town atlases that used large-scale town plans and also identified phases of historical urban
development. It was this work by German-speaking urban morphologists that gradually
became known by English-speaking geographers in the UK and USA. R. E. Dickinson had
introduced German urban morphology to a geography audience in Britain in the 1930s, and
also undertaken a typological study of town plans in eastern England very much like those of
Klaiber and Geisler. In his West European City he also referred to the then more recent (and
sophisticated) work of Bobek and Rörig. But Dickinson’s influence on Anglophone geographers
was overtaken in the early 1960s by a German émigré geographer, M. R. G. Conzen, who
used his grounding in German geography to develop an approach to urban morphology that
has become known as the ‘Conzenian tradition’. In the US, it was the work of Leighly in the
1920s and 1930s that brought urban morphology into cultural geography, in particular, the
Berkeley School, but the focus there was rather more on rural settlement than urban, and
subsequently it was Conzenian urban morphology again that came to influence North
American historical geographers’ work on built environments and urban landscapes.

The ‘Conzenian geographers’, whose intellectual origins stem back to the ‘morphogenetic
geographers’ of continental Europe, share a common belief that urban landscapes are
dynamic yet at the same time conservative. This principle guides their thinking on the methods
as well as applications of urban morphology. It concerns the historicity of the urban
landscape, and the values attached to this. Conzen initially dealt with problems of method, of
how to interpret town plans ‘morphogenetically’, and of how to disaggregate the
morphological complexity of urban landscapes both in terms of their plan form and built
fabric. He devised an approach, ‘town plan analysis’ to identify ‘plan elements’ (streets, plots,
and buildings)
that together constituted a town’s plan, and used this to define areas of morphological
homogeneity, which he called ‘plan units’, each indicating a phase of
urban morphogenesis as he saw it. Conzen conceptualized formation and redevelopment
processes through his close analysis of streets, plots, and buildings, and paid particular
attention to cyclical changes in form, for example, the formation of ‘fringe belts’ and the
internal transformation of building lots (‘the burgage cycle’).

These were discussed in his monograph on Alnwick, a small historic market town in northeast
England. In this study he also paid attention to what else gave a townscape its character, not
only its ‘town plan’ but also local ‘building fabric’ and ‘land utilization’. With building fabric, he
sought to focus on architectural style and building materials and façade features, mapping
building types in detail, and likewise with types of land utilization. Such detailed study required
fieldwork and not only borrowed on Conzen’s training as a geographer in Berlin between the

10
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

wars but also his early profession as a town planner. The ways that these three ‘form
complexes’ – town plan, building fabric, and land utilization – all combined gave rise, he
suggested, to the genius loci, or spirit of place, achieved through long-term historical and
morphological development and redevelopment processes. Conzen’s methodological and
conceptual ideas, as well as his thinking on historical townscapes, has formed a critical school
of thought in urban morphology that touches not only geography but also history,
archaeology, architecture, and planning. In UK geography in particular, Conzen’s work was
further developed in the 1970s and 1980s, primarily at the University of Birmingham under the
auspices of the Urban Morphology Research Group (UMRG) set up by J. W. R. Whitehand. This
fostered the Conzenian tradition and helped to disseminate Conzenian ideas across Britain, as
well as Ireland. Two areas in particular were developed, one historical in focus concerning the
use of ‘town plan analysis’ to reconstruct the early histories of European towns and cities, and
the other more contemporary in focus concerning the role of agents and agency in urban
redevelopment and development control. Through this activity, the ‘Conzenian school’ has
gained identity and international recognition, with new links fostered between the UK and
urban morphologists working in Spain and Poland. It has also revealed the presence of
cognate schools of urban morphology, notably the ‘Italian school’ that had emerged in the
1950s and 1960s at the same time that Conzen was writing, through the work of Muratori and
Caniggia.

In the US too, the Conzenian tradition was fostered by an out-migration of UK geographers,

including M. P. Conzen and Deryck Holdsworth. But neither in the UK nor
the USA has urban morphology gained ascendancy in human geography as a whole.
It remains a fairly peripheral part of the discipline. Indeed, by the 1990s, some UK geographers
were beginning to suggest that urban morphologists’ view of ‘landscape’ was too narrow, too
empirical, particularly in the light of a more theorized
approach to landscape that had begun to root in Anglophone historical and cultural
geography which was more concerned with iconography than morphology. With the
foundation of ISUF, in 1994, and the publication of its journal Urban Morphology (since 1997),
the various ‘schools’ of urban morphology present both within and between academic
disciplines and national intellectual traditions have begun to cross-fertilize, making it perhaps
now more difficult than 20 years ago to map out a genealogy of urban morphology as
Whitehand did in the 1980s. The subject continues to attract comment, as it always has done,
not just by geographers but also by others interested in understanding built forms and
managing urban landscapes.

11
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

READING MATERIAL NO. 3

Urbanization and the Development of Cities
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-sociology/chapter/urbanization-an
d-th e-development-of-cities/

The Earliest Cities Early cities arose in a number of regions, and are thought to have
developed for reasons of agricultural productivity and economic scale.

Early cities developed in a number of regions, from Mesopotamia to Asia to the Americas.
The very first cities were founded in Mesopotamia after the Neolithic Revolution, around
7500 BCE. Mesopotamian cities included Eridu, Uruk, and Ur. Early cities also arose in the
Indus Valley and ancient China. Among the early Old World cities, one of the largest was
Mohenjo-daro, located in the Indus Valley (present-day Pakistan); it existed from about
2600 BCE, and had a population of 50,000 or more. In the ancient Americas, the earliest
cities were built in the Andes and Mesoamerica, and flourished between the 30th century
BCE and the 18th century BCE.

Ancient cities were notable for their geographical diversity, as well as their diversity in form
and function. Theories that attempt to explain ancient urbanism by a single factor, such as
economic benefit, fail to capture the range of variation documented by archaeologists.
Excavations at early urban sites show that some cities were sparsely populated political
capitals, others were trade centers, and still other cities had a primarily religious focus.
Some cities had large dense populations, whereas others carried out urban activities in the
realms of politics or religion without having large associated populations. Some ancient
cities grew to be powerful capital cities and centers of commerce and industry, situated at
the centers of growing ancient empires. Examples include Alexandria and Antioch of the
Hellenistic civilization, Carthage, and ancient Rome and its eastern successor,
Constantinople (later Istanbul).

The Formation of Cities Why did cities form in the first place? There is insufficient evidence
to assert what conditions gave rise to the first cities, but some theorists have speculated on
what they consider pre-conditions and basic mechanisms that could explain the rise of
cities. Agriculture is believed to be a pre-requisite for cities, which help preserve surplus
production and create economies of scale. The conventional view holds that cities first
formed after the Neolithic Revolution, with the spread of agriculture. The advent of farming
encouraged hunter-gatherers to abandon nomadic lifestyles and settle near others who
lived by agricultural production. Agriculture yielded more food, which made denser human
populations possible, thereby supporting city development. Farming led to dense, settled
populations, and food surpluses that required storage and could facilitate trade. These
12
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

conditions seem to be important prerequisites for city life. Many theorists hypothesize that
agriculture preceded the development of cities and led to their growth.

A good environment and strong social organization are two necessities for the formation of
a successful city. A good environment includes clean water and a favorable climate for
growing crops and agriculture. A strong sense of social organization helps a newly formed
city work together in times of need, and it allows people to develop various functions to
assist in the future development of the city (for example, farmer or merchant). Without
these two common features, as well as advanced agricultural technology, a newly formed
city is not likely to succeed.
Cities may have held other advantages, too. For example, cities reduced transport costs
for goods, people, and ideas by bringing them all together in one spot. By reducing these
transaction costs, cities contributed to worker productivity. Finally, cities likely performed
the essential function of providing protection for people and the valuable things they were
beginning to accumulate. Some theorists hypothesize that people may have come
together to form cities as a form of protection against marauding barbarian armies.

Preindustrial Cities Preindustrial cities had important political and economic functions and
evolved to become well-defined political units.

Cities as Political Centers

While ancient cities may have arisen organically as trading centers, preindustrial cities
evolved to become well defined political units, like today’s states. During the European
Middle Ages, a town was as much a political entity as a collection of houses. However,
particular political forms varied. In continental Europe, some cities had their own
legislatures. In the Holy Roman Empire, some cities had no other lord than the emperor. In
Italy, medieval communes had a state-like power. In exceptional cases like Venice,
Genoa, or Lübeck, cities themselves became powerful states, sometimes taking
surrounding areas under their control or establishing extensive maritime empires. Similar
phenomena existed elsewhere, as in the case of Sakai, which enjoyed a considerable
autonomy in late medieval Japan.

For people during the medieval era, cities offered a newfound freedom from rural
obligations. City residence brought freedom from customary rural obligations to lord and
community (hence the German saying, “Stadtluft macht frei,” which means “City air
makes you free”). Often, cities were governed by their own laws, separate from the rule of
lords of the surrounding area.

13
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

Trade Routes

Not all cities grew to become major urban centers. Those that did often benefited from
trade routes—in the early modern era, larger capital cities benefited from new trade routes
and grew even larger. While the city-states, or poleis, of the Mediterranean and Baltic Sea
languished from the 16th century, Europe’s larger capitals benefited from the growth of
commerce following the emergence of an Atlantic trade. By the early 19th century, London
had become the largest city in the world with a population of over a million, while Paris
rivaled the well-developed regional capital cities of Baghdad, Beijing, Istanbul, and Kyoto.
But most towns remained far smaller places—in 1500 only about two dozen places in the
world contained more than 100,000 inhabitants. As late as 1700 there were fewer than 40,
a figure which would rise thereafter to 300 in 1900. A small city of the early modern period
might have contained as few as 10,000 inhabitants.

Industrial Cities

During the industrial era, cities grew rapidly and became centers of population and
production. The growth of modern industry from the late 18th century onward led to
massive urbanization and the rise of new, great cities, first in Europe, and then in other
regions, as new opportunities brought huge numbers of migrants from rural communities
into urban areas. In 1800, only 3% of the world’s population lived in cities. Since the
industrial era, that figure, as of the beginning of the 21st century, has risen to nearly 50%. The
United States provides a good example of how this process unfolded; from 1860 to 1910,
the invention of railroads reduced transportation costs and large manufacturing centers
began to emerge in the United States, allowing migration from rural to urban areas.

Rapid growth brought urban problems, and industrial-era cities were rife with dangers to
health and safety. Rapidly expanding industrial cities could be quite deadly, and were
often full of contaminated water and air, and communicable diseases. Living conditions
during the Industrial Revolution varied from the splendor of the homes of the wealthy to the
squalor of the workers. Poor people lived in very small houses in cramped streets. These
homes often shared toilet facilities, had open sewers, and were prone to epidemics
exacerbated by persistent dampness. Disease often spread through contaminated water
supplies.

In the 19th century, health conditions improved with better sanitation, but urban people,
especially small children, continued to die from diseases spreading through the cramped
living conditions. Tuberculosis (spread in congested dwellings), lung diseases from mines,
cholera from polluted water, and typhoid were all common. The greatest killer in the cities
was tuberculosis (TB). Archival health records show that as many as 40% of working class
deaths in cities were caused by tuberculosis.
14
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

The Structure of Cities

Urban structure is the arrangement of land use, explained using different models.

Urban Structure Models

Grid

In grid models, land is divided by streets intersect at right angles, forming a grid. Grid plans
are more common in North American cities than in Europe, where older cities tend to be
build on streets that radiate out from a central square or structure of cultural significance.
Grid plans facilitate development because developers can subdivide and auction off
large parcels of land. The geometry yields regular lots that maximize use and minimize
boundary disputes. However, grids can be dangerous because long, straight roads allow
faster automobile traffic. In the 1960s, urban planners moved away from grids and began
planning suburban developments with dead ends and cul-de-sacs.

