IDPR, 30 (3) 2008

K. C. Ho and Mike Douglass

Globalisation and liveable cities

Experiences in place-making in Pacific Asia

As cities in Pacific Asia become more tightly integrated into the global economy, issues of liveability need
to be considered alongside economic vitality. While place-marketing projects may work to strengthen the
economic capacities of the city, their scales and costs strain city budgets and create significant displace-
ments of local residents and businesses. Efforts to create an attractive, themed product may bleach places
of their diversity. These impacts require us to question the importance given to such ventures, and to insert
the place-making efforts of local communities and agents in creating convivial and liveable urban environ-
ments into the global city research agenda. Such an approach argues for a shift in focus from examining
the city in terms of its economic competitiveness to a better understanding of the local textures of the city
by incorporating social and political processes.

The shared concern of the research brought together in this special edition of IDPR
is place-making as a principal dimension of the liveability of cities. Understood as a
process of transforming space into place, of giving identity, meaning and collective
memory to specific locations, place-making is indispensable in creating a sense of
neighbourhood and, more broadly, associational life. The overarching question taken
up by the authors is how the impacts of globalisation on the built environment of
cities influence local capacities for place-making. While much of the evidence suggests
that, as a process of privatisation of space for extra-territorial interests, globalisa-
tion is, from a local perspective, more a process of place-breaking than place-making
(Friedmann, 2007), the cases presented in this volume also reveal ways in which local
actors can counter such tendencies. They also reveal tensions that are not simply
local–global, but also entail cross-cutting relations between citizens and states, among
social classes and across cultural divides.
A rethinking of the concept of liveability is also needed. In the context of devel-
oping countries, this concept currently focuses almost exclusively on the physical
dimensions – the natural and the built environment, economic growth and urban
services – and sees the social and political life of cities as instrumental to achieving
material outcomes, rather than as ends themselves (World Bank, 1997; 2000; Bigio
and Dahiya, 2004). To reduce the liveability of cities to their material or economic
wealth is to miss the social relations needed for what Peattie (1998) puts forth as the
highest pursuit of a liveable city, which is its social conviviality. In the same light, in

K. C. Ho is Associate Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore, [Q], email: sochokc@nus.
edu.sg. Mike Douglass is the Executive Director of the Globalization Research Center and Professor of Urban and
Regional Planning at the University of Hawai’I, [Q], email: global@hawaii.edu.

Paper submitted January 2008; revised paper received and accepted May 2008.

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 200 K. C. Ho and Mike Douglass

giving meaning and a sense of shared community life, the interaction of people with
the built environment through place-making is fundamental to the conviviality, and
thus the liveability, of any city.
When we associate place-making with liveability, we see place-making as having
the ability to create healthy social worlds that are the result of individuals and families
being active in interacting and participating beyond their homes. Place-making is
both the outcome of and a critical support for social capital and social efficacy. And
when the outcomes create increased liveability, an emerging literature indicates that
individuals enjoy better health outcomes in addition to a vibrant social environment
(Frumkin, 2003), where positive place-based social supports1 increase the mental
wellbeing of residents (O’Campo et al., 2008).
As the cases presented in this issue reveal, the tendency of globalisation to create
extra-territorial spaces encounters contradictory forces at the local level. The middle
class, for example, has not only been a source of demand for global commodities and
services, but has also led social mobilisation for democratic reform in Asia. Different
ethnic groups can and do cooperate with each other at the neighbourhood level and
at higher levels in the city. The state is not monolithic, and it is often observed to have
different interests within it working at odds with each other over matters such as urban
policy. Experiences in place-making in various urban contexts are brought together in
this issue as a way of exploring these and other complexities of local–global interac-
tions.
The widespread economic changes and the increasing mobility of people and all
forms of capital have fundamental socio-political implications for the city. As econo-
mies under globalisation become more interdependent and susceptible to decisions
made in other quarters of the world, understanding how urban-centred societies
organise at different levels and react to these changes is a crucial avenue for research.
Set within this multi-layered context of globalising cities in Pacific Asia, the theme of
place-making and livable cities:
• contrasts the place-marketing efforts of local authorities with the place-making
efforts of communities of residents, workers and businesses as an essential project
of the city;
• moves the analysis from transnational capital and local large corporate players as
the agents of change to the local community, local merchants and civic groups as
agents of creating viable social and economic alternatives for the city; and
• intends to discuss the issue of urban economic development alongside the issue of

liveability.

