The City and the Bottom Line: Urban Megaprojects and the Privatization of Planning in Southeast Asia

Prevailing perspectives on the impacts of globalization on urban form in large, globalizing cities in Asia hold that these cities are experiencing an inexorable process of ‘Westernization’ or ‘Americanization’. Yet this focus on convergence distracts us from the task of analyzing urban change and its causes, leading to analytical muddiness and awkward planning and policy implications. The author presents an alternative framework that focuses on actor-centered analysis, and the importance of understanding historical context. This framework is employed in a case study of recent trends in urban development in Metro Manila, based on interviews, government, private sector, and nonprofit sector documents, and newspapers. It is concluded that, in Metro Manila, a defining characteristic of contemporary urban development is the unprecedented privatization of urban and regional planning. Large developers have conceived of urban development plans on a metrowide scale, and begun to implement these with the assistance of government. This phenomenon has its roots in the historical development of social groups in the Philippines and their shifting interests with the globalization of the Philippine economy. The author concludes that the privatization of planning raises distinct issues for urban planning theory and practice.