Concentric Ring Model

The concentric ring model was postulated in 1924 by sociologist Ernest Burgess, based on
his observations of Chicago. It draws on human ecology theories, which compared the city
to an ecosystem, with processes of adaptation and assimilation. Urban residents naturally
sort themselves into appropriate rings, or ecological niches, depending on class and
cultural assimilation. The innermost ring represents the central business district (CBD), called
Zone A.. It is surrounded by a zone of transition (B), which contains industry and
poorer-quality housing. The third ring (C) contains housing for the working-class—the zone
of independent workers’ homes. The fourth ring (D) has newer and larger houses occupied
by the middle-class. The outermost ring (E), or commuter’s zone, is residential suburbs.

Sectoral

In 1939, the economist Homer Hoyt adapted the concentric ring model by proposing that
cities develop in wedge-shaped sectors instead of rings. Certain areas of a city are more
attractive for various activities, whether by chance or geographic/environmental reasons.
As these activities flourish and expand outward, they form wedges, becoming city sectors.
Like the concentric ring model, Hoyt’s sectoral model has been criticized for ignoring
physical features and new transportation patterns that restrict or direct growth.

15
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

Multiple Nuclei

The multiple nuclei model was developed in 1945 to explain city formation after the spread
of the automobile. People have greater movement due to increased car ownership,
allowing for the specialization of regional centers. A city contains more than one center
around which activities revolve. Some activities are attracted to particular nodes while
others try to avoid them. For example, a university node may attract well-educated
residents, pizzerias, and bookstores, whereas an airport may attract hotels and
warehouses. Incompatible activities will avoid clustering in the same area.

Irregular Pattern

The irregular pattern model was developed to explain urban structure in the Third World. It
attempts to model the lack of planning found in many rapidly built Third World cities. This
model includes blocks with no fixed order; urban structure is not related to an urban center
or CBD.

Alternate Uses of “Urban Structure”

Urban structure can also refer to urban spatial structure; the arrangement of public and
private space in cities and the degree of connectivity and accessibility. In this context,
urban structure is concerned with the arrangement of the CBD, industrial and residential
areas, and open space.
A city’s central business district (CBD), or downtown, is the commercial and often
geographic heart of a city. In North America, this is referred to as “downtown” or “city
center. ” The downtown area is often home to the financial district, but usually also
contains entertainment and retail. CBDs usually have very small resident populations, but
populations are increasing as younger professional and business workers move into city
center apartments.
An industrial park is an area zoned and planned for the purpose of industrial development.
They are intended to attract business by concentrating dedicated infrastructure to reduce
the per-business expenses. They also set aside industrial uses from urban areas to reduce
the environmental and social impact of industrial uses and to provide a distinct zone of
environmental controls specific to industrial needs.
Urban open spaces provide citizens with recreational, ecological, aesthetic value. They
can range from highly maintained environments to natural landscapes. Commonly open
to public access, they may be privately owned. Urban open spaces offer a reprieve from
the urban environment and can add ecological value, making citizens more aware of
their natural surroundings and providing nature to promote biodiversity. Open spaces offer
aesthetic value for citizens who enjoy nature, cultural value by providing space for
concerts or art shows, and functional value—for example, by helping to control runoff and
16
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

prevent flooding.

The Process of Urbanization

Urbanization is the process of a population shift from rural areas to cities, often motivated
by economic factors.

Urbanization and rural flight

Urbanization is the process of a population shift from rural areas to cities. During the last
century, global populations have urbanized rapidly:
● 13% of people lived in urban environments in the year 1900
● 29% of people lived in urban environments in the year 1950
One projection suggests that, by 2030, the proportion of people living in cities may reach
60%.

Rural and Urban World Population: Over time, the world’s population has become less rural
and more urban.
Urbanization tends to correlate positively with industrialization. With the promise of greater
employment opportunities that come from industrialization, people from rural areas will go
to cities in pursuit of greater economic rewards.
Another term for urbanization is “rural flight. ” In modern times, this flight often occurs in a
region following the industrialization of agriculture—when fewer people are needed to
bring the same amount of agricultural output to market—and related agricultural services
and industries are consolidated. These factors negatively affect the economy of small- and
middle-sized farms and strongly reduce the size of the rural labor market. Rural flight is
exacerbated when the population decline leads to the loss of rural services (such as
business enterprises and schools), which leads to greater loss of population as people
leave to seek those features.
As more and more people leave villages and farms to live in cities, urban growth results.
The rapid growth of cities like Chicago in the late nineteenth century and Mumbai a
century later can be attributed largely to rural-urban migration. This kind of growth is
especially commonplace in developing countries.
Urbanization occurs naturally from individual and corporate efforts to reduce time and
expense in commuting, while improving opportunities for jobs, education, housing,
entertainment, and transportation. Living in cities permits individuals and families to take
advantage of the opportunities of proximity, diversity, and marketplace competition. Due
to their high populations, urban areas can also have more diverse social communities than
rural areas, allowing others to find people like them.

17
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

Economic and Environmental Effects of Urbanization

Urbanization has significant economic and environmental effects on cities and surrounding
areas. As city populations grow, they increase the demand for goods and services of all
kinds, pushing up prices of these goods and services, as well as the price of land. As land
prices rise, the local working class may be priced out of the real estate market and pushed
into less desirable neighborhoods – a process known as gentrification.
Growing cities also alter the environment. For example, urbanization can create urban
“heat islands,” which are formed when industrial and urban areas replace and reduce the
amount of land covered by vegetation or open soil. In rural areas, the ground helps
regulate temperatures by using a large part of the incoming solar energy to evaporate
water in vegetation and soil. This evaporation, in turn, has a cooling effect. However in
cities, where less vegetation and exposed soil exists, the majority of the sun’s energy is
absorbed by urban structures and asphalt. During the day, cities experience higher surface
temperatures because urban surfaces produce less evaporative cooling. Additional city
heat is given off by vehicles and factories, as well as industrial and domestic heating and
cooling units. Together, these effects can raise city temperatures by 2 to 10 degrees
Fahrenheit (or 1 to 6 degrees Celsius).

Suburbanization and Counterurbanization

Recently in developed countries, sociologists have observed suburbanization and

counterurbanization, or movement away from cities. These patterns may be driven by
transportation infrastructure, or social factors like racism. In developed countries, people
are able to move out of cities while still maintaining many of the advantages of city life (for
instance, improved communications and means of transportation). In fact,
counterurbanization appears most common among the middle and upper classes who
can afford to buy their own homes.
Race also plays a role in American suburbanization. During World War I, the massive
migration of African Americans from the South resulted in an even greater residential shift
toward suburban areas. The cities became seen as dangerous, crime-infested areas, while
the suburbs were seen as safe places to live and raise a family, leading to a social trend
known in some parts of the world as “white flight. ” Some social scientists suggest that the
historical processes of suburbanization and decentralization are instances of white privilege
that have contributed to contemporary patterns of environmental racism.
In the United States, suburbanization began in earnest after World War II, when soldiers
returned from war and received generous government support to finance new homes.
Suburbs, which are residential areas on the outskirts of a city, were less crowded and had a
lower cost of living than cities. Suburbs grew dramatically in the 1950s when the U.S.
interstate highway system was built, and automobiles became affordable for middle class

18
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

families. Around 1990, another trend emerged known as counterurbanization, or

“exurbanization”. The wealthiest individuals began living in nice housing far in rural areas
(as opposed to forms).
Suburbanization may be a new urban form.Rather than densely populated centers, cities
may become more spread out, composed of many interconnected smaller towns.
Interestingly, the modern U.S. experience has gone from a largely rural country, to a highly
urban country, to a country with significant suburban populations.

U.S. Urban Patterns

The U.S. Census Bureau classifies areas as urban or rural based on population size and
density.
Different international, national, and local agencies may define “urban” in various ways.
For example, city governments often use political boundaries to delineate what counts as
a city. Other definitions may consider total population size or population density. Different
definitions may also set various thresholds, so that in some cases, a town of just 2,500 may
count as an urban city, whereas in other contexts, a city may be defined as having at least
50,000 people. Other agencies may define “urban” based on land use: places count as
urban if they are built up with residential neighborhoods, industrial sites, railroad yards,
cemeteries, airports, golf courses, and similar areas. Using this sort of definition, in 1997, the
U.S. Department of Agriculture tallied over 98,000,000 acres of “urban” land.
In spite of these competing definitions, in the United States “urban” is officially defined
following guidelines set by the U.S. Census Bureau. The Census Bureau defines “urban
areas” as areas with a population density of at least 1,000 people per square mile and at
least 2,500 total people. Urban areas are delineated without regard to political
boundaries. Because this definition does not consider political boundaries, it is often used
as a more accurate gauge of the size of a city than the number of people who live within
the city limits. Often, these two numbers are not the same. For example, the city of
Greenville, South Carolina has a city population under 60,000 and an urbanized area
population of over 300,000, while Greensboro, North Carolina has a city population over
200,000 and an urbanized area population of around 270,000. That means that Greenville
is actually “larger” for some intents and purposes, but not for others, such as taxation, local
elections, etc.
As of December, 2010, about 82% of the population of the United States lived within the
boundaries of urbanized area. Combined, these areas occupy about 2% of the land area
of the United States. The majority of urbanized area residents are suburbanites; core central
city residents make up about 30% of the urbanized area population (about 60 million out of
210 million). In the United States, the largest urban area is New York City, with over 8 million
people within the city limits and over 19 million in the urban area. The next five largest
urban areas in the United States are Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia,
19
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

and Boston.

The Rural Rebound

During the 1970s and again in the 1990s, the rural population rebounded in what
appeared to be a reversal of urbanization.
The rural rebound refers to the movement away from cities to rural and suburban areas.
Urbanization tends to occur along with modernization, yet in the most developed countries
many cities are now beginning to lose population. In the United States in the 1970s,
demographers observed that the rural population was actually growing faster than urban
populations, a phenomenon they labeled the “rural rebound. ” This trend reversed in the
1980s, due in part to a recession that hit farmers particularly hard. But again in the 1990s,
rural populations appeared to be gaining at the expense of cities. Indeed, in the last 50
years, about 370 cities worldwide with more than 100,000 residents have undergone
population losses of more than 10%, and more than 25% of the depopulating cities are in
the United States.
Rather than moving to rural areas, most participants in the so-called the rural rebound
migrated into new, rapidly growing suburbs. The rural rebound, then, may be more
evidence of the importance of suburbanization as a new urban form in the most
developed countries.

Suburbanization

Suburbanization is a general term that refers to the movement of people from cities to
surrounding areas. However, the suburbanization that took place after 1970 was different
from the suburbanization that had occurred earlier, after World War II. In this more recent
wave of suburbanization, people moved beyond the nearby suburbs to farther-away
towns. Sociologists have invented several new categories to describe these new types of
suburban towns; two of the most notable are ex-urbs and edge cities.
The expression exurb (for “extra-urban”) refers to a ring of prosperous communities beyond
a city’s suburbs. Often, these communities are commuter towns or bedroom communities.
Commuter towns are primarily residential; most of the residents commute to jobs in the city.
They are sometimes called bedroom communities because residents spend their days
away in the cities and only come home to sleep. In general, commuter towns have little
commercial or industrial activity of their own, though they may contain some retail centers
to serve the daily needs of residents. Although most exurbs are commuter towns, most
commuter towns are not exurban.
Exurbs vary in wealth and education level. In the United States, exurban areas typically
have much higher college education levels than closer-in suburbs, though this is not
necessarily the case in other countries. They typically have average incomes much higher

20
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

than nearby rural counties, reflecting the urban wages of their residents. Although some
exurbs are quite wealthy even compared to nearer suburbs or the city itself, others have
higher poverty levels than suburbs nearer the city. This may happen especially where
commuter towns form because workers in a region cannot afford to live where they work
and must seek residency in another town with a lower cost of living. For example, during
the “dot com” bubble of the late twentieth century, housing prices in California cities
skyrocketed, spawning exurban growth in adjacent counties.