1 Capriano (2007, 650) also recognises that strong social attachments may possibly lead to harmful health outcomes
when increased involvements come with greater stress, or when involvements lead to activities that are unsafe or/
and unhealthy.

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 Globalisation and liveable cities 201

Globalising urban space in Pacific Asia

As cities in Pacific Asia become ever more tightly integrated into the global economy,
shifts in global–local interdependencies become more deeply transforming in their
impacts on the built environment. In the higher-income economies, urban landscapes
are being restructured to allow for a transition from their former low-wage export-
oriented industrial base to producer services, global consumption and ‘experience
economies’ linked with tourism and global spectacles. Even in lower-income econo-
mies such as Vietnam and Cambodia, global investments in business districts, tourist
areas and peri-urban new town development are rapidly filling urban areas in countries
that are still substantially agrarian.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the development of cities in Pacific Asia, though certainly
influenced by global forces, was largely in the hands of post-colonial states and
local capital. The 1970s marked the rise of a few ‘miracle economies’ that found the
right policy mix to be included in a new international division of labour (NIDL),
manifested in a sudden deindustrialisation of the Fordist factory system in the global
North that was enhanced by technological and institutional innovations in moving
labour-intensive assembly operations to newly industrialising economies (NIEs) in the
global South (Fröbel et al., 1980). The rise of the first generation NIEs (South Korea,
Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore) was followed to a lesser extent in Southeast Asia
by Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. China and Vietnam would
open their economies to join the global factory by the end of the 1980s.
The spatial impacts of joining the NIDL focused mainly on areas that were periph-
eral to the urban core. Export-processing zones, deepwater container ports and other
large-scale infrastructure such as hub airports and fast trains were constructed to
effect direct linkages of production and assembly sites to external commodity chains
contained within separate corporate circuits of production and distribution. This
attention given to production sites and globally-linked transportation linkages left
central areas of the city relatively untouched, and low skylines and many middle-class
inner-city neighbourhoods, as well as large slum areas, continued to exist in central
areas (Jones and Douglass, 2008).
In the mid-1980s, the first round of urban-industrial transformations of the previous
decades, with the exceptions of China and Vietnam, were mostly in place, and in the
higher-income economies of Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, they even
began to be replaced by new developments as low-wage production rapidly moved
offshore, particularly to China from the late 1980s. A second phase of urban restruc-
turing began in the form of intentional world city formation and global consumption,
which appeared in Pacific Asia from around 1985 with Japan’s bubble economy, the
opening of Pacific Asia to global finance, and the advent of a new era of globally-
syndicated urban mega-projects. Unlike the previous manufacturing export round,

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 202 K. C. Ho and Mike Douglass

