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DOI: 10.1355/ae23-2h Beyond Metropolis: The Planning and Governance of Asia's Mega-Urban Regions. By Aprodicio A. Laquian. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. Pp. 488.
The book begins with a rather controversial title - Beyond Metropolis. In a world where the majority of cities in developing countries are struggling with metropolitan growth and change, the title might appear to be rather mocking to the governments that have been shown up more often than not for their inaptitude at metropolitan governance and change. It is a world, as the author has rightly pointed, where the mega-cities in Asia dominate the world's urban population growth statistics and, hence, urban development issues. Yet, the fastest growing urban areas are not the mega-cities but cities with populations of 1.5 million to 5 million. These are growing at triple the rates in mega-cities. In terms of sheer numbers, however, population growth in the mega-cities would be breathtaking compared with the population growth in the smaller cities. The author speaks of Shanghai as the "head of the dragon" in the Yangtze River delta and the dominant core of a metropolitan region covering about 100,000 square kilometres with a population of 72.7 million (p. 30).
What the author, however, has focused on in his discussion, has been the spatial growth of mega-cities to encompass regions or mega-urban regions. Intriguingly, much of the growth of these mega-urban regions is being attributed to planning aimed ironically at containing metropolitan growth or what many North American cities would be familiar with - urban sprawl. Debates are ongoing concerning the measurement and impact of urban sprawl. There are similar debates, which the author has highlighted, concerning the growth of metropolises and whether mega-urban regions are necessarily the best things that can happen in Asian urbanization, at least. While one school of thought has argued for smaller cities and cities apparently of "lower levels", the author notes...