White Flight

Sociologists have posited many explanations for counterurbanization, but one of the most
debated is whether suburbanization is driven by white flight. The term white flight was
coined in the mid-twentieth century to describe suburbanization and the large-scale
migration of whites of various European ancestries, from racially mixed urban regions to
more racially homogeneous suburban regions. During the first half of the twentieth
century, discriminatory housing policies often prevented blacks from moving to suburbs;
banks and federal policy made it difficult for blacks to get the mortgages they needed to
buy houses, and communities used restrictive housing covenants to exclude minorities.
White flight during this period contributed to urban decay, a process whereby a city, or
part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude. Symptoms of urban decay include
depopulation, abandoned buildings, high unemployment, crime, and a desolate,
inhospitable landscape. White flight contributed to the draining of cities’ tax bases when
middle-class people left, exacerbating urban decay caused in part by the loss of industrial
and manufacturing jobs as they moved into rural areas or overseas where labor was
cheaper.
More recently, the concept has been extended to newer forms of suburbanization,
including migration from urban to rural areas and to exurbs. In a similar vein, some
demographers have described the rural rebound, and the newest waves of
suburbanization, as a form of ethnic balkanization, in which different ethnic groups (not
only whites) sort themselves into racially homogeneous communities. These phenomena,
however, are not so clearly driven by the restrictive policies, laws, and practices that drove
the white flight of the first half of the century.

Models of Urban Growth

Models of urban growth try to balance the advantages and disadvantages of cities’ large
sizes.
Cities are dynamic places—they grow, shrink, and change. Sociologists have developed
different theories for thinking about how urban populations change.

21
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

Growth Machine Theory

The growth machine theory of urban growth says urban growth is driven by a coalition of
interest groups who all benefit from continuous growth and expansion. First articulated by
Molotch in 1976, growth machine theory took the dominant convention of studying urban
land use and turned it on its head.
The field of urban sociology had been dominated by the idea that cities were basically
containers for human action, in which actors competed among themselves for the most
strategic parcels of land, and the real estate market reflected the state of that
competition. Growth machine theory reversed the course of urban theory by pointing out
that land parcels were not empty fields awaiting human action, but were associated with
specific interests—commercial, sentimental, and psychological. In other words, city
residents were not simply competing for parcels of land; they were also trying to fulfill their
particular interests and achieve specific goals. In particular, cities are shaped by the real
estate interests of people whose properties gain value when cities grow. These actors
make up what Molotch termed “the local growth machine. ”

Urban Sprawl

Whether explained by older theories of natural processes or by growth machine theory,

the fact of urban growth is undeniable: throughout the twentieth century, cities have
grown rapidly. In some cases, that growth has been poorly controlled, resulting in a
phenomenon known as urban sprawl. Urban sprawl entails the growth of a city into
low-density and auto-dependent rural land, high segregation of land use (e.g., retail
sections placed far from residential areas, often in large shopping malls or retail
complexes), and design features that encourage car dependency.
Urban sprawl’s segregated land use means that the places where people live, work, shop,
and relax are far from one another, which usually makes walking, public transit, or bicycling
impractical. As a result, residents must use an automobile. Urban sprawl tends to include
low population density: single family homes on large lots instead of apartment buildings,
single story or low-rise buildings instead of high-rises, extensive lawns and surface parking
lots, and so on.
Critics of urban sprawl argue that it creates an inhospitable urban environment and that it
encroaches on rural land, potentially driving up land prices and displacing farmers or other
rural residents. Urban sprawl is also associated with negative environmental and public
health effects, many of which are related to automobile dependence: increases in
personal transportation costs, air pollution and reliance on fossil fuel, increases in traffic
accidents, delays in emergency medical services response times, and decreases in land
and water quantity and quality.

22
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

Urban Decay

Some have suggested that urban sprawl is driven by consumer preference; people prefer
to live in lower density, quieter, more private communities that they perceive as safer and
more relaxed than urban neighborhoods. Such preferences echo a common strain of
criticism of urban life, which tends to focus on urban decay. According to these critics,
urban decay is caused by the excessive density and crowding of cities, and it drives out
residents, creating the conditions for urban sprawl.

BROKEN WINDOWS

An alternative theory suggests that density does not cause crime, and crime does not
cause people to leave the city; when people leave, city neighborhoods are abandoned
and neglected, resulting in crime and decay. This theory, known as the “broken windows
theory,” argues that small indicators of neglect, such as broken windows and unkempt
lawns, promote a feeling that an area is in a state of decay. Anticipating decay, people
likewise fail to maintain their own properties.

RESPONSES TO DECAY

Cities have responded to urban decay and urban sprawl by launching urban renewal
programs. Two specific types of urban renewal programs—New Urbanism and smart
growth—attempt to make cities more pleasant and livable.
Smart growth programs draw urban growth boundaries to keep urban development dense
and compact. In addition to increasing the density of cities, urban growth boundaries can
protect the surrounding farmland and wild areas. Smart growth programs often
incorporate transit-oriented development goals to encourage effective public transit
systems and make bicyclers and pedestrians more comfortable.
New Urbanism is an urban design movement that promotes walkable neighborhoods with
a range of housing options and job types. As an approach to urban planning, it
encompasses principles such as traditional neighborhood design and transit-oriented
development. A neighborhood designed along New Urbanist principles would have a
discernible center (such as a square or a green) with a transit stop nearby. Most homes
would be within a five-minute walk of the center and would provide a variety of housing
options, including houses, row houses, and apartments to encourage the mixing of
younger and older people, singles and families, and poor and wealthy.

23
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

TASK 2: Read the materials provided for this task and create an infographic.

TASK INFORMATION: Please take note of the following in formulating your output.
1. Read thoroughly the reading materials provided.
2. Create a n infographic on the impact of urban development in Asian cities and
its underlying problems.
3. Below is a sample infographic:

https://www.adb.org/news/infographics/fostering-growth-and-inclusion-asia-cities

24
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

OUTPUT CONDITION: Take note of the following in crafting your infographic.

1. The task can be computer generated or drawn in this module. Please make sure
to use readable fonts.
2. For the purpose of readability, electronic outputs should be encoded using
Century Gothic, with font size of at least 18-20 px. Images shall improve the
appearance of the output, but do not forget to cite these images at the bottom
of your infographic or at the end of your presentation (APA format).
3. You may draw your output and take a screenshot of it.
4. Outputs may be sent again to the official email address of the professor with the
subject “SURNAME_SUBJECT_TASK2” as back-up in case of internet connectivity
issues.

RUBRIC OF ASSESSMENT: Take time to review the rubric of evaluation which inform you
of the how to your Task 2 would be graded

YOUR POINTS AND NOTES (to be accomplished by the teacher)

25
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

ANSWER SHEET: Place your infographic here.

26
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

READING MATERIAL NO. 4

Rethinking Asian Cities and Urbanization: Four Transformations in Four Decades
by Yue-man Yeung
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10225706.2011.577975

Economic transformation As Asia entered the 1970s, it was a tumultuous period of the
Cold War, the Vietnam War and the oil crises. By that time Japan had already completed
its post-World War II economic miracle from the debris of a defeated nation. It appeared
poised for leading the region and the world for further economic growth (Vogel 1986). The
newly industrializing countries of Asia, or better known as the Four Little Dragons, namely
Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, were beginning to make their marks on
the global economy by pursuing their style of export-oriented manufacturing. The 1980s
saw the emergence of the so-called Asian tigers represented by Thailand, Malaysia,
Indonesia and Vietnam. However, it was the recent rise of China and India that has
elevated the prospect of Asia being able to enhance its global significance in the
twenty-first century.

In the two decades prior to 1980, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan witnessed a 13-, 11-, and
14-fold increase, respectively, in per capita gross national product, as they skillfully tapped
the world market (Yeung 1988a, p. 155). Much of the economic growth was city-led, with
export processing zones adopted initially as a vehicle to channel a range of consumer
goods to the world market under regimes of tax relief (Antione 1984, Kundra 2000). The
Asian rush to tap the world market took an active turn when China adopted its open-door
policy and economic reforms in 1978 and Vietnam similarly adopted a policy of doi moi in
1986. In South Asia, too, India in 1991 forsook its erstwhile conservative import substitution
policy and lowered tariff barriers which had hitherto kept multinationals at bay. This was
followed by the globalization of consumption patterns and the explosion of South Asian
economies, with a large range of “modern” products ranging from IT services to nuclear
warheads (Bradnock and Williams 2002, Lakhera 2008). The entire Asian region has
changed in its orientation and complexion, having via their cities connected their
economy and their people to the world at large. Asian economies and their people have
become more globalized than ever.

Closer integration of Asian economies with the world as a consequence of accelerating

globalization processes over recent decades has had its pros and cons on the economic
and social life of the people. When financial globalization in the last decade of the
twentieth century was not tempered by the requisite regulatory mechanisms and
27
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

safeguards, what began as a devaluation of the Thai Baht on 2 July 1997 quickly spread,
with contagion effect, from Thailand to South Korea and Indonesia. Indeed, most Pacific
Asian countries excepting China were engulfed in an unprecedented and devastating
financial crisis. The Asian financial crisis led most Asian countries edging towards the brink
but they managed somehow to slowly recover (Yeung 1998a). Another even more
ominous financial crisis, this time global in nature and originating in the United States
through the sub-prime meltdown, took Asia by storm in 2008. Signs of recovery in Asia
appeared slowly and spottily in 2009 but the whole episode brought home the message of
the vulnerability of every country to the shortcomings of the global economy and how
Asian countries and cities can be severely and inadvertently affected (Yeung 1998b).

Physical transformation

On the basis of their sound economic development, most Asian countries have over the
past four decades undergone the dramatic physical transformation of their cities. From
what used to be pedestrian urban entities, many Asian cities have literally thrust
themselves into the forefront of an urban renaissance that has come with more
heightened roles played by cities in the era of globalization (Knight 1989, Kim et al. 1997,
Yeung 1998c, 2000a, 2000b). The process of urban physical change in Asia can be traced
through systemic forces emanating from within individual countries/cities and from global
production and distribution chains, although these internal and external drivers of change
are increasingly intertwined (Yeung 1996a, 2000a).

In the late 1960s, it was fashionable to explain the growth of Asian cities, especially in
Southeast Asia, by invoking their growth through a process of urbanization without
industrialization, in what T. G. McGee (1967) termed pseudo-urbanization. With the
exception of perhaps of Japan, Asian cities were largely about to enter their
industrialization phase, with the informal sector being quite prominent in providing
employment. Certainly in Southeast Asia, hawkers and vendors played a valuable role in
providing vital service and employment opportunities (McGee and Yeung 1977) and
low-cost housing provided shelter for the masses (Yeung 1973, 1983, 1985, Yeh and
Laquian 1979, Yeung and Wong 2003). The informal sector figured even more prominently
in South Asia, since even in the 1990s, as much as 40% of India's urban population lived in
informal housing, figures exceeded by Pakistan with 58%, including 22% in katchi abadis, a

28
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

local name for squatter settlements (Bradnock and Williams 2002, p. 231). Indeed, South
Asia had the largest concentration of global poverty, accounting for 43.5% of the world's
total, with over 500 million people living on less than a dollar a day even in 2000,
according to World Bank data (Bradnock and Williams 2002). South Indian intellectuals
have provided a critical reappraisal of “mainstream development” and have provided an
empirical and rational exposition of poverty by stressing its characterization and
measurement, at the same time, pointing out the flawed approach of policy definition
(Sen 1981, 1997). Drawing examples from South Asia, Lipton (1977) propounded his urban
bias hypothesis by which he submitted the urban world is underrepresented in that
sub-region, although the agricultural sector has remained critically important to the
majority of the people in South Asia.