most of the investments of this era have been aimed at the urban core (in the form of
global business zones and shopping malls) to accommodate global franchises, chain
stores and name-brand outlets. Peri-urban areas were no longer just potential factory
sites but were instead targeted for huge upscale housing estates and new towns.
The greatly enhanced capacities of global investors to launch mega-projects
reached Asia from the late 1980s onwards, and proved to be particularly impressive,
with no historic precedent in terms of the scale and speed of implementation (Flyvb-
jerg et al., 2003; Altshuler and Luberoff, 2004; Douglass, 2007). From previous levels
of millions of US dollars in the 1970s, by the 1990s land development projects in
Pacific Asia were surpassing the billion dollar mark, and a decade later they were
over US$10 billion.2 Recent new town developments, such as Saigon South, are being
constructed for a million residents and are to be completed in a matter of years rather
than decades.
The grand projects are created not only for their functions as offices, commercial
outlets or living spaces. They are also intended to create symbolic value as elements
of world city status, which is now seen as a requirement for winning global investment
in an era of intensifying intercity competition across national boundaries (Marshall,
2003; Daniels et al., 2005; Newman and Thornley, 2005). By the 1990s, almost any
large city could build an export-processing zone or elevated road system, and offering
such public investments as a means to attract global capital had become only margin-
ally successful. Governments instead found themselves compelled to devote scarce
public resources to intentionally creating physical structures and imagery for world
city status for their principal urban centres. This imperative has become so pervasive
that by 2005 Pacific Asia had 25 of the world’s 35 tallest skyscrapers, with each new
building outdoing the last, year by year.
Whether large or small, the innumerable urban development projects directed
by global investors over the last two decades combine to lead to pervasively swift
changes in urban landscapes, particularly in the largest cities of Pacific Asia. Very
tall buildings, global corporate business zones, mega-malls, sports complexes and vast
gated suburban housing estates and new towns are being intensively layered over city
regions. In the process they are replacing many of the pre-existing local small-scale
commercial areas and urban neighbourhoods. In each city hundreds of thousands
of people have been compelled to leave the urban core to make way for the new
urban projects, most of which also reflect a trend toward the privatisation of public
and community spaces.3 For the 2008 Beijing Olympics alone, the number of people

2 Muang Thong Thani, a vast new town promoted in Bangkok in the 1990s, was promoted as a US$1 billion
project. Songdo, a global business hub now being constructed on an ocean landfill near Incheon Airport in the
Seoul metropolis, is said to cost US$15 billion (Douglass, 2008).
3 From 1984–88, just in the early phase of the building boom in Bangkok, an estimated 100,000 people within a
ten-mile radius of the centre were displaced by high-rise commercial development (Padco-LIF, 1990). For the

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 Globalisation and liveable cities 203

forcefully evicted from their homes and neighbourhoods is estimated to be 1.5 million
(Goto, 2007).
A major driver of the trends that are now being experienced in Pacific Asia, where
cities are oriented toward the provisioning of global services and consumption, is
the appearance and growth of an affluent urban middle class. This expansion of an
economic class of consumers has opened cities to unparalleled levels of construc-
tion of shopping malls as secure, privately-owned sites for global food franchises and
name-brand merchandise. Luxury housing behind high security gates fills the same
perceived need to insulate new elites from the ‘chaos’ of poverty and crime, and
the unplanned development of the larger urban setting (Dick and Rimmer, 1998;
Douglass et al., 2002; Hogan and Houston, 2002; Douglass and Huang 2007).
The scales of these urban design adventures leading up to the turn of the century
were impressive. The government of Malaysia constructed what are still the world’s
tallest twin towers, Petronas. Shenzhen (on the periphery of Hong Kong in Guang-
dong, China) grew from a settlement of 40,000 to 4 million inhabitants in fewer than
20 years. In Jakarta, the Kuningan ‘Golden Triangle’ of office buildings was desig-
nated for special investment, and 16 new towns ranging from 500 to 10,000 hectares
were completed or under construction. In Bangkok, Muang Thong Thani, portrayed
proudly as a private city planned for 700,000 people, was nearly completed when it
went bust with the financial crises of 1997–98 (New York Times, 1999).
After the 1997–98 crisis, mega-projects not only continued to appear but did so
at ever larger scales and costs. In Southeast Asia, a new era of constructing gigantic
peri-urban new towns burst onto the scene around 2000.4 By 2008, Ho Chi Minh
City, the principal city-region in one of the lowest-income economies in Southeast
Asia, was surrounded by these mega-projects. In both the urban core and peri-urban
settings, the city-region of the 1960s had receded into the shadows of the globalised
mega-urban region of the early twenty-first century (Jones and Douglass, 2008).
As shown in Figure 1, the new layers of the built environment take many forms,
ranging from suburban housing to very tall buildings. But they all call upon similar
vocabulary to describe how they fit into the city and what they see as their contribution

