Urban Form and Land Use in LDCs: Part Two

Southeast Asian Cities

• Two historical types: Sacred City and Trading City

– Sacred cities were places of spiritual authority for inland agricultural areas (eg Angkor Wat)

• They were located and laid out by cosmologists; but their success was tied to the conquests of their rulers.

– Trading cities were on rivers or coast, part of a trade network extended to both South and East Asia, with walled interiors where trade was done and elite lived

• Europeans upended the pre-colonial order through the establishment of their port/gateway cities (usually on the site of a much smaller settlement) like Batavia (now Jakarta), Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) and Singapore

– Manila had the largest of the pre-colonial settlements of the major Southeast Asian cities

Southeast Asian Cities (cont.)

• Southeast Asia is a true crossroads region, with strong local cultures, but South Asian and East Asian influence

– Thus its cities (even its colonial cities) are extraordinarily complex

• Zones

– Port Zone – The heart of the colonial era city

– NO CBD with all functions combined, but instead a group of interconnected zones divided by function and ethnicity

• A government zone

• Western commercial zone with foreign banks, department stores and office towers

• “Alien” (usually Chinese or Indian) commercial zones, with two story shops that also serve as home for the merchants, who sell clothing, jewelry, pharmaceuticals, etc

Southeast Asian Cities (cont.)

• Zones (cont.)

– Colonial elite residential near the government zone

– Mid-density kampungs (urban villages – some for different ethnicities or regional backgrounds) are slowly transforming to middle class as they receive more services

– Squatter settlements in zones of disamenity

– Peripheral market gardening zone with a special new industrial zone somewhere within it

• Market gardening zones historically occurred around most cities world wide; it is an area of farms that specialize in fruits and vegetables which perish quickly (especially without refrigeration)

– These tend to bring higher prices per unit of land area than grain, which is produced in a belt further out from the city

» Also called truck farming

Indonesian Cities

• Again, many zones

– Port-colonial city zone: even as better facilities constructed elsewhere, smaller-shipment port activities remain here; the old Dutch districts have largely been turned over for historic preservation

– Chinese commercial zone: straddles the old colonial district and newer mixed commercial zone; has both two story specialist shops and newer shopping plazas

• These districts connect Indonesia to Chinese manufactures

– Mixed commercial zone: ethnically mixed with many international brands, as well as traditional markets

– International commercial zone: this where the high-rises, upscale malls and hotels are, largely funded by Japanese investors

– Government Zone

Indonesian Cities

• Zones (cont.)

– Elite residential, near government zone and along the highways in the form of the gated community

• This is becoming increasingly common all over the world, but especially in Middle East and South Asia

– Middle income suburbs: converting kampungs near the commercial zone and planned suburbs near ring roads, industrial parks and universities

– Industrial zones: in suburban parks, attract FDI and edge city development

– Kampungs – Oldest ones closest to port are overly dense, mid city ones are becoming middle class thanks to kampung improvement schemes, rural ones are self contained; squatter kampungs in pollution or industrial zones

Southeast Asian Megacities

• Like elsewhere, crowding in the central city is leading to emerging megacity regions like Jabotabek (Jakarta + surrounding cities), with large suburban/rural fringes within commuting distance of the various downtowns

– Mixed among these are desakotas (something between a village and a town), the following features

• Large small farmer population

– This becomes the labor reserve pool that will make the urban region as it grows

• Increasing non-farm activity, including suburban residential, cottage industries and industrial estates (which employ large numbers of female laborers)

– Also a growing informal sector

• Lots of movement around the area by motorbike, bus and truck

– These desakota zones of conversion are transitioning from rural to urban at a much faster rate than what happened in the US.

East Asian Cities

• In the initial Post WWII era, differences emerged between cities in the communist countries (China, North Korea, Mongolia) and capitalist system in (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao)

– Capitalist cities were defined by private land ownership, more social stratification and earlier mass adoption of the automobile

– Communist cities were defined by the elimination of retail at the core (replaced by political, cultural, admin functions), standardized housing, and the idea of the self contained neighborhood concept (to go along with the general policy of local and national self-sufficiency

East Asian Cities

• Traditional cosmologically designed East Asian cities would have a square shape, with a series of walls and moats

– Three gates in each wall, resulting in three major streets that ran north south and 3 more running east west through the old city

– The imperial palace and government offices were at the very center; commercial and religious land uses were secondary; with residential stratification based on status or occupation

• Before the mid-1800’s in East Asia, being involved in trade or commerce was not seen as prestige profession; in fact, in Japan, traders were basically considered outcasts until the late 19^th century

