Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global

"Urban studies is marked by an ingrained tendency to consider cities in Western Europe and North America as the leading edge of global urban change. This important book draws attention to ways in which cities in Asia are experimenting with ways of being global which do not necessarily refer back to antecedents in the North Atlantic world. The book should be read not only by Asianists but by anyone who is interested in the dynamics of urban change globally."
—Tim Bunnell, National University of Singapore

“The contributors to Worlding Cities bring new ethnographic attention to urban sites of innovation, cultural connections, and potentially transformative aspirations. They connect what is happening in cities to the ways changing relations among cities are remaking connections across national boundaries. And in the process they help to remake social science with new connections among anthropologists, geographers, and urban planners. Focused mainly on Asia, this is work that matters globally.”
—Craig Calhoun, President, Social Science