1988 Seoul Olympics, an estimated 750,000 people were forcibly evicted (Bread Alert!, 1998). In Jakarta in the late
1990s, a crackdown on slums and trishaw drivers by the governor, who was intent on ridding the city of the poor,
caused an estimated 200,000 people to lose their houses and livelihoods (Khouw, 2001). Moreover, the coverage
of peri-urban land by large-scale housing development is implicated in the annual flooding of Jakarta, which, in
2008, saw more than a million people forced out of their homes.
4 Among the more well known are: Saigon South and Thu Thiem New Urban Development Area in Ho Chi
Minh City; Ciputra and Star World in Hanoi, Vietnam; Camko (an abbreviation for ‘Cambodia and Korea’) in
Phnom Penh; Kota Wisata and Kota Legenda in Jakarta; Eastwood and Megaworld’s Laguna Bel Air in Manila;
and Iskandar in Johor, Malaysia (Douglass and Huang, 2007). Ho Chi Minh City alone in 2008 had at least nine
peri-urban mega-projects that in total had expected residential populations of several million. From 1990 to 2008,
Greater Jakarta (Jabodetabek) constructed approximately 75 new shopping malls (Jakarta Post, 2008; Tempo, 2008).

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 204 K. C. Ho and Mike Douglass

Figure 1

to society under the banner of a private, exclusive, self-contained, secure, new global
urban culture. The result is that major aspects of the city that were once assumed to be
public – streets, sidewalks, plazas, parks, and other forms of collective experiences such
as cultural festivals – are suddenly private spaces that are immersed in the dynamics
of commodification, simulation and new global identities explicitly programmed into
the production of new urban space. This vocabulary contrasts fundamentally with
the idea of a spontaneous, vibrant city; a ‘heteropolis’ of vernacular architecture
and urban landscapes that are not privileged for access or use by a single class, ethnic
group or authority, but are instead made by the people themselves with all their differ-
ences (Foucault, 1967[Q]). In the emergent city-region, the private–public division of
urban space became inverted, with the city becoming less like a grand public sphere
in which privately-owned spaces exist under the regulation of the state, and more like
a huge private sphere governed by private interests with limited and marginalised

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 Globalisation and liveable cities 205

public space and, by extension, a diminished public sphere of governance (Douglass

and Huang, 2007).
As a more complex spatial matrix, the various new elements together create what
Graham and Marvin (2001) term ‘secessionary networked spaces’ that rise out of the
nation-state by privatising and therefore removing from the sphere of democratic
governance much of what previously would have been public space: urban roads,
walkways, open spaces, recreational facilities and other amenities. In other terms, these
elements form ‘interdictory spaces’ that are designed to systematically exclude the
citizenry who do not fit the targeted market profile desired by developers (Flusty, 2001).
Where they cannot be excluded, their behaviour can be limited to uses that are desired
by the owner of the space, such as shopping, through architectural design and private
police (Douglass, 2007). Through exclusion and control, each of the sites is substan-
tially removed from the public sphere of political inquiry and oversight. As such, they
are each a part of a citywide ‘desocialization of space’ (Gleeson,[Q] 2006).
In addition to the sites identified in Figure 1, other mega-projects for state-of-the-
art airports, superhighways and light-rail systems (as well as high-speed internet and
other informational linkages) are implemented to form ‘premium networked infra-
structure’ that substantially reduces the friction of space in articulating the circulation
of capital through the various elements of the new urban landscape (Graham and
Marvin, 2001). Most of this infrastructure is made possible through subsidies from and
the involvement of governments in the form of land consolidation, forced evictions,
tax holidays and other giveaways, and direct financial outlays in partnership with
private sector developers.

