Planning the Future of the Asian City

Planning the Future,the Asian City: A Twenty-five Year Retrospective As its title implies, this paper represents a quarter-century retrospective on the contents of a paper presented originally at a conference in Hong Kong in 1969 and then published in 1972. Following the thrust of argument in the conference papers, the importance of urbanization as a major force in modernization was underscored, as was the crucial role of the great cities in Asia as "engines of growth," a view not popular at the time. It also was argued that planning for Asian urbanization in Asia required concern not only with the central cities, but also with their hinterlands with which, it was proposed, they were becoming increasingly integrated. These arguments have stood up well in the ensuing twenty-five years, and the interaction between large city and hinterland has been vastly extended, the result being the emergence of what has been termed "the extended or dispersed metropolis," a phenomenon apparently unique to Asia and a product of accelerated economic development there. Some suggestions for further research are then proposed.