Worlding Cities is the first serious examination of Asian urbanism to highlight the connections between different Asian models and practices of urbanization. It includes important contributions from a respected group of scholars across a range of generations, disciplines, and sites of study.

List of Illustrations vii

Notes on Contributors viii

Series Editors’ Preface xiii

Preface and Acknowledgments xv

Introduction Worlding Cities, or the Art of Being Global 1
Aihwa Ong

Part I Modeling 27

1 Singapore as Model: Planning Innovations, Knowledge Experts 29
Chua Beng Huat

2 Urban Modeling and Contemporary Technologies of City-Building in China: The Production of Regimes of Green Urbanisms 55
Lisa Hoffman

3 Planning Privatopolis: Representation and Contestation in the Development of Urban Integrated Mega-Projects 77
Gavin Shatkin

4 Ecological Urbanization: Calculating Value in an Age of Global Climate Change 98
Shannon May

Part II Inter-Referencing 127

5 Retuning a Provincialized Middle Class in Asia's Urban Postmodern: The Case of Hong Kong 129
Helen F. Siu

6 Cracks in the Façade: Landscapes of Hope and Desire in Dubai 160
Chad Haines

7 Asia in the Mix: Urban Form and Global Mobilities – Hong Kong, Vancouver, Dubai 182
Glen Lowry and Eugene McCann

8 Hyperbuilding: Spectacle, Speculation, and the Hyperspace of Sovereignty 205
Aihwa Ong

Part III New Solidarities 227

9 Speculating on the Next World City 229
Michael Goldman

10 The Blockade of the World-Class City: Dialectical Images of Indian Urbanism 259
Ananya Roy

11 Rule by Aesthetics: World-Class City Making in Delhi 279
D. Asher Ghertner

Conclusion Postcolonial Urbanism: Speed, Hysteria, Mass Dreams 307
Ananya Roy

Index 336

From Dubai to Delhi and from Singapore to Shanghai, cities across Asia are sites of intense experiments with different ways of being global. This book intervenes in urban theory focused on established global cities, and instead argues that the urban globality is something that is continually being imagined, assembled, and contested. Greater Asia is a region of vibrant innovations in urban design, built forms, governance, aesthetics, and politics. Worlding Cities draws attention to diverse projects of 'worlding' and "reworlding" that draw upon local and transnational relationships. Alternative ways of being global are instantiated through practices of mobility, modeling, and speculation that inter-reference other Asian sites. As many of the essays in this book illustrate, different Asian futures are being shaped in cities, from green governmentality to eco-city, from corporate speculations to political contestations over urban development, from "world-class" city branding to demands for "world-class" services, and from sky-high hopes to dashed dreams on the ground for city-dwellers and migrants. This inter-generation and interdisciplinary group of authors offers the first serious examination of diverse actors, energies, and conditions at play in defining new worlds of inter-Asian urbanism.

"Urban studies is marked by an ingrained tendency to consider cities in Western Europe and North America as the leading edge of global urban change. This important book draws attention to ways in which cities in Asia are experimenting with ways of being global which do not necessarily refer back to antecedents in the North Atlantic world. The book should be read not only by Asianists but by anyone who is interested in the dynamics of urban change globally."
—Tim Bunnell, National University of Singapore

“The contributors to Worlding Cities bring new ethnographic attention to urban sites of innovation, cultural connections, and potentially transformative aspirations. They connect what is happening in cities to the ways changing relations among cities are remaking connections across national boundaries. And in the process they help to remake social science with new connections among anthropologists, geographers, and urban planners. Focused mainly on Asia, this is work that matters globally.”
—Craig Calhoun, President, Social Science Research Council

"A refreshing and wide-ranging volume that makes a timely contribution to debates in urban studies, geography, and planning. Rather than attempt to identify the features of a 'global' city or trace the reproduction of 'Western' forms in Asian cities, this collection examines how projects of 'worlding' are actively assembled and urban futures envisaged. It uncovers diverse routes through which cities inter-reference one another and are produced as distinctive spaces of experimentation and aspiration in contexts of uncertainty and inequality."
—Colin McFarlane, Durham University, UK

List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Series Editors? Preface Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction: Worlding Cities, or the Art of Being Global Part I: Modeling Part II: Inter-Referencing Part III: New Solidarities Conclusion: Postcolonial Urbanism: Speed, Hysteria, Mass Dreams Index