Place-marketing, place-making and liveability

Within the economic environment fostered by globalisation, the changes described
above comprise the new work of cities: to develop ways of staying competitive by
attracting new investments, visitors and skilled personnel. And within the new work
of cities, place-marketing has become a key strategy of urban management (Haider,
1992; Olds, 1995; van de Berg and Braum, 1999[Q]), with the key elements being
the construction of new urban quarters, monumental spaces and buildings, and the
hosting of mega-events (Eisinger[Q], 2000; Doel and Hubbard, 2002).
Place-marketing may be seen as a dominant form of place-making by govern-
ments and tourism agencies anxious to create an enduring image of the city as a way
to secure economic advantage. The unequal power of place-making agents – govern-
ments, agencies and elites on the one hand, and city residents on the other – creates a
set of salient issues around the construction of place-marketing projects. Lepofsky and
Fraser (2003, 129) point out that such place-marketing projects work at the cultural
meaning of the city in terms of ‘who can make claims upon the city’ and ‘whom

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 206 K. C. Ho and Mike Douglass

cities are for’. Commenting on new types of urban projects, which are a response to
economic globalisation, Marshall (2003, 24) points out that such projects ‘encapsu-
late a specific and narrow definition of urban life and culture’ and ‘this urban vision
becomes the dominant urban vision by which all other urban visions must relate’. And
visions shape our experience of transnational spaces in certain ways. Huang (2004,
17) observes that these spaces represent an urban glamour zone (a term she borrows
from Sassen). To users, the open spaces in such zones are capable of ‘seducing them to
claim the spaces for their own purposes, but the political and economic forces working
behind the “open space” seldom reveal themselves to the users’ (p. 21). She concludes
that ‘these walkers [the users] cannot see the dubious nature of the inflated global
city: a convenient door that invites them to fantasise about all kinds of possibilities
camouflages an invisible wall indifferent to their desires and dreams’ (p. 33).
While place-marketing projects may work to strengthen the economic capacities
of the city, their scales and costs strain city budgets and create significant displace-
ments of residents and local businesses (Whitson and Macintosh, 1996; Eisinger[Q],
2000). Efforts to create an attractive, themed product bleach places of their diversity
(Chang, 2000). These impacts require us to question the seemingly over-riding impor-
tance given to such ventures and to use the place-making efforts of local communi-
ties in the global city research agenda. According to Lepofsky and Fraser (2003, 128),
‘place-making is participation in both the production of meaning and in the means of
production of a locale’. With this as the starting point, an elaboration of the concept
of place-making should take into account its social and political dimensions, the actors
involved, and its different scales.
The mechanics of place-making implies a set of relationships, and diverse elements
and processes. Friedmann (2007, 272) points out that place-making involves the inter-
section between the state (which traditionally controls the urban form in terms of
design and amenities) and the people (residents, workers and businesses) who utilise
these features in their everyday lives. This relationship between the state and the
people is often problematic when seen in the language of rights. Residents are granted
the rights to use, but they often have restricted rights when it comes to planning and
design, which are reserved for the state or global corporate proxies in the form of
professional community and city builders (Lepofsky and Fraser, 2003, 132).
The attempts by residents and local businesses to intervene and shape the produc-
tion of locales (the second portion of Lepofsky and Fraser’s definition) brings into
focus the neighbourhood as a unit of political action and governance. In answering
Charles Tilly’s question of whether communities act, Davis (1991, 5) remarks that:
place-bound ‘communities’ do act – sometimes out of a common interest in improving
local safety, services or amenity; sometimes out of a special interest in protecting local
property values; sometimes because not to act is to acquiesce in the community’s own
destruction. So often does the residential urban neighbourhood serve as a seedbed