As relatively young nations which had become independent from colonial rule, most
countries in South and Southeast Asia had by the early 1970s entered into a phase of rapid
urbanization, with cities, particularly large cities being nurtured as symbols of national unity
and national identity (Yeung and Lo 1976, p. xx, Yeung 1976, 1978). With poverty being a
pervading problem, urban planning was primarily aimed at improving the basic functions
and services of the city. Even as late as 1990, I was commissioned by the World Bank to
write a “think piece” to address the subject of the access of the urban poor to basic
infrastructure services in Asia. The urban poor across Asia were faced with the common
problem of not adequately provided for in basic urban services ranging from water
supply, housing, sanitation, transport and so on (Yeung 1991). Urban infrastructure
development lagged behind economic development in the region even by the mid-1990s
(Yeung 1994, Yeung and Han 1997, pp. 15–31). In any event, large, capital and “million”
cities in the region were better off in physical infrastructure provisions because of their
relative importance in their countries and their competitive advantage (Yeung 1988a,
Misra and Misra 1998, Laquian et al. 2007). Yet large cities were confronted with incessant
rural-urban migration. It was not surprising that many cities attempted to control their
population growth (Yeung 1986, 2002a) and sought ways to improve metropolitan
management (Yeung 1995e). As early as 1970, Jakarta attempted to “close” the city by
putting in place policies to limit city-bound migration, complemented by a long-standing
policy of transmigration to direct movement of population from congested Java to other
less populated islands. Seoul instituted tax measures in 1973 to discourage the arrival of
new migrants. Since 1958, China effectively sealed off rural-urban migration through a

29
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

stringent household registration system until its relaxation in 1984 (Chan 2009). Singapore
even controlled the entry of vehicles into the central city area to minimize traffic
congestion by initiating an Area Licensing Scheme since 1975. In fact, cities became
centres of change in Asia, with no shortage of ideas to improve urban growth and
management (Dwyer 1972, Yeung 1990).

In terms of the speed and scale of urban change, no country can compare with China in
its urban transformation in recent decades. China's urban population of 172 million in 1978
ballooned to 593.8 million in 2007. Within the same period, its level of urbanization leaped
from 18% in 1978 to 45% in 2007, at a growth rate of almost 1% per year; the number of
cities exploded from 192 in 1978 to 651 in 2007 (NBSC, various years). The number of cities
has grown especially rapidly since the country adopted economic reforms in 1978. By
2006, there were 48 “million” cities, accounting for 41.53% of the total non-agricultural
urban population in China (Gu et al. 2008, p. 30). While China's urbanization since the
onset of economic reforms was driven by rural industrialization and town development,
since the mid-1990s, urban spaces have been reproduced through a city-based and
land-centred process of urbanization led by large cities (Lin 2007). During this period, the
conversion of non-agricultural land to urban use has been widespread and historically
intense, although recent measures have kept rural land conversion in check (Ho and Lin
2004, Lin and Ho 2005). In recent studies of urban development and urban space in China,
the interplay of power between the state and the market is highlighted, as institutions, laws
and regulatory controls are being put in place (McGee et al. 2007, Wu et al. 2007). Without
a doubt, Chinese cities have grown the fastest and changed beyond recognition, with
many exciting achievements and some wasteful investments (Yeung 2007a). Even the
study of China's urbanization has progressed at an impressive pace, with admirable
scholarship and tangible results to boot (Gu et al. 2008).

With respect to external forces that have been increasingly impacting on urban change in
Asia, the phenomenon had become more prominent from the late 1980s. McGee has
expounded the thesis of extended metropolitan region (EMR), drawing attention to the
desakota process of interaction between urban and rural areas (Ginsburg et al. 1991).
Integrated rural-urban economic growth may stretch anywhere from 50 to 100 km from
the city centre. External and international firms seek business opportunities through the
new international division of labour, where cheaper land and labour in Asian cities attract

30
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

supply chains of transnational corporations. This process has been prevalent in Southeast
Asia, where mega-urban regions have emerged (McGee and Robinson 1995, Yeung
2007c) and in China, as exemplified in a case study of Kunshan in the Lower Yangtze Delta
(Marton 1998).

Where globalization processes especially favor, world cities or global cities have loomed
large in the current phase of globalized economic development. Sassen (1991) has used
Tokyo as one of the examples to expound her thesis of global cities, but world cities have
been more appealing to scholars and planners in Asia. Either type, they symbolize a level
of global reach and integration of Asian cities to global economic, political and cultural
processes not previously experienced. The Asian region has its fair share of world cities,
with Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore having reached the highest level of importance
(Beaverstock et al. 1999). Hong Kong has gone one step further in employing the label –
world city – to publicize the city since 1999 but the planning took more than a decade in
its run-up to the handover in 1997 (Yeung 1997a).

In order to enhance their competitiveness and world fame, many Asian cities have been
engaged in a process to make themselves known to the world, strategically targeting at
potential investors and visitors. Otherwise known as place-making or place-marketing,
Asian cities have favored mega-projects, with funding often coming from international
sources, to promote their long-term interests. Kuala Lumpur's city centre and the Petronas
Twin Towers, Tokyo's Teleport Town, the commercial and cultural hub at Marina Centre in
downtown Singapore, and Shanghai's Pudong New Area are some shining examples (Olds
1995, Yeoh 2005). In addition, Tokyo's and Hong Kong's Disneyland, Osaka's United Studio
and Macao's Venetian stand for another kind of attraction and place-making. Still another
level of world fame is garnered by some Asian cities hosting global events such as the
Olympic Games (Tokyo 1964, Seoul 1996, Beijing 2008), World Exposition (Shanghai 2010)
and the World Cup (South Korea and Japan 2002).

In fact, world city formation can be achieved through a deliberate process of purposeful
investment, in R&D in a drive towards new technology and knowledge, in infrastructure
investment such as building huge and futuristic airports, container ports, intelligent
buildings and first rate commercial land uses, and such like (Lo and Yeung 1998, pp.
132–154). Indeed, foreign demands for better services and facilities in Asian cities have
converged on local needs to improve infrastructure facilities along many fronts. Within
31
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

large cities, urban highways and elevated networks are complemented by subways. The
outstanding example is China, where at least 15 cities are building subway lines and a
dozen more are planning them. The most ambitious construction plans have been made
in Guangzhou, which is building the world's largest and most advanced subway system.
Construction is going non-stop around the clock in Guangzhou to reach a long-term plan
of 500 miles of subways and light rail routes, from the present 71 miles of subway lines (New
York Times, 17 March 2009). China's grandiose plans in subway construction and
automobile manufacturing go hand in hand, with total sales of automobiles outstripping
the United States in the first six months of 2009, at 6.1 million vehicles versus USA's 4.8 million
vehicles (Wong 2009). These stand in stark contrast to India, where in Mumbai, its
population of 19 million is struggling daily to move about the mega-city without being able
to count on a better day. The city has no plans to build any subway system, an
understanding based on my field reconnaissance in Mumbai in early 2009.

Along with the physical changes of Asian cities that have been touched upon, they are
being suburbanized, motorized, westernized and globalized, especially for cities located in
East and Southeast Asia. The convergence with the western model has been observed of
urban development in Southeast Asia (Dick and Rimmer 1998), but much of the same has
been afoot or already in place in East Asia. For the most obvious physical change of Asian
cities, the best indicator is perhaps the competition to vie for the distinction of possessing
the tallest building in the world. This race is never ending, as the tallest building fame
comes and goes. Of the 10 tallest buildings in the world in 2009, nine were located in Asia.
It is noteworthy that six of the 10 tallest buildings are located in cities in China, Hong Kong
and Taiwan, making it perhaps a mark of Chinese cities.3 As a consequence, the skyline of
many Asian cities, notably Hong Kong and Shanghai, is stunningly beautiful.

The physical transformation of Asian cities has largely occurred during the past two
decades. The most dramatic of all the urban physical changes can be epitomized by
Dubai, of the United Emirates. A picture showing the main thoroughfare of the city in 1990
is completely transformed in another shot taken in 2003. Dubai stands for the most
ambitious physical engineering change of any Asian city. It boasts of having the world's
largest indoor ski facility, the largest shopping mall, the tallest building, the biggest
amusement park and other superlatives. However, even Dubai has not escaped the
onslaught of the recent global financial crisis. It was reported by Time magazine (25 May

32
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

2009) that property prices in 2009 had declined to 2007 levels and expatriates had been
leaving in droves.

Social transformation

Cities exist more than their physical form but they inhabit dreamlike space of past and
present, individual and collective memories (Robinson 2000, p. 108). It is people who give
meaning to cities entailing associational life, social conviviality, identity and power (Ho
and Douglass 2008). However, these were not the immediate concerns of urban life in Asia
in the early 1970s when poverty was an overriding challenge for governments and
international assistance bodies to tackle. A sample of some of the policy foci and
research projects included low-cost housing (Yeung 1973, 1983, 1985), community
participation in delivering urban services (Yeung and McGee 1986) and employment and
livelihood for the urban poor (Yeung 1988b). The policy focus on the urban poor in Asia
persisted through the 1990s and beyond (Yeung 1991, 2001a). The exceptionally rapid
economic growth in many Asian countries since 1970, as noted earlier, has markedly
reduced the incidence of poverty. Overall for Asia, the official poverty rate was reduced
from 32% in 1990 to 22% in 2000 (Kabeer 2006).

Indeed, recent reports have focused on how past efforts have borne fruit in reducing
urban poverty in Asia. Real progress has been made to reduce poverty through
partnerships working together to improve slums, networking, providing credit for financing
micro-enterprises and adopting a programme rather than a project approach. Economic
growth has accounted for 60% of poverty reduction in Asia (Hamid and Villareal 2001, pp.
237–239). Complementing these efforts have been major advances made by NGOs
(non-governmental organizations) to work in concert with government bodies to improve
the livelihood of the urban poor ranging from protecting the environment to meeting
basic health needs. NGOs have been exceptionally active in South Asia, notably India
and Bangladesh, with the role of women effective in generating positive socio-economic
change (Bradnock and Williams 2002). In view of the progress made to reduce poverty,
development aid from developed countries itself is being dwarfed significantly by the
move towards neo-liberalism which became the hallmark of the 1990s and which left its
imprint in all countries in South Asia, especially Nepal and Bangladesh, and across the
south (Bradnock and Williams 2002, p. 270). Poverty alleviation in the urban areas in

33
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

Southeast Asia has been no less impressive, where the work of NGOs also scored high
marks (Porio 1997). Some of these NGO activities have been inspired and supported by
global transnational movements which have take precedence over indigenous funding
and efforts. Urban social movements related to protecting the environment and improving
low-cost housing are examples that have enjoyed widespread support.

Over the years the persistence of poverty has been a powerful motive for Asian
population to take a key decision to migrate, both within their countries and to other
countries. Although seeking better economic opportunities has been commonly identified
as the primary motive, many people have also migrated within their countries because of
warfare, national social movements and the like. During the past decades, Asia has
painfully gone through many wars for different reasons, such as the Vietnam War
(1959–1975), the Bangladesh War of Independence (1971), Indonesia's war over Aceh
(2001–2004), the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) and the First Gulf War (1990–1991). The
rustification programme of educated youth, otherwise known as xiafeng, in China
involved some 12 million youths going to the countryside for a learning experience and
contribution to nation building at the height of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
(1966–1976). Many youths returned to Shanghai and other large cities after the tumultuous
period concluded (Ivory and Lavely 1977).