• After revolutions, more broad streets added to the core, everything renamed after revolutionary heroes/events

– The new street grid created walled, self-contained neighborhood units, which were subdivided into residential, office, service and other functions. Most buildings were box-like

– A mass square for political gatherings was made at the city center, along with party HQ, revolutionary museums, and entertainment complexes

– Large factories and universities emerged at the periphery

• As the cities expanded into the periphery, get new factory workers housing estates in an outer ring, followed by the market gardening ring, then the grain ring

– Beijing, for example, displays these concentric zones

East Asian Cities

• European colonialism had comparatively small impacts here (although biggest in the ports of Shanghai and Tianjin, and obviously Hong Kong and Macao, which were under British and Portuguese rule)

– Chinese port cities were first opened up to the British after the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing; by 1911, some 90 coastal and river ports (as well cities in Manchuria) had been opened to Europeans by the Open Door policy

• Under the concession system, cities changed structure

– A concession zone with docks and military bases along coast/river; eventually got warehousing, factories, offices and elite Western residential

• After the revolution, this area goes for party offices and housing party bosses; workers go into highrises at the periphery

– Chinese residential zone which was the old city designed on old cosmologic principles

– Buffer zone between the two which became the location for the Chinese elite who had businesses, worked for government, or for the foreign corporations

East Asian Cities

• Once market reform begins in China in the late-1970’s, its urban form begins to quickly converge with the capitalist countries of East Asia, with the following features

– Ring roads to channel increased auto/truck traffic around cities

– Satellite towns near larger cities

– Renovation/complete remake of central city commercial and residential districts

– Preservation districts for a memory of per-colonial past

• Chinese cities have done comparatively little of this, and have all but eliminated most colonial era housing in favor of high-rises

– Urban open space system to provide recreation

– Major concentrations of high-rise office, condo and hotels

• Some of world’s largest buildings are in East/Southeast Asia, including Petronas Towers (KL), Taipei 101, World Financial Center (Shanghai), all of which will be dwarfed by Burj Khalifa

East Asia Examples: Shanghai/Pudong

• Shanghai is China’s largest, with 17 million in the metro area

– Even before independence, it was one of the world’s leading manufacturing centers and busiest port in Asia.

• Each European power had its own district that was not subject to Chinese law; the centerpiece was the neo-classical Bund riverfront development with banks and trading houses

– Most of the wealth generated went back to Europe

– The communists taxed industrial activities in Shanghai to the tune of 75% in order to fund the rest of the government initiatives

• Almost nothings was reinvested, the city became rundown

– But in 1980, the new leadership wanted to unleash economic development, so they created the Shanghai Economic Zone and the Pudong New Area (the latter from a patch of low density farm land to the East of the city.

• This was to be the Dragon Head of development for the whole Chang Jiang Valley (the Dragon Body)

Shanghai/Pudong (cont.)

– These development zones offered tax breaks and infrastructure to attract investment; new bridges and ring roads were built along with subway, sewers and a second international airport.

• Shanghai now house export industrialization, commercial HQ’s, finance, scientific and university research, and new residential communities

– Shanghai is a city of extreme wealth and extreme poverty, but is also a World City

• Other problems include the large role played by FDI and the lack of technology transfer, rising wages for factory workers which is pushing investment elsewhere, long commute times, and two financial districts competing for foreign banks by offering sweet packages of goodies to outdo each other

East Asia Example: Hong Kong

• Pearl River Delta (which Hong Kong sits at the edge of) is one of fastest growing urban areas of world

– Also includes Macao and Guangzhou

• Hong Kong has world class financial industry, manufacturing and trading firms, plus the world’s busiest port

– Hong Kong was under the British until 1997, from 1980-onward, Chinese government began pouring investment in Guangzhou preparing

• Hong Kong still holds elections, under the “one country, two systems” policy.

– China located two of its key export processing zones (aka Special Economic Zones) – Shenzhen and Zhuhai – in the Pearl River Delta

• Now Hong Kong does “Front shop” work like design, marketing, purchasing, inventory control, and Chinese sub-contractors in the EPZ’s do manufacturing with their low wage work forces

– Whole delta now a Open Economic Area, which allowed farmers to either migrate to factories, or diversify their crops from rice to include market gardening, livestock and fish farming.

• Also got low tech rural manufacturing

– Land within the triangle between Macao, Hong Kong and Guangzhou remains relatively inexpensive for now even though the government has spent lots on communications, road, rail, and water infrastructure

• Means even more growth will happen, with more resorts, tech parks, and industrial parks emerging in formerly small towns