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 Globalisation and liveable cities 207

for collective action that much of contemporary political life simply becomes unintel-
ligible without some understanding of the interests, groups, and conflicts of the
‘homeplace’.
And in this regard as well, Kearns and Parkinson (2001, 2108) argue that ‘in a system
of multilevel governance, the neighbourhood forms the foundation upon which the
other levels of governance must depend’.
The local capacity for place-making can be helped with support from external
linkages. Ho (2008, 61–62) provides a review of case studies to show how alliances
with NGOs, professionals and other segments of urban society, as well as state support
in terms of a regional governance structure involving representatives from different
locales of a wider metropolitan region, can enhance the place-making capacity of
communities.
If we think about place-making capacities within place-based communities, then
Putnam’s concept of social capital (defined as networks, norms and trust that facili-
tate collective action; Putnam, 2001, 111) and Sampson’s concept of social efficacy5
(defined as working trust and shared expectations for action; Sampson, 2004, 108)
come to mind. Place-making, collective efficacy and social capital exist as elements
in a virtuous cycle in the sense that place-making arises from a high level of collec-
tive efficacy and social capital, and at the same time reinforces collective efficacy as
well as social capital. These features, in turn, are very much influenced by the nature
and design of neighbourhoods. At the scale of the neighbourhood, the availability of
social amenities such as community gardens have been positive in building a stronger
sense of participation and identity through involvement in a common collaborative
activity (Kuo et al., 1998) and in developing community organisation skills (Twiss et al.,
2003). According to a study by Leydon (2003), mixed-use neighbourhoods that have a
range of amenities close by generate a more walkable lifestyle among its residents, and
this in turn results in neighbours being more likely to know each other, being more
involved socially and having higher levels of social trust and political participation.
Community place-making capacities can also be appreciated by contrasting these
abilities with those of the state and market. At the level of localised actions, Bowles
and Gintis (2002, 424) argue that state and market actions are more inefficient when
localised actions depend on dispersed private information, and when it comes down
to the monitoring of responsible individual actions. Proximity and frequency of inter-
action allow for information to be acquired, reduce free-rider problems and increase
the incentives to behave in socially approved ways.
The elements that go into the production of meaning (the first portion of Lepofsky
5 Sampson’s 1997 work is interesting in that social efficacy moderates the effects of social disadvantage in influ-
encing criminal activities. In order words, while lower-income neighbourhoods were more likely to have violent
crime, lower-income neighbourhoods that had higher levels of social efficacy were more likely to have lower
violent crime compared to low-income neighbourhoods where social efficacy was lower.

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 208 K. C. Ho and Mike Douglass

and Fraser’s definition) are quite diverse. For the ethnic community, place-making
elements include everyday rituals that are culturally derived, including ethnic festivals
and celebrations and monuments that honour and commemorate (Harney, 2006).
Communities have banded together to build schools and religious organisations.
The presence and wellbeing of such institutions require the continued support of
individuals and their families. Through voluntarism and other forms of contributions,
institutional place-based histories and memories are tied to individual and family
biographies, and these linkages are vital to place-making (Ho, 2006, 98).
Besides being the focus of sociability and collective action, places can also become
repositories of memory when historic events and monuments mark out specific sites
of social importance. Place-based memories may transform places into crucibles of
opinion by allowing for the formation of a common set of attitudes associated with
particular locations. As Cox (1999, 21) points out, these elements can act as symbolic
anchors or markers of territorial ideological currents. Through design and history,
public squares and open spaces can also contribute to an amplification of action
through the ability of such places to provide culturally powerful settings for collec-
tive action (Kuper, 1972; Hershkovitz, 1993[Q]). In summary, the formation of such
place-based relationships can promote an ability to mobilise and sustain participation
by building a support base beyond the local community. This requires government to
take such actions seriously (Ho, 2008, 58–9).
If we bear in mind Relph’s (2000, 34) injunction that ‘places have to be made
largely through the involvement and commitment of people who live and work in
them; places have to be made from inside–out’, we begin to understand the value of
this bottom–up process in creating a city that is diverse, strong in generating social
capital at the neighbourhood level, and has an active urban-based civil society at the
level of the city. This connection between scales (neighbourhood, city, region, nation)
is of vital importance. The ability of place-making to generate social capital creates
positive externalities for larger regions and compelled Bolton (1992) to argue for a ‘place
prosperity’ approach to public policy and expenditure. Thus, while place-marketing
is advanced within the paradigm of growing the urban economy and bringing jobs
to people, place-making has to be encouraged for its value in strengthening the social
fabric of the city, region and the nation.