Internal migration in many of the Asian countries mentioned above was sizeable and has
had huge social, political and economic significance (Yeung 2002a). In Vietnam and
countries within South Asia, post-independence migration has been economically and
socially motivated. However, with the Middle East having emerged as a favorite
destination with its petrol dollar after the oil crises in the 1970s, international migration from
countries in South Asia, the Philippines, South Korea and others has been substantial and
sustained. Kerala in India and Sri Lanka are two South Asian regions that have been
identified as having their social and cultural landscapes dominated by migration to the
Gulf countries of West Asia since the early 1970s. International migration has introduced
new styles of consumption, production of novel forms of social differentiation in
Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan (Osella and Gardner 2004). It has also led to marked
social transformation in all countries concerned, in which flows of resources (such as
remittances) have gone from centres of capital into their peripheries. In addition, social
and power relations have changed in the place of origin, and new consumption tastes

34
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

and patterns have taken root (Bolaria and Bolaria 1997). The phenomenon of
transnational domestic workers has become a familiar landscape in high-income countries
and economies such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei and countries in the Middle East
(Huang et al. 2005).

With the kind of rapid economic transformation that has occurred in Asia, it is to be
expected that society in many countries has been undergoing revolutionary change. Like
the ancient “Silk Road” that connected China to the outside world, the new Silk Road is
projected to connect Asia to the West. A rapid and transforming change is coming to
pass in many Asian cities. A new middle class is said to have emerged in many countries
and cities, especially large cities. Although the middle class is a contested concept, Smith
(2002) has estimated that India has probably 300 million who can be considered as the
middle class, and China has about 110 million, or about 15% of the employed population.
Professional middle class youth has been observed to be important in directing social
change in Vietnam, especially in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (King et al. 2009). Similarly,
Singapore, Manila, Kuala Lumpur and other cities in Southeast Asia have been
transformed in the past decade by the expansion of consumer culture, along with a
different urban landscape, by virtue of the “new middle classes” (Clammer 2003, p. 407).
The proliferation of posh and large shopping malls in cities ranging from Beijing, Manila,
Bangkok to Jakarta is a new social and economic phenomenon of Asian cities (Yeung
2002b, 2002c). A reflection of the how better off Asians are, using ownership of key
commodities as indicators, will testify to the vastly changed and rapidly affluent society. In
television sets per 1000 people, the figures for 1970 and 2003, respectively, are
dramatically improved for China (1, 350), India (0, 83), (Sri Lanka, 0, 117) which started with
almost nothing, and substantially improved for Hong Kong (113, 504), South Korea (19, 458)
and Japan (337, 795), with the United States (395, 938) used for comparison. Similarly, in
ownership of personal computers per 1000 people, the figures for 1988 and 2003,
respectively, are impressive for China (0.3, 27.6), India (0.2, 7.2), Sri Lanka (0.2, 13.2), which
started almost from zero, and indicative of very rapid change in Hong Kong (25.7, 422),
South Korea (11.2, 558) and Japan (41.6, 382.2), which are miles ahead from the previous
group of countries, with the United States (184, 658.9) again used for comparison (Mostrous
et al. 2006, p. 11). It has been rationalized that Asia has become an indispensable part of
a complex global economy,

having come of age during a period of explosive globalization and technological

35
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

change. Asia has become an engine of global economic growth, with a high savings rate
and an increasing bias towards consumption. The world needs a new growth engine in
the twenty-first century and Asia has the ability to develop a sustainable and
consumer-based economic growth model (Brahm 2001, Mostrous et al. 2006).

In the midst of growing affluence in Asia, extreme poverty persists and has become more
pronounced in rural areas. Table 3 shows disaggregated data for three largest countries in
Asia. In both China and Indonesia, both urban and rural poverty gaps have sharply
declined since the early 1990s, a reflection of their very rapid economic transition over the
past two decades. The difference is much less marked in India. Asian urbanization has
become more economically and socially polarized, as measured by the Gini index. Data
for a few selected countries in South Asia show a worsening trend. Between 1991 and 2000,
the Gini coefficient as a measure for income inequality in Bangladesh rose from 0.30 to
0.41, Sri Lanka from 0.32 to 0.40 from 1990 to 2002, and Nepal from 0.34 to 0.39 between
1995 and 2003 (Kabeer 2006, p. 64). The sharpest rise in the Gini index was recorded by
China, which saw the index rose from 29.2 in 1990 to 35.4 in 2005. The biggest drop in the
Gini index occurred in Malaysia, whose index dropped from 43.9 in 1990 to 37.9 in 2005, but
the Philippines and Thailand remained stable and high over the said period, with the score
in the low 40s in 2005 (ADB 2008, p. 122). In China it has be reported that increasing social
inequality has been a cause for growing instability. Social unrest has been more frequent
now than a decade ago when society was less affluent (Huang 2008).

As the new global economy began to unfold and integrate Asian cities and economies, a
literature began to accumulate on subjects such as global restructuring (Yeung 1995a,
1996a, Lo and Yeung 1996, pp. 17–47), global processes (Bishop et al. 2003), the
relationship between globalization and world cities (Yeung 1995b, 1995c, 1995d),
changing labour markets (Brocks 2006), minorities and civic society (Hasegawa and
Yoshihara, 2008), links between international and local development (Yusuf et al. 2001)
and the role of transnational corporations (H. Yeung 1998, 2002).

Much of the global capital that has been driving the Asian growth over the past quarter
century has been derived from foreign direct investment (FDI). FDI inflows as a measure of
its percentage of the GDP, for the period 1980–1985 came to 18.72% in Singapore and
6.9% in Hong Kong, but only 0.87% in China and 0.14% in India. These percentages for the
period 1994–1997 for the four countries in question were, respectively, 27.81, 9.93, 13.24
36
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

and 2.46, indicating that both Singapore and Hong Kong continued to depend on
substantial FDI inflows, and China and India, especially the former, have vastly increased
the importance of FDI inflows to their economy (Lall & Urata, 2003: 3). China's actual
utilization of FDI totaled US $78.34 billion in 2007, a big leap from only US $13.06 billion for
the period 1978–1982 (Almanac 2008, p. 17). China's ability to attract FDI far outstripped
India, as in 2000, China's FDI inflows totaled US $38.39 billion, compared with US $2.32 billion
for India (Brooks and Hill 2004, p. 34).

After two decades of being integrated with the global economy, Asian countries have
developed rapidly and, consequently, have greatly improved their ability to outsource
FDI. Hong Kong has become the second largest source of outward FDI flows in Asia, after
Japan. Hong Kong's outward FDI came to US $43.46 billion in 2006, a tremendous
improvement on its US $82 million in 1980. China exported US $16.13 billion of FDI in 2006, a
far cry from its US $830 million in 1980. The relevant figures for India were US $9.68 billion in
2006, and merely US $4 million in 1980 (Rajan et al. 2008, p. 4). The massive increase of FDI
outflows from Asian countries has fully demonstrated the maturity of Asian economies and
their growing integration with the global economy. The flow of financial resources has now
become circular between Asia and the world, no longer a one-way street.

In most Asian countries, a majority of their GDP has been generated by their cities. The
extreme cases can be cited of Bangkok (44%), Dhaka (40.9%) and Seoul (24.1%) (IMF,
2009),2 where their classical primacy in their respective countries prevails not only in
population but also in economic importance, as shown in the proportion of GDP they
contributed to their respective countries. As countries that have recently opened or
reopened to world trade and commerce, China and Vietnam both engineered their
economic revival from their cities, as recent studies have chronicled and analyzed their
major milestones after their openness (Yeung and Hu 1992, Yeung and Sung 1996, Yeung
2004a, 2007a, 2007b, Yeung et al. 2009).

Along with globalization, regional cooperation and integration with the global economy
have furthered the economic development of Asia by connecting countries/cities within
Asia to world markets. Within East Asia, the development of ASEAN (Association of
Southeast Asian Nations) since 1967, APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation) since
1989 and the run-up to the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area in 2010 have been facilitating
regional integration and cooperation and, in the process, have consolidated Asia's global
37
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

status as a consequence (Yeung 2006).

Over the past four decades, economic transformation in Asia has been sustained and
progressed in what has been characterized as a flying-geese pattern, with Japan leading
the way (Yamazawa 1990). Table 1 shows that between 1970 and 2005, the average
annual growth rate of the GDP of most countries in Asia has been at double digits or close
to them in all its sub-regions with the exception of South Asia. Even countries in South Asia
have enjoyed an average of high single digit growth. The fastest sustained economic
growth has been accorded to South Korea, Singapore and Saudi Arabia. The rapid
economic growth at the country level has been matched by impressive per capita GDP
increases in their own currency over the same period.

However, positive change in Asian cities has come from the mindset of the people. As an
example, liveable cities with an accent on the quality of life have been espoused by
academics and planners. Consequently, the planning agenda has built-in concerns about
economic, social and environmental sustainability (Girardet 2004, Yeung 2004c, 2009).
Smart growth, compact cities and new urbanism have been invoked from experiences in
western countries. People have become more conscious of the effects of climate
change, possible sea-water level rises and their negative impacts of Asian coastal cities
(Yeung 2001b), limits of combustion technologies and the search for renewable energy
and so on. Car ownership is still high in some cities, such as Bangkok (255 cars per 100
persons), Tokyo (250) and Seoul (220) versus some cities much better positioned from an
environmental standpoint, represented by Hong Kong (55), Mumbai (50) and Guangzhou
(45) (UN-HABITAT 2008, p. 178). These concerns about car ownership and energy
consumption are embodied in a new concept of harmonious cities that has been
advocated by the UN body, underpinned by two guiding thoughts of equity and
sustainability and maintaining social and environmental harmony (UN-HABITAT 2008). In
fact, at the Fourth World Urban Forum convened in Nanjing in November 2008,
harmonious cities provided an overarching theme to connect cities of the world to take
stock of the present to chart their common future (Germain 2009).

Informational transformation

One of the distinguishing features of the current phase of globalization from past ones is
the fact that it has been driven by new technologies, notably information and
38
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

communication technologies (ICT). These technologies that until recently were nothing but
pipe dreams to many people have been widely adopted and become reality. They have
radically changed our lives and the way in which cities function within them and between
them. The ease with which people can access, generate, transfer and retrieve information
is a new blessing, but it has as well created a digital divide between those who have
access to the new technologies and those who have not, often differentiated by
economic, educational and locational attributes. In short, Asian cities and their inhabitants
are never the same with the advent of the information age.

People in the information age have taken many of the recent ICT inventions and
conveniences for granted. Imagine a life now without the computer, the cellular phone,
e-mails, digital camera and the like. Yet the Internet's founding can be traced to a
message sent on 29 October 1969 from UCLA to Stanford and by 1988, only about 60,000
computers in the world were connected to the Internet (Zittrain 2008, p. 27). The cost of
processing information has tremendously cheapened over time. In 1961 a single transistor
cost US $10, which is enough to buy almost two million transistors today, which with
“rounding to zero” is essentially free of charge. The time-tested Moore's Law accurately
predicted that the cost of computer processing would drop by half at least every two
years. Indeed, the digital computer and the Internet shrink the price of many forms of work
to free (Canon 2009).

