Urbanization and Development in Asia: Multidimensional Perspectives, edited by Jo Beall, Basudeb Guha‐Khasnobis, and Ravi Kanbur
这本书汇集了多学科研究，探讨亚洲快速城市化地区的移民、治理、性别和基础设施等问题，适合研究生课程和跨学科学者参考。
Urbanization and Development in Asia: Multidimensional Perspectives , edited by Jo Beall, Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis, and Ravi Kanbur . 2012 . New Delhi : Oxford University Press , for United Nations University World Institute for Development . 336 + xiii. ISBN 978-0-19-807853-1 , $55 Beall, Guha-Khasnobis, and Kanbur's edited volume Urbanization and Development in Asia: Multidimensional Perspectives, is an interdisciplinary excursion into contemporary issues of migration and development in the rapidly urbanizing regions of Asia. The authors do an excellent job compiling works that address the tremendous socioeconomic and built environment transformations that have occurred on the Asian continent over the past three decades. As such, the book is ideally suited for use in graduate courses in international development, but would also be of great interest for interdisciplinary scholars interested in the complexities and paradoxes associated with development and urbanization in some the world's most populous regions. The editors begin their volume with an introductory chapter that unifies the major themes addressed in the remainder of the book. Specifically, they argue that urban policy in rapidly urbanizing Asian countries should focus on creating places for large segments of the population that have been displaced over the past 30 years due to rapid rural-urban migration. The remainder of the volume is organized into five sections that focus on interdependent lenses of urbanization in Asia. Each section includes case study-based chapters highlighting country-specific issues relevant to the section's theme. Part I, “Globalization and Urbanization,” examines the role economic globalization has played in inducing rural-urban migration in Asian cities. In Chapter 2, the authors question the assertion that globalizing forces will continue to increase the pace of internal and external migration into Asia's largest agglomerations, while Chapter 3 utilizes a unique Indian data set to show that globalizing forces (measured by foreign direct investment and exports) have indeed concentrated economic activity and migration activity into Bangalore. Chapter 4 narrows the geographic focus of globalization even further with an analysis of neighborhood-level sentiments of identity, economic success, migration, and social integration in Shanghai. Part II, “Migration and Urbanization,” is a logical progression from earlier chapters, although substantively there is little difference between Parts I and II. Chapter 5 examines migration patterns of Chinese emigrants to France and their subsequent return to China. From a regional development perspective, this chapter makes perhaps the most important contribution to the book by showing that the quality of urban environments will increasingly matter for attracting talented workers into globalizing cities. Chapters 6 and 7 consider immigration and settlement in Japan by investigating the needs that local and regional governments are currently fulfilling in order to accommodate multicultural communities in a once culturally homogenous society. Part III, “Governance and Urbanization,” is the most policy-oriented section of the volume. In Chapter 8, the authors critically address existing urban development and land use planning policies in China, and argue that they are terribly land-inefficient. They propose a series of smart growth policies, such as urban growth and service boundaries that are very similar to smart growth policies advocated in the United States over the past 30 years. Chapters 9 and 10 examine fiscal decentralization in Indonesia and growth management in Sri Lanka, respectively. The editors assemble two chapters in Part IV—“Women in Urban Settings”—that abruptly take the volume into different disciplinary territory. The authors of Chapter 11 cover land rights and ownership in informal settlements in India and convincingly argue that, in order for India to fully develop, the country must encourage ownership of land amongst women. Similarly, the authors of Chapter 12 discuss pediatric malnutrition in India and conclude that social sequestering of women in rural areas is preventing the development of healthy children, and subsequently productive adults. Part V, “Infrastructure in Urban Peripheries,” consists of the final two chapters of the book. In Chapter 13, the author empirically tests whether municipal sources of water in Vietnam lead to healthier outcomes when compared to communities that rely on natural sources of water—lakes, rivers, and wells. He concludes that although municipal systems are indeed correlated with healthier communities, natural sources of water in Vietnam do not necessarily lead to health problems in peripheral areas. The authors of Chapter 14 conclude the volume by examining the efficacy of anti-poverty infrastructure programs in the Philippines. The book is attractive in many ways. The editors should be praised for compiling a work that addresses both the breadth and depth of urbanization and development issues in Asia. While clearly a difficult task, the editors succeed in creating a volume that is suitable for upper-division undergraduate and introductory graduate courses in most of the social science disciplines, but particularly those in geography, political science, international development, economics, and public policy. This suitability is further strengthened by their focus on case studies of individual countries and cities that provide a tangible sense of urbanization and development issues on such a large continent. I see three minor weaknesses in the book. First, though the editors do a good job covering a wide range of subjects, the real nature of the volume is multidisciplinary, rather interdisciplinary. While this minor criticism is semantically based, each chapter is essentially a silo of work in a specific discipline that does little to highlight the complex interdependencies across globalization, migration, politics, and urbanization. Second, the editors could have expanded the geographical breadth of the case studies. Most of the chapters consist of case studies in India, China, or Japan, while very few address development and urbanization issues in the poorer countries of Asia such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the former Soviet Republics in Central Asia, or the smaller countries of Southeast Asia. Last, the editors could have enhanced the volume by including a theoretical chapter on regional economic growth and urbanization in the context of Asia. Such a chapter would have placed the subsequent chapters against a solid conceptual background that would allow the reader to identify similarities and differences of regional growth trajectories between developed and developing countries on the Asian continent. However, this may simply be the biased perspective of a regional scientist!