Introduction to the papers

Global versus local tensions are most clearly seen in the papers by Lui on the West
Kowloon Project and Chang and Huang on the Singapore River, where place-
marketing is contrasted with place-making. Both articles feature attempts by state devel-
opment agencies to market specific sites for tourism. The absence of local elements
in these two projects point our attention to how global competitive discourses have

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 Globalisation and liveable cities 209

dominated our attempts to make places through the incorporation of a set of easily
identifiable internationalised elements, and in the process we forget that the local is
what makes places interesting and memorable: authentic (because it is established
through everyday practices and/or celebrated through community participation),
creative (because ideas do not come from the same repetitive discourse), and diverse
(because many different actors from different segments are involved in the process).
This commercialising tendency in remaking places is also dramatically captured
in the article by Hee, Schroepfer, Su and Li. They show how the art community’s
attempts to create its own places has commercialising implications beyond the original
intentions of the inhabitants, as vibrant art spaces in Shanghai and Beijing face gentri-
fying pressures from other agents keen on appropriating trendy art spaces for other
commercial purposes.
The competitive pressures that cities face make local authorities the willing partners
of real estate development agencies in reshaping the city in order to host a range of
transnational services activities. Communities are often left out of the picture. Zabiel-
skis’s article on Penang in Malaysia indicates that communities might not be against
the redevelopment of local areas. Their involvement in the development process,
plus their knowledge of place, can allow for a greater sensitivity to place histories as
well as a better integration of a new project into the surrounding environment. This
paper also reveals how local place-making can overcome potential ethnic and religious
divides in social collaboration to present a common front towards external forces. In
so doing it gives hope to the possibility of multicultural coexistence through sponta-
neous place-based social mobilisation.
The process of local involvement in place-making is clearly spelt out in Huang’s
paper on the Qing-tien heritage neighbourhood in Taipei. Her analysis shows how
residents’ attempts to prevent large-scale gated housing development focused initially
on preserving old trees and expanded to incorporate the protection of Japanese houses
as heritage assets. The article highlights the interplay of actors involved in the place-
making process: NGOs, students, academics, residents, media and local government.
The relative power of different groups to engage in place-making should also be
considered, especially when place making attempts are directed at the more visible
and symbolic sites of the city. Lim and Padawangi’s analysis of the main square in
Bandung shows the shifting political, commercial and religious character of Bandung’s
most iconic site. They show how, through a number of renovations, the Masjid Raya
(Grand Mosque), which is located at one side of the square, has increasingly come
to dominate what has historically been an open civic space, and in the process has
displaced different groups of people who used to use the square. This is a cautionary
tale about unequal powers within the layer we term ‘civil society’, and the potential
conflicts of interest within this heterogeneous sector.
This set of articles provide a significant contribution to the globalising cities litera-

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 210 K. C. Ho and Mike Douglass

ture by pointing to dangers involved in the uncritical adoption of place-marketing

techniques. More importantly, the collection illustrates the vital and complex collab-
orating (as well as conflicting) roles that states, economic agents, civic groups and
communities play in creating cities that are inclusive and diverse. Such features make
cities liveable not just as a realised end-product of material gains, but equally as an
ongoing process of community and civil society engagement in place-making.

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