Over the past few years, the widespread adoption of ICT technologies has occurred in
Asia. By 2007, mobile telephones in developing countries in Asia have cornered over 80%
of the total telephone market. In the poorer developing countries in the region, most of
the expansion in communications has been via mobile telephone connectivity. For
example, the banks in the Philippines allow people to pay, receive and transfer money
using a mobile telephone (ADB 2008, p. 123). Between 2003 and 2007, the change in
telephone lines per 100 people reached between 20 to 40 for most countries in Asia, with
the role of fixed lines further eroded (ADB, p. 124). The increase in the number of Internet
users per 100 population has similarly been substantial between 2000 and 2007, ranging,
respectively, from China (1.8, 15.8), Hong Kong (27.8, 55.0), Japan (29.9, 73.5), Macao
(13.6, 49.5) to South Korea (40.7, 72.2) in East Asia; Indonesia (0.9, 5.6), Malaysia (21.4, 56.5),
the Philippines (2.0, 6.0), Singapore (32.4. 60.9), Thailand (3.8, 21.0) to Vietnam (0.3, 20.5) in
Southeast Asia; and Bangladesh (0.1, 0.3), India (0.5, 17.1), Pakistan (0.2, 10.7) to Sri Lanka

39
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

(0.6, 4.0) (ADB, p. 127). Quite clearly, the level of economic development is positively
related to the degree of intensity of Internet users. Another source has reported that of the
1 billion users of the Internet service in the world in December 2008, China ranked first with
its 179.7 million users, compared with 60 million in Japan.4

In an information society, the strategic importance of cities, especially world cities and
global cities, is to become managerial centres for global activities that can be subsumed
under three heads: economic competitiveness and productivity, socio-cultural integration
and political representation. First, competitiveness does not mean cost-cutting, but rather
increasing productivity, which, in turn, is predicated upon connectivity, innovation and
institutional flexibility. Connectivity means being linked to circuits of information and
communication; innovation invokes the capacity to generate new knowledge based on
a capacity to obtain and process strategic information; and institutional flexibility refers to
the internal capacity and external autonomy of local institutions in dealing with supra
local entities. Secondly, as globalization extends its homogenizing influences, it is
incumbent on nation states and cities to strengthen their cultural and historical identity of
territories to cohere with their people and add meaning to their lives. Thirdly, city
governments faced with the challenge of authority and power that cross-border flows of
capital, goods and services inevitably entail, have to seek a revitalized role through the
structural crisis by building new networks of cooperation and solidarity (Borja and Castells
1997, Yeung 2001d).

The adoption of new technological innovations for communication and exchange of

information has resulted in the new geographies of Asia. Two sectors have been exploding
in their growth and influence. The first is telecommunications infrastructure, notably fiber
optic cables, and the second is the expansion of regional electronic media, especially
television through satellites (Forbes 1997, p. 21). Fiber optics is the preferred technology
despite the challenges associated with laying deep-sea cables. By 1995, 50
telecommunications carriers from 34 countries had invested US $3.5 billion in the
expanding web of international optical systems in the region. In the present wired world,
the concentration of submarine cables in Asia is increasingly pronounced (Malecki and
Wei 2009). A similar rush for satellites is epitomized by Interlsat, the 127-member global
consortium, launching the first Pacific satellite in 1996 (Yeung 2001d). With the widespread
adoption of technological innovations, a dilemma that has to be addressed in the

40
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

information age is media ethics in Asia (Iyer 2002). As a consequence, all these
developments have greatly advanced the connectivity and quality of life in Asian cities.

The emergence of the informational economy has facilitated the globalization of finance.
The operation of stock markets across the world, for example, is computer-dependent and
closely linked, to such an extent that the stock market crashes in 1987, 1997 and 2008 were
to some extent computer-triggered, certainly with the first two. Even mass political protests
witnessed over the past decade in cities such as Taipei, Bangkok and Jakarta have been
facilitated by the ease and ready transmission of communication (Yeung 2009).
Transnational crime of diverse kinds is a fact of life in the global economy that has
affected Asian cities. Drug traffic, illicit traffic of weapons, art treasures, human beings,
human organs, radioactive materials and money laundering continue to plague cities in
the region. Alarmed by the growing trend of cross-border crime, some Asian countries
have made the trafficking of drugs a crime punishable by death (Yeung 2001d).

Recent ICT technological advances have helped people to change their concept of
space and distance, even within Asian cities. The region and its cities have suddenly
become much smaller, being traversed by information superhighways across cyberspace.
The relationship between ICT, space and place has been played out in the spatial impact
of the new information technology. The choices people make about ICT technologies
capture the potential immensity of social and spatial changes, which can be so huge that
Wilson and Corey (2000) have termed information tectonics. Electronic space has
emerged in the electronic age, with the need to plan cyber structure and its relationship
to social forces. Cyber city entails planning designs and policy choices, where public or
private spaces become blurred and may need to be redefined in “web cities” (Aurigi
2005). The best example for an Asian country to plan its future and cities is Malaysia. That
country has planned to build its future on an explicit reliance on technological innovations.
Malaysia's Vision 2020 is essentially built upon its technological uplift and reaching
developed status via ICT policies and investments. The focus is in the new Multimedia
Super Corridor (MSC) from the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur to the Kuala Lumpur
International Airport, with the administrative capital of Putrajaya and the science park of
Cyberjaya in between (Bunnell 2004, pp. 351–376). Similarly, Singapore has envisaged its
future through ONE, that is one network for everyone, in which internal spatial organization
and ICT infrastructure are integrated through technology corridors (Wilson and Corey

41
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

2000). The Malaysian and Singapore examples represent a genre of intelligent cities which
can inspire other Asian cities about their future.

Reflections on Asian cities and urbanization

Earlier in this paper in Table 2, it is shown that Asia as a whole reached a level of
urbanization only of 39.7% in 2005, albeit the existence of sizeable sub-regional variation. In
2007, however, for the first time in human history more people lived in urban settlements in
the world, making the twenty-first century the urban century. The implications for future
urbanization in Asia are immense. It means, first and foremost, there is considerable room
for Asia to urbanize in order to “catch up” with the world average. It will still be a long
distance to the urbanization level of 70% or more in developed countries. Indeed, the
United Nations estimates that the world's urban population will further increase by 3.2
billion people by 2050 from now. It is further estimated that some 60% of this increase, or
1.9 billion people, will be in Asia (Montgomery et al. 2003, pp. 11–17, Dhakal 2008, p. 7). Of
all the Asian countries, China is the only one that has an urbanization policy of increasing
its level of population by about 1% per year to 2050 when its urban population will reach
70% or thereabout (China Mayors Association 2003, p. 39, Yeung 2007a). China's is a policy
of deliberate urbanization that began with a low base in 1978, when the country opened
up, and that would be most challenging for any country to put into practice. In 2008,
China's level of urbanization reached approximately 45.7%, with 607 million urban dwellers
(Chen 2009).

In an increasingly globalized economy that characterizes most countries in the world,

cities continue to play key roles, in particular world cities and global cities. Cities are more
than concentration of people and resources. They are hubs of trade, culture, information
and industry. They articulate and mediate major functions of the global economy. In Asia,
its world cities and global cities have a fair share of their global reach and importance
and, if the size of population of cities is taken into consideration as well, Asia would fare
even better (Yeung 1996b, 1997b). United Nations source shows that 10 of the 19 largest
cities in the world in 2007 were located in Asia, and 5 alone were in the sub-region of
South Asia (UN DESA 2008, p. 10). Management of these super large cities is, to say the
least, extremely challenging (Laquian 2005), especially in infrastructure provision (Laquian
et al. 2007). Managing the orderly transfer of rural population to urban areas has always

42
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

been a thorny problem for many governments to tackle.

Sustained and high rates of economic growth in China and India over the two decades
have raised the prospect of a recentralization of global economic growth to Asia in which
their cities will be major propelling agents. The historical pattern of economic growth in
India is most revealing. In 1600, when the East India Company was founded, Britain was
generating 1.8% of the world's economic output, whereas India was producing 22.5%
(Dalrymple 2007). This set of figures, as well as other similar data, unravels the trajectory of
global economic growth which, prior to the advent of the Industrial Revolution, was
heavily centred in India and China. In addition, Table 4 shows their relative global shares in
economic output and population in the twentieth century. In their share of world
economic output, both China and India exhibit a pattern of a sharp drop in 1950,
reflecting the effects of World War II. However, at century end their relative importance
was back to, indeed exceeded, where they were before in 1913. Both China and India
had a smaller relative share of world population by century end than the beginning of the
century, more markedly in China because of a successful one-child policy adopted since
the late 1970s. The record of recent economic growth and reforms in China and India has
encouraged many observers to think that the world is perhaps entering another transition
with them playing more enhanced global roles (Faber 2002, Tseng and Cowen 2005). Will
the recent global economic crisis present opportunities for another turning point?

To generate new global demand to sustain the next phase of growth, it is almost a
consensus that this will not come from the United States, Europe and Japan, which still
account for more than half of the global economy. Some would even argue that China,
almost alone, has the means to lead the global economy out of its doldrums, with India
and other Asian countries playing supplementary roles (Moeller 2009). Beyond Asia, there
are other countries in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) grouping, forming a
powerful cluster with their large and rapidly growing economies and possible forces for
rebalancing global demand. Friedmann (2005) in a recent book has provocatively
submitted that the world is flat. Flatness in this sense means more countries are becoming
good places to do business – more stable, open and market-oriented. Many Asian cities,
especially those along the Pacific coastal region, have truly embraced this concept and
have adopted place-making policies, with global networking as one of their objectives.
Asian cities are increasingly conscious of their economic competitiveness and business

43
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

environment and have fared well in global rankings, notably Hong Kong and Singapore
(Yeung 1987, 2001c, 2004b, Ni et al. 2009).

If indeed global economic growth will gravitate more towards Asia in the future, what
rethinking is appropriate for Asian cities to shoulder their newfound opportunities and
responsibilities? Firstly, this means that Asian cities will have to cope with growing
populations. Energy consumption at current rates is unsustainable in the long run for many
Asian cities. Energy consumption has gone largely to buildings, as exemplified by Seoul
(57%), Singapore (54%) and Tokyo (53%); to transport, as in Hong Kong (58%); and to
industry, as in Shanghai (80%), Beijing (62%) and Kolkata (56 %) (UN-HABITAT, 2009, p. 122).
The search for alternative and recyclable energies has to be intensified, in view of the
limited stock of fossil fuels and the growing concern of climate change. This brings to a
dilemma of whether to build more roads or subways in large cities, especially in China,
although the choice is clearly not one or the other. Secondly, where Asian cities have to
articulate with the global economy and have disproportionate access to non-integrated
hard and soft infrastructure, they have become ad hoc urban amalgams, spanning
multiple political jurisdictions that are often in competition (Oliver 2008, p. 22). Metropolitan
governance in the age of globalization is particularly challenging and complex. It calls for
inclusive urban planning, with a political commitment to pro-poor development to
ameliorate worsening economic and social inequality. Governing a city of cities demands
effective leadership, efficient financing and active citizen participation (UN-HABITAT 2009).
Finally, haste brings environmental ruin, corruption and other negative side effects in the
rush to mount urban infrastructure projects. More than 40 cities in China are in a frenzy to
build subways, which total 1,700 km of new urban metro rail expected for completion in
2015 at a cost of 623 billion yuan or US $90.74 billion. The hectic pace of construction has
resulted in an alarmingly high accident rate, with deaths, building collapses and
economic costs (Toh 2009a) In addition, China's much-vaunted 4 trillion yuan (US $582.1
billion) stimulus package being implemented in 2009 has led to fears of wasted resources
and misallocated funds due to shoddy construction and environmental damage (Toh
2009b). In sum, Asian cities have to reflect on where they have fallen short in their current
practices and policies and in what directions they should seek changes, innovations and
breakthroughs to meet the new urban challenge.

44
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

READING MATERIAL NO. 5

Asian Solutions to Asia’s Urban Challenges
by Anthea Mulakala and Minjae Lee
https://asiafoundation.org/2017/06/14/asian-solutions-asias-urban-challenges/

According to UN Habitat’s most recent World Cities Report, cities today make up more
than half of the world’s population, emit 70 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide
emissions, and account for 80 percent of global GDP. These figures underscore the fact
that rapid urbanization is one the most critical trends shaping the world today. And
nowhere will the impact of our collective successes and failures managing our cities be
greater than in Asia.

