Taipei's quest to become a global city is the key to its urban development. Globalizing Taipei looks at this "Asian Dragon", a major city in the South China Growth Triangle and a centre for transnational production, revealing how the development of this capital has received firm state support but is conditioned by international and domestic politics. The book is divided into four parts: economic and spatial restructuring, state and society realignment, social differentiation and cultural reorientation. Each analyzes the interaction of international, state and local politics in the shaping of the city's urban environment since World War II. All contributors to this edited volume are Taiwan scholars presenting critical insiders' views. Based on each author's specialization and research focus, each chapter provides an in-depth consideration of one of Taipei's developmental issues generated by globalization. Collectively they provide broad, insightful and coherent coverage of this crucial time in Taipei's global transmutation.

This comprehensive book uses a rich array of case studies from cities in Asia, Latin America, Africa, Southern Europe, and beyond to highlight the intensifying global struggle over urban space and underline gentrification as a growing and important battleground in the contemporary world.

Taipei's quest to become a global city is the key to its urban development. Globalizing Taipei looks at this "Asian Dragon", a major city in the South China Growth Triangle and a centre for transnational production, revealing how the development of this capital has received firm state support but is conditioned by international and domestic politics. The book is divided into four parts: economic and spatial restructuring, state and society realignment, social differentiation and cultural reorientation. Each analyzes the interaction of international, state and local politics in the shaping of the city's urban environment since World War II. All contributors to this edited volume are Taiwan scholars presenting critical insiders' views. Based on each author's specialization and research focus, each chapter provides an in-depth consideration of one of Taipei's developmental issues generated by globalization. Collectively they provide broad, insightful and coherent coverage of this crucial time in Taipei's global transmutation.

Introducing readers to the far-reaching global orientation that is now taking place in urban China, an international team of contributors describe overarching globalization through a detailed examination of the transformation of the built environment. A range of urban development processes are analyzed including urbanization, real estate development, changing landscapes, the industrial restructuring of the second-tier city, and the formation of the city-region in the context of global and local interactions. In examining city development and local practices as part of globalization processes, the global city is treated as a collection of microcosms and concrete places, overcoming the analytical tension of the dichotomy of the perceived 'East versus West' divide.

Stephen Hamnett and Dean Forbes have brought together some of the region’s most distinguished urbanists to explore the planning history and recent development of Pacific Asia’s major cities. They show how globalization, and the competition to achieve global city status, has had a profound effect on all these cities. But how resilient are these cities to the risks that they face? How can they manage continuing pressures for development and growth while reducing their vulnerability to a range of potential crises? And, given the tradition of top-down, centralized, state-directed planning which drove the economic growth of many of these cities in the last century, what prospects are there of them becoming more inclusive and sensitive to the diverse needs of their populations and to the importance of culture, heritage and local places in creating liveable cities?

Illuminating how the identities of Taiwanese diasporic subjects are contextually and historically shaped, this book advances a nuanced, complex, and differentiated understanding of globalization.

"Do not be misled by the title of this book. It is a study of Taiwan's bridal industry but it is also a fine ethnography of marriage in contemporary urban Taipei. With great subtlety, Bonnie Adrian shows us how much marriage in Taiwan has changed and how many of the old ways it has retained. She does so with wit and humor."—Margery Wolf, author of A Thrice-Told Tale: Feminism, Postmodernism, and Ethnographic Responsibility "Faced with the puzzle of the ubiquitous bridal photography in Taipei, Bonnie Adrian has produced a model ethnography of media-saturated contemporary life. Ethnographically adventurous, analytically smart, and warmly human, this book cleverly unpacks the ways women’s canny choices in Taiwan are forged at the intersection of everyday worlds of inter-generational tension, fantasies fed by a keenly competitive local culture industry, and global imagery tied to the transnational beauty industry. Unlike many who work on globalization, Adrian has not lost sight of the ways that gender and family are still at the heart of people’s social worlds and women are not victims."—Lila Abu-Lughod, author of Veiled Sentiments and Writing Women’s Worlds

Migrant women are the primary source of paid domestic labor around the world. Since the 1980s, the newly prosperous countries of East Asia have recruited foreign household workers at a rapidly increasing rate. Many come from the Philippines and Indonesia. Pei-Chia Lan interviewed and spent time with dozens of Filipina and Indonesian domestics working in and around Taipei as well as many of their Taiwanese employers. On the basis of the vivid ethnographic detail she collected, Lan provides a nuanced look at how boundaries between worker and employer are maintained and negotiated in private households. She also sheds light on the fate of the workers, “global Cinderellas” who seek an escape from poverty at home only to find themselves treated as disposable labor abroad. Lan demonstrates how economic disparities, immigration policies, race, ethnicity, and gender intersect in the relationship between the migrant workers and their Taiwanese employers. The employers are eager to flex their recently acquired financial muscle; many are first-generation career women as well as first-generation employers. The domestics are recruited from abroad as contract and “guest” workers; restrictive immigration policies prohibit them from seeking permanent residence or transferring from one employer to another. They care for Taiwanese families’ children, often having left their own behind. Throughout Global Cinderellas, Lan pays particular attention to how the women she studied identify themselves in relation to “others”—whether they be of different classes, nationalities, ethnicities, or education levels. In so doing, she offers a framework for thinking about how migrant workers and their employers understand themselves in the midst of dynamic transnational labor flows.

Publishes interdisciplinary research on issues of Government and Policy with an international perspective. Committed to a broad range of policy questions, not just those related to government and public policy. Topics covered include nonstate agents, private-public collaboration, and NGOs (nongovernmental organisations). All areas of economic, social and environmental institutions, and policy are included. Disciplines from which papers are derived include political science, planning, geography, economics, law, sociology, and public administration.