Kris Olds

Pathways to global city formation: a view from the developmental city-state of Singapore

The main aim of this paper is to offer a constructive critique of the dominant (indeed hegemonic) global city/world city discourse. This is a discourse that is overly dependent upon a theoreticallyglobalistperspective derived out of limited empirical studies. Moreover, this is a discourse that focuses relatively too much upon (a) the characteristics of global/world cities and (b) the processes creating global/world cities versus (b) and (c) governance issues and implications. Consequently there remain many unanswered questions about how global cities have‘come into being’, and what is the role of the state in intentionally devising pathways to global city formation. In such a conceptual context, we tease out the main contours of three forms of global cities–hyper global cities; emerging global cities; and global city-states–in emphasizing the need to consider differential and dynamic developmental pathways. Drawing upon the case of Singapore, we then analyse the unique nature of the global city-state, especially in a Pacific Asian context associated with strategic‘plan rational’developmental states. The conjunction of a Pacific Asian city-state with developmentalist policies and capacities both requires and enables this form of global city to be rapidly and constantly reworked in the aim of embedding the city into an extraterritorial terrain of network relations.

(Re)Shaping ‘Chinese’ Business Networks in a Globalising Era

Globalising tendencies have transformed the forms and organisation of business networks. This is particularly true in the rapidly developing Asia-Pacific region where ethnic-based modes of business organisation prevail. Chinese business networks, for example, are posited to play a leading role in propelling the forces of regionalisation in the Asia-Pacific. In this paper, we explore the relationships between globalising tendencies and the changing form of Chinese business networks. We discuss how Chinese business networks, traditionally conceptualised as closed and internally shaped owing to a variety of historically and geographically specific factors, are being (re)shaped by an array of actor-networks with an international business dimension. Groups of actor-networks associated with international finance, the international business media, and multilateral institutions are engaging with Chinese business networks. Through their capacity to enrol relevant Chinese firms into their actor-networks, the international business community is forging changes in some business practices, while also reinforcing other business practices. At the most basic of levels, though, the reshaping of Chinese business practices has been driven by the desire of large Chinese firms to access the financial resources that flow through the global financial system. That such a situation should arise is not surprising given the nature of profits that have been generated from the development process in Asia-Pacific over the past two decades (before the onset of the Asian economic crisis). In the context of the reworking of global capitalism, and the reshaping of subglobal capitalisms, such a relational approach to analysis of economic organisation may help shed some light on the networks that bind together actors and institutions over time and space in uneven (albeit evolving) relations of interdependence.

Globalizing Chinese Business Firms: Where are They Coming From, Where are They Heading?

In a widely-read Harvard Business Review article, John Kao (1993) concluded that Chinese business and its ‘worldwide web’ will become a major force in the global economy in the next millennium. Similarly, Joel Kotkin argued in Tribes: How Race, Religion and Identity Determine Success in the New Global Economy that by the early twenty-first century, ‘the Chinese global tribe likely will rank with the British-Americans and the Japanese as a driving force in transnational commerce’ (Kotkin, 1992, p. 9). Despite the 1997/8 Asian economic crisis, it appears that current thinking in global business reveals a serious reappraisal of the economic potential of Chinese business and its associated organizations and institutions. The Weberian thesis on the inherent limits to the growth of Chinese business and societies has been subject to fundamental challenges by recent studies (for example, Hamilton, 1996a; Whyte, 1996; Olds and Yeung, 1999). Scholars of contemporary Chinese business affairs have been forced to recognize the economic success of the ‘overseas Chinese’1 and their business firms in the host countries throughout East and Southeast Asia. Once established in host countries, Chinese business firms have extended their business operations and ‘bamboo networks’ across national boundaries, forming an increasingly global web of economic relations. These developments underscore the significance of a recent phenomenon in Chinese business — the globalization of Chinese business firms.

Singapore's Global Reach: Situating the City-State in the Global Economy

Urban competitiveness has become a critical issue confronting cities throughout the Asia Pacific region. As a city-state in Southeast Asia, Singapore has been highly proactive in creating and sustaining its competitiveness as a strategic nodal point in the global space of flows. In this paper, we aim to discuss Singapores global reach vis-a-vis a set of national development strategies that shape the global competitiveness of the city-state. We argue that the creation and reproduction of urban competitiveness in Singapore is highly dependent upon the states capabilities to exercise power and implement national development strategies that situate the city-state in a beneficial manner to the global space of flows. In Singapore, these national development strategies can be analyzed in three broad areas. First, Singapore has sought to serve as a centre for the spatial agglomeration of high value-added and high- tech investments in leading industries. Second, since the mid-1980s, Singapore has been actively s...

Forced Evictions in Tropical Cities: An Introduction

 Copyright 2002 Department of Geography, National University of Singapore and Blackwell Publishers Ltd In early January 2002, a fire destroyed a slum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, displacing approximately 16,000 people. The slum was situated on “prime” riverfront land, some of which was owned by Theng Bunma, a politically powerful Cambodian businessman. Several days after the first fire, some men were witnessed propelling Molotov cocktails into another Phnom Penh slum, leading to the destruction of over 1,000 additional homes populated, in this case, by mainly Vietnamese people. Not coincidentally, the fires cleared space to be used in an urban “revitalisation program” that is associated with government ambitions to reclaim Phnom Penh’s historical reputation as one of Southeast Asia’s grandest cities (Kazmin, 2002).