The World Bank estimates that since 2000, over 200 million people have migrated into cities
across Asia, but despite this rapid migration, approximately half of the continent’s
population still live in rural areas. This means that Asia’s cities can expect an even more
rapid influx of migrants in the decades to come, which will drive much of the economic
growth, but also put greater strain on the region’s resources.
In May, urban development experts, city government officials, and scholars from across
Asia gathered in Manila for the 16th meeting of the Asian Approaches to Development
Cooperation (AADC) dialogue. (Read more about this ongoing series here). The
conference explored planned urbanization and the New Urban Agenda (NUA), and how
Asian countries are helping each other through South-South cooperation and innovative
partnerships to tackle urbanization challenges and achieve Sustainable Development
Goal (SDG) 11: making cities inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.
Over the course of the conference, participants from 10 countries shared best practices in
how their cities and countries are partnering to tackle urbanization. Here are a few
highlights:

Singapore shares livable city lessons with Amaravati, India

The world’s most famous city-state, Singapore, and its Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC) is
collaborating with the Andhra Pradesh government to build a new capital city, Amaravati,
from scratch. A key feature of the partnership is the focus on sustainable and green
infrastructure, including the development of natural waterways, providing green public
spaces and efficient public transport. Amaravati will be 10 times the size of Singapore but

45
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

hopes to emulate Singapore’s reputation as a sustainable and livable city.

Safer cities for women, from Delhi to Jakarta and Quezon City
Both the SDGs and the NUA recognize universal access to safe and inclusive public space
as an essential element of a city. Safetipin, a social enterprise based in India, created a
map-based online and mobile phone application that collects and disseminates
safety-related information through various methods, including crowd-sourcing. Local
residents contribute directly to the data collection, which is not only shared to the public,
but also reported to local governments. Safetipin started in Delhi, expanded across India
and is now operating in Jakarta, Nairobi, Bogota, and Quezon City. Data is also being
collected in eight additional cities including Rio de Janeiro, Kuala Lumpur, and
Johannesburg. The app is available in English, Hindi, Spanish, Mandarin, and Indonesian.

Thailand supports urban infrastructure in the Greater Mekong sub-region Access to

sustainable physical infrastructure, such as roads, power, and telecommunications, is
another essential element in urban development and planning—but one that requires
much financial and technical assistance. Thailand’s Neighboring Countries Economic
Development Cooperation Agency (NEDA) has been assisting with trade and investment
facilitation, transportation within the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), and more
recently, urban development. In Laos, NEDA provided financial assistance for a drainage
system and road improvement project in Vientiane Capital City. It was noted that
significant changes in the area could be observed after improvements were made. The
commercial and residential area expanded and economic activities heightened as a
result of the alleviated traffic and flood conditions. Technical assistance was given to
Yangon, Myanmar, to conduct a feasibility study and design a power system that can
keep up with the rapid economic growth in Yangon. Additionally, projects to improve
GMS interconnectivity have been successful in developing subregional roads, power, and
telecommunication linkages.

NGO partnership tackles Ulaanbaatar’s urban sprawl

The growth of unplanned, peri-urban settlements, or ger areas which account for more
than half of the residents of Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, has presented a growing
urbanization challenge for the country, as many residents lack access to water, sanitation,

46
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

or central heating. In 2013, The Asia Foundation forged a partnership between Solo city in
Indonesia, and local NGO Solo Kota Kita (SKK), to conduct a community mapping
initiative to provide planning tools for Ulaanbaatar officials to better understand and meet
the needs of its 700,000 ger residents.

With training and support from Solo Kota Kita, the Ulaanbaatar government and local
leaders have improved their community planning capacity, mapping the availability and
accessibility of basic services in 87 neighborhoods based on 11 indicators and developing
a community mapping website where the maps can be accessed by citizens and city
officials as an advocacy and planning tool. The City Municipality has subsequently
expanded the community mapping to the cover the entire city.

China-Bangladesh one-stop shop partnership

Developing local solutions for the efficient delivery of basic services within urban
communities in Asia is a rising challenge. Since 2014, UNDP has facilitated a partnership
between China and Bangladesh to improve urban service delivery in Bangladesh. Mayors
from several cities in Bangladesh visited Beijing to observe its “one-stop shop” community
service centers, which streamline the provision of essential services including birth and
death certificates, trade licenses, inheritance, and succession certificates. Following the
visit, the mayors returned to Bangladesh and designed a one-stop service center
prototype for Bangladesh, building on the Beijing model. The initiative is currently being
piloted in Gazipur.
These examples demonstrate how Asian development cooperation is driving sustainable
urbanization in Asia. Through technical assistance, public-private partnerships, innovative
sharing, and problem solving, Asia’s urban challenges are being met by Asian solutions.
South-South cooperation will remain instrumental in Asia’s future as it continues to meet
urban challenges in the region’s dynamic cities.
Anthea Mulakala is The Asia Foundation’s director for international development
cooperation. Minjae Lee is a KOICA Young Professional based in the Foundation’s Korea
office. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors and not those of
The Asia Foundation or its funders.

47
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

YOUR PROJECT
After analyzing the reading resources available to this module, you will
create a critical analysis about the continuous urban development in the
country. Please consider the set of instructions and expectations in creating
your final paper. If you follow the instruction very carefully and have
completed all the three tasks that were given, a hundred points will be given to you.

OUTPUT CONDITION: Take note of the guidelines to follow as you complete your
written output.
1. The paper must contain an introduction, definition of terms, literature review,
body, conclusion, and references as its parts.
2. Written analysis should be a maximum of five hundred (500) words. Total
number of words should be indicated on the last page of your output.
3. use the format (a) short bond paper, (b) font
style is Century Gothic, (c) font size is 12, (d) double spacing, and (e) justified.
4. The file must be submitted with the filename SURNAME_FIRSTNAME_SUBJEC
T_DATE SUBMITTED.

RUBRIC OF ASSESSMENT: Take time to review the rubric of evaluation which inform you
of the how your OUTPUT would be graded

CRITERIA POINTS

Accuracy Cites information that is accurate and with precise and 30

logical details.

Content Focuses on the main topic and cites relative information that 30
adheres to the content.

Creativity Emphasizes the aesthetic side of knowledge which engages 20

the readers to explore the study.

Grammar Uses correct grammar that makes the paper more 10

comprehensible and coherent.

Format Follows the general format in writing the paper which makes 10
the study organized and systematic.

TOTAL: 100 points

48
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

YOUR POINTS AND NOTES (to be accomplished by the teacher)

ANSWER SHEET: Place the content of your answers to the activity here.

49
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

50
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

READING MATERIAL NO. 6

Challenges and Opportunities for Urban Development in the
Philippines By Samantha Deave
https://asiahouse.org/news-and-views/challenges-opportunities-urban-development-philipp
ines/
https://blogs.worldbank.org/eastasiapacific/unlocking-the-philippines-urbanization-potential

“For Asia 2025, an Asia House publication launched on March 8, the Chairman and Chief
Executive Officer of Ayala Corporation Jaime Augusto Zóbel de Ayala plh contributed his
thoughts on the challenges and opportunities for urban development in the Philippines.”

Urbanisation has been a significant phenomenon globally, and has potentially been a key
contributor to progressive development. Over the last half-century, the world has become
increasingly urbanized. In East Asia, over 50 percent of people live in cities and, today, the
whole of Asia is home to more than half of the world’s megacities. This trend is expected to
continue, with 75 percent of today’s world population projected to be living in urban
areas in the next 35 years. This is an exponential increase from the 1950s when the total
population was only 2.5 billion.

The Philippine experience sees nearly half of the population residing in urban centres, with
almost 25 per cent in the capital alone. Massive urban sprawl across the south and east
ends has expanded the metropolis into the Greater Manila Area. This expanded
metropolitan area has a population of about 25 million, or a quarter of the country’s total
population. Over the past two decades, regions within and adjacent to Metro Manila
have sporadically grown without proper planning, with their capacities unable to keep up
with a growing urban population.

This has led to a host of infrastructure, health, environmental and social problems,
including traffic congestion, burgeoning informal settlements, disaster vulnerability, and
threats to water and food security. A JICA study1 cited how traffic congestion currently
robs Filipinos of up to US$55 million a day. The study further noted that, if no intervention
takes place, this amount is projected to increase to over US$130 million a day.

Clearly, much needs to be done in infrastructure development. Based on the World Bank’s
estimates, the Philippines would need to hit spending levels of at least 5 per cent of GDP in
infrastructure projects to catch up with its Southeast Asian neighbours. Our average
51
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

infrastructure expenditure since 2009 has only been 2.2 per cent of GDP.

Risks and opportunities

Cities are the main centres of consumption, resource use, congestion, and waste. Eleven
of the 20 most polluted cities, and 15 of the 20 most vulnerable cities to rising sea levels,
are in Asia.

Despite all these problems, cities are the growth drivers of most economies, particularly
when one looks at clusters of cities. Urban density can actually be a positive contributor on
many fronts. It is usually accompanied by lower poverty incidence, increased productivity,
and steeper economic growth. This is true across the board, and even more so as the city
size grows. The high concentration of industries and services in highly urbanised cities has
attracted job-seekers to relocate in droves to find employment and gain better access to
education, healthcare and overall quality of life.

Urban density creates critical mass, attracts diversity, and makes possible the ‘creative
combustion’ that brings life, new ideas, entrepreneurial vigour, and an innovative verve to
urban communities. Today, when people think of places to live, work, invest, or visit, they
think not so much of countries; they think of cities.

Decisive interventions are imperative at the city level

However, it is important to manage the ‘quality of that density’. Cities like Metro Manila
need to ensure that urban growth is supported by adequate infrastructure, such as
adequate power, water, roads, transport systems, flood control, and waste management,
to name a few.

In response, private sector groups, such as the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC),
have been pushing for the trend towards sustainable, competitive, and liveable cities.
ABAC is of the belief that cities can achieve resilience if they will elevate their
competitiveness level in key indicators, such as transportation and infrastructure,
technology readiness, health and safety, environment, and ease of doing business. This
initiative can be a potentially viable long-term solution to mitigating the impact of climate
change. However, more work clearly needs to be done and cooperation and synergies

52
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

between the public and private sectors will be integral to taking this initiative forward.

Aside from hard infrastructure, we need to ensure that the right level of governance,
urban management and planning is in place to support Metro Manila. I believe there is a
need for the creation of a central institution that would spearhead a cohesive and
strategic planning and execution of a national urban agenda – from land use and urban
planning to infrastructure development while ensuring the sustainability and resilience of
the cities. While the local government units continue to do their part in addressing the
challenges, the lack of an integrated urban management framework and execution falls
short in enabling seamless connectivity across the whole spectrum.

Greater private sector participation in urban development

Since a developing country such as the Philippines would have significant constraints
investing in capital assets for infrastructure, public services, and even disaster
management, the government has increasingly involved the private sector in providing
these services to address these challenges without straining public finances or burdening
the population with higher taxes.

The private sector, for its part, has, over time, made significant strides in helping to
augment the Philippines’ urbanisation challenges, particularly in the areas of transport,
communication, property development, and disaster management. Much more needs to
be done and I believe the private sector can still intensify its role in helping to develop
more liveable communities within and outside the metropolis that encourages
decongestion and improves the standard of living significantly.

At Ayala, for instance, we have been pushing to improve our existing townships into more
sustainable developments and building new integrated mixed-use projects of different
scales, both within and outside Metro Manila. To date, we have over 8,000 hectares of
strategic land bank, out of which we have 16 large-scale, mixed-use developments across
the Philippines. In each of the cities that we have presence in, we work hand in hand with
the local government in planning and building key infrastructure requirements around our
developments, including access roads, pedestrian walkways, and water distribution.

Another example is how the build-operate-transfer law enacted in the 1990s has paved

53
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

the way for private sector participation in sectors critical to economic growth, particularly
in power generation, telecommunications, transport infrastructure, and water utilities.

Ayala has been an active participant in some of the Philippines’ landmark Public-Private
Partnership (PPP) initiatives. In 1997, Ayala won the country’s first PPP programme, which
was water privatization for the east zone of Metro Manila. Over the last 18 years, Manila
Water has greatly improved water distribution in the east zone, driving down non-revenue
water to 11 per cent and bringing water to 99 per cent of the households in the area.
Today, Manila Water is a leader in the water sector, not only in Manila, but in other parts of
the country, as well as in Southeast Asia.

Similarly, we took part in the government’s liberalization efforts of the telecommunications

sector also in the 1990s and established Globe Telecom. From a virtual monopoly back
then, the telecommunications industry today has spawned a host of entrepreneurial
activity and ‘cottage industries’ in various mobile content and services. More importantly,
the vast improvement in the telecommunications infrastructure has given rise to the
business process outsourcing industry, currently one of the main growth engines of the
country.

More recently, the government has started a PPP programme that includes several
potentially impactful transport infrastructure projects in rail, toll roads, and airports. This
should create an ecosystem that is conducive for urban success.

From what we have seen in the Philippines, good public governance is crucial for
implementing successful PPPs. Multiple stakeholder participation and access to
information for informed dialogues are important, starting from the planning process to the
implementation.

Since the auctions under the PPP framework are conducted in a considerably fair and
transparent manner, the projects have attracted great interest from both local and
foreign investors, including the Ayala Group.

Broadening access to serve communities

It is also worth noting how business groups in the Philippines are increasingly broadening
access to products and services that touch on basic needs to a much larger segment of
54
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

society. In addressing our urbanisation challenges, it is essential that we aim for progress
that is felt across all segments of the population. From our own personal experience at the
Ayala group, we have, over time sought ways to provide products and services that meet
a broader set of needs, at varying price points. We believe our businesses can play a role,
in some measure, in providing practical and realistic solutions to address some of the
challenges confronting the broader society given that we participate in industries that
touch on basic human needs – housing, banking, telecommunications, water distribution,
and, more recently education. These are just a few examples of what we call ‘shared
value’.

Overall, we have seen that these initiatives can create social inclusivity while yielding
attractive returns, and creates a more holistic developmental approach to communities
and to addressing challenges of growth and urbanisation. This has driven us as a group of
companies to seek creative and innovative ways to broaden access to our products and
services with a view towards meeting the needs of a large segment of unserved
communities, particularly those at the base of the economic pyramid.

Supporting the implementation of this core value is our group-wide sustainability policy.
This covers operations, products and services, the supply chain, our human resource
practices, community involvement, and our overall management approach. We have
started benchmarking the Ayala Group against global sustainability indices and best
practices, and we have implemented a comprehensive 360 degree framework to monitor
key sustainability indicators and metrics that we focus on.

Conclusion

In summary, the sustained economic growth and urban sprawl have resulted in
overcapacity in infrastructure and increased vulnerability to disasters. However,
population density per se is not the problem. In addition to hard infrastructure, we need to
ensure that the right level of governance, urban management and planning is in place to
support Metro Manila. I believe there is need for the creation of a central institution that
would spearhead a cohesive and strategic planning and execution of a national urban
agenda, where clear accountabilities are defined. Second, there is a growing importance
for government and private sector collaboration to address some of the key urbanisation
challenges, particularly in critical sectors such as infrastructure and shared value creation.
55
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

As a final note, as this unprecedented positive environment taking place in the Philippine
economy is poised to continue in the next few years, it is imperative that we act together
to intensify our efforts to address the rapid urbanisation. I believe that to a large extent, this
entails collaborative efforts across multiple sectors – the government, the private sector,
the civil society, and multilaterals. This, combined with a healthy sharing of expertise and
best practice among peers, can well fortify our efforts in dealing with urbanisation
challenges.

READING MATERIAL NO. 7

Emerging Cities in the Philippines are on the Rise Despite
Economic Challenge By Leony Garcia
https://businessmirror.com.ph/2018/10/29/emerging-cities-in-the-philippines-are-on-the-rise
-despite-economic
-challenge/#:~:text=THE%20ten%20%E2%80%9Cnew%20emerging%E2%80%9D%20cities,Tug
uegarao%20City%2 C%20and%20Zamboanga%20City.

VARIABLES such as topography, climate, tax code, and cost of living —in addition to
proximity to family and friends—all play roles in the emergence of cities and attractive
places to live in.

The factors that make some parts of the country preferable to others as a place to live
and raise a family vary from one person to the next. Still, some cities are demonstrably
more attractive to new residents than others; thus the reason for population growth.

Population change is the product of two factors–net migration and natural growth.
Natural growth is simply the number of births over a given period less the number of
deaths. Net migration is the difference between the number of new residents—either from
other parts of the country or from abroad—and the number of residents who have left the
area.

As of 2017, there are 47 megacities in existence. Most of these urban agglomerations are
in China and other countries of Asia. The largest are the metropolitan areas of Tokyo,
Shanghai, and Jakarta, each having over 30 million inhabitants. China alone has 15
megacities, and India has six. Other countries with megacities include the United States,
Brazil and Pakistan, each with two.

56
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

In the 2018’s Global Cities Index and Emerging Cities Outlook (A.T. Kearney), seven new
cities have been added to the Index and the Outlook: In the US, Seattle joins the rankings
for the first time, and in China, six cities have emerged in the rankings (Changsha, Foshan,
Ningbo, Tangshan, Wuxi, and Yantai). The list identifies the top emerging cities by
measuring human capital, business activity, information exchange, cultural experience,
and political engagement.

China’s key cities have experienced greater progress than cities in the other regions of the
world during the 10 years of A.T. Kearney’s Global Cities research: business activity remains
the dominant factor, but human capital and cultural experience are also significant
drivers of growth. Established in 2008, A.T. Kearney’s Global Cities was one of the first to
rank cities based on their global standing, and it remains highly regarded for its holistic
assessment of city capabilities and potential.

Designed by top academics and business advisors, the analysis is based on facts and
publicly available data. The report is developed annually, updating the underlying
information and reviewing whether new cities meet the criteria for inclusion. Since its
inception, the report added the Global Cities Outlook and it increases the number of cities
it assesses nearly every year.

What makes an emerging city?

ACCORDING to experts, a city may be considered “emerging” if there is potential for job
creation, a healthy workforce, and efficient land use; in addition to visionary leadership,
political will, good planning, good design, and good governance. Gateway cities such as
those with international airports and seaports also have an edge over others in terms of
trade and tourism opportunities.

By these standards, the top emerging cities outside of Metro Manila are Puerto Princesa,
Zamboanga, Clark, San Fernando (Pampanga), Laoag, Vigan, Legazpi, Balanga,
Batangas, Lucena, and Iloilo. Davao and Cebu have already far exceeded the pack and
ae almost in the same cluster as Metro Manila.Not following the mistakes of Manila, the
Davao and Cebu magalopoli should pursue better mobility through walkable and bikable
streets with well-connected mass transport systems.

57
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

Over the years, there’s a lot of development potentials for Zamboanga City. Dubai, like
Zamboanga is a port city. But unlike Dubai, Zamboanga is blessed with more natural
resources. Zamboanga Peninsula plays a critical role in realizing the medium and
long-term goals of Mindanao and BIMP-EAGA which is to become a major location in
Asean for high-value-added agro-industry, natural resource-based manufacturing, and
high-end tourism that will eventually shift towards ensuring socio-economic, physical
development, and a southern gateway to and from the Philippines.

Laoag, on the other hand, is posing to be the international gateway between the
Philippines and the wealthier countries of North East Asia. Currently, the Laoag
International Airport has direct flights to and from Guangzhou, China. Learning from
‘instant’ cities of the world. These are cities that became First-World caliber in less than 15
years: San Francisco, Zurich, Singapore, and Hong Kong. These cities were able to
transform from one resource to another. Zurich, for instance, was able to move forward
from chocolate and watch-making to becoming Europe’s leading international financial
center. After the gold rush, San Francisco, on the other hand, shifted from a mining town
into a financial, tourism, and technology hub. While Dubai transformed from an
oil-dependent city to one that was driven by tourism, trade and commerce, real estate,
health, and education.

“Our cities should be in a continuous state of improvement. We should not be complacent

with just one source of revenue. For instance, real estate and business process outsourcing
may be booming today. But what are we doing now to ensure that we will have other
sources of income in the event that these two industries slow down? We should be able to
improve our competitiveness in tourism, agriculture, finance, education, and health care,
among others.” This is according to Architect Felino A. Palafox, Jr., in a report written in
April 2017. “Growth is inevitable, growth is necessary. In setting the framework for the
development of our cities, we must focus on practices that are environmentally sound,
economically vital, and that encourages livable communities—in other words, smart
growth and new urbanism. Some of the best practices elsewhere in the world can be
appropriately applied to address the country’s urban issues and challenges to make
Philippines more livable and globally competitive,” he concluded.

58
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

New Emerging Cities

THE ten “new emerging” cities in the Philippines are recognized for their potential to
become next wave cities. These new are, in alphabetical order:Balanga City, Batangas
City, Iriga City, Laoag City, Legazpi City, Puerto Princesa City, Roxas City, Tarlac City,
Tuguegarao City, and Zamboanga City. Meanwhile, the country’s $14 billion
‘pollution-free’ city, the New Clark, is expected to be larger than Manhattan. In a 2016
survey, navigation company Waze ranked Manila as having the “worst traffic on Earth.”
The city’s reliance on cars also exacerbates its growing air-pollution problem.As a possible
solution to Manila’s smog and gridlock, on the works is an entirely new, more sustainable
city called New Clark City.

The New Clark, about 75 miles outside Manila, calls for drones, driverless cars, technologies
that will reduce buildings’ water and  energy usage, a giant sports complex, and plenty of
green space. According to the development plan, the city will eventually stretch 36
square miles — a land area larger than Manhattan — and house up to 2 million people.
Developers say the urban plan will prioritize environmental sustainability and climate
resilience.

With a minimum elevation of 184 feet above sea level, the city will likely not see much
flooding. To reduce carbon emissions, two-thirds of New Clark will be reserved for
farmland, parks, and other green space.The buildings will incorporate technologies that
reduce energy and water usage.Driverless cars, running on electric energy rather than
CO2-emitting gas, will roam the streets.Additionally, the city will feature a giant sports
stadium and an agro-industrial park. New Clark’s developers, BCDA Group and
SurbanaJurong, see the first phase of the project finished by 2022 butthe goal is to keep
developing as technologies advance.

The vision for New Clark certainly sounds utopian.But the ambitious plan faces several
challenges, including persuading Manila residents to move there.

New infrastructure projects, meanwhile, could bridge the distance between Manila and
New Clark City, Wong said. A brand new railway line is being built by the Japan Overseas
Infrastructure Investment Corporation for Transport & Urban Development. The train would
59
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022
 Adaptive Community for the Continuity of Education and Student Services
National Teachers College

reduce the travel time between the two cities to one hour from the current two to three
hours.

In late May, BCDA started the bidding process for companies to design, build, finance,
operate, and maintain power and water systems in New Clark City. The project is mainly
funded through public-private partnerships — and has been earmarked among the Build,
Build, Build (BBB) projects of the current government.

The project is planned to be smart, sustainable and resilient to  disasters, according to

SurbanaJurong CEO Heang Fine Wong. The new urban space would become a “twin city”
to Manila. The Philippine government already announced it is committed to moving some
offices to New Clark City, but the main goal plan is for foreign investors to set up
operations there, according to Wong.

But technical hurdles would still need to be resolved said Wong. “You need that network
of communication. And also a cyber security network needs to be put in place,” he said.

60
SS107 Geography 3 - Urban Geography
School of Teacher Education, First Semester, SY 2021-2022