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Planning Asian Cities: Risks and Resilience

The vulnerability of the largest metropolitan regions in the Asia-Pacific region was brought home alarmingly by two events in 2011. First, the possibility of a full-scale catastrophe in Tokyo occurred on Friday 11 March when a 9.0 magnitude earthquake just off shore of north-east Japan caused the entire rail system to come to a standstill, stranding millions of commuters, many of whom decided to walk home that evening. Though they were located some 300 km south of Sendai, the closest major city to the epicentre, the residents of Tokyo experienced significant disruptions over the following days, including the risk of a serious meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant (225 km away) and the nightmarish scenario of a complete evacuation of the nation’s capital. Later the same year Bangkok and its surrounding areas received the worst floods in Thailand’s history, which ranked as the world’s fourth costliest disaster surpassed only by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the 1995 Kobe earthquake and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Multiple industrial estates surrounding Bangkok were badly affected by the flooding, resulting in manufacturing disruptions and global supply shortages, as well as over 200 000 tourists to the city cancelling their trips. This book is therefore a timely contribution to an examination of how urban planning (if at all) can contribute to risk reduction and resilience to the hazards that large cities face in the Asia-Pacific region. Each of the 11 cities considered in this volume have, or are, developing strategies that could help them attain world-class status, particularly through symbolic infrastructure such as towering skyscrapers, ‘fast train’ systems, international architecture, new airports and other mega-projects, as well as international events such as the World Expos and the Summer Olympics. On the other hand, government agencies also have to face the challenges of natural disasters, economic and political catastrophes, environmental decline due a lack of water, land for expansion, slums and global warming. The contributors examine how these often opposing objectives are being met, and how current governance arrangements help or hinder their execution. The editors, Hamnett and Forbes, have assembled a star-studded collection of chapter authors, each an acknowledged export on their particular city. In a very innovative manner they have encouraged the writers to move beyond the usual litany of urban environmental problems, such as traffic congestion, heat island effects and climate change (although these too are covered) to examine the impact of past and likely future economic and social threats and disasters, including the financial and currency meltdown that occurred in