ABSTRACT
Urban development in cities of Southeast Asia is often taken for granted by policymakers as the prescription to pave the way for economic growth. The resulting urban landscapes, however, often only benefit economically privileged groups. This is reflected in Andre Ortega’s chapter on the concentration of capital in mega-urban regions of the Philippines, as well as in the chapter by Simone Shu-Yeng Chung and Robin Chung on Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, which points to the private sector’s dominance in funding infrastructure projects. Yeoh Seng Guan identifies a similar domination of private corporate entities, while Hoai Anh Tran finds that the new urban areas promoted in post-reform Vietnam are large-scale, corporate-invested and profit-driven developments.
