"In this paper I seek to review recent work on Chinese urban geography and to appraise the development of China's urban geography as a field of study both inside and outside China. The temporal scope will span scholarship finished and published mainly during the 1980s." The focus is on works published in English. The author examines the primary topics of interest, methodologies and theories, and available sources of data.

China's urban geography.

PIP: European models of urbanization inadequately capture the process of growth of urban cities in Asian developing countries. The following theoretical issues were presented as illustrations of the inadequacies of European paradigms: 1) the role of cities in regional development, 2) the dual nature of employment in Asian cities, 3) foreign investments, and 4) socialism. The concept of extended metropolitan regions in Asian countries was advanced by the studies of McGee and Ginsburg; metropolitan regions were recognized as unique to Asia. Socioeconomic development led to the blurring of regions into distinct urban and rural areas and to the mixing of agricultural and nonagricultural areas. The city-based model of economic concentration was replaced with a region-based urbanization. There is no universally applicable model of urban transition, although the influence of Euro-Americanism can still be felt in the theories of developing country development. What is not known is whether the new form of urban transition is a viable option or is a compromise between city-biased strategy and the development of intermediate and small towns. The effects of extended metropolitan regions are still unknown. Primary urbanization has its roots in early civilizations. Peterson developed the notions of the transitional stages of industrialization and urbanization: 1) preindustrial with high birth, death, and infant mortality rates of young, small populations; 2) early Western industrialization with reduced mortality and increased births; and 3) modern Western society with low birth and mortality rates and older, larger populations. Kingsley Davis provided the conception of rural-to-urban migration and urban growth, associated with urban economic and social opportunity and a shift from agricultural to nonagricultural employment. McGee postulated demographic, economic, and social transitions as part of the urbanization process. There is an increasing awareness that urban growth and the structure of the city are strongly influenced by the production and distribution of the world economy.

Changing theoretical perspectives on urbanisation in Asian developing countries

Asian cities and the processes that have driven their rapid changes are examined under four heads in this paper. Rapid economic transformation has provided the basis on which Asian cities have witnessed breathtaking physical change and fundamental social reorientation in the midst of an information age. Reflections on the role of Asian cities and urbanization are provided in the post-crisis global financial and political realignments.1

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10225706.2011.577975

Rethinking Asian cities and urbanization: four transformations in four decades

http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/Urbanisation.pdf

exclusionary Urbanisation in asia: a Macro Overview

The present paper overviews urbanisation and migration process in Asian countries at macro
level since 1950s, including the projections made till 2030. It questions the thesis of southward
movement of urbanisation and that of urban explosion in Asia. Increased unaffordability of urban
space and basic amenities, negative policy perspective towards migration and various rural
development pogrammes designed to discourage migration are responsible for this exclusionary
urban growth and a distinct decline in urban rural growth differential, with the major exception
of China. The changing structure of urban population across different size categories reveals a
shift of growth dynamics from large to second order cities and stagnation of small towns. The
pace of urbanization has been modest to high in select countries in Asia, not because of their
level of economic growth but its composition and labour intensity of rapidly growing informal
sectors. Several countries have launched programmes for improving governance and
infrastructural facilities in a few large cities, attracting private investors from within as well as
outside the country. These have pushed out squatter settlements, informal sector businesses along
with a large number of pollutant industries to a few pockets and peripheries of the cities. The
income level and quality of basic amenities in these cities, as a result, have gone up but that has
been associated with increased intra-city disparity and creation of degenerated periphery.
Nonetheless, there is no strong evidence that urbanization is associated with destabilization of
agrarian economy, poverty and immiserisation, despite the measures of globalization resulting in
regional imbalances. The overview of the trend and pattern suggests that the pace of urbanization
would be reasonably high but much below the level projected by UNPD in the coming decades.

https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/19197/1/MPRA_paper_19197.pdf

Urbanisation and Migration: An Analysis of Trends, Patterns and Policies in Asia

Expansion of large cities in Eastern Asia since World War II has created a host of problems for administrators and residents. Strategies to restrain growth are discussed under physical control regional planning and social policy. Tokyo Shanghai and Seoul receive special attention. (EXCERPT)

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/214619.pdf

Yue-Man Yeung

Papers

Controlling metropolitan growth in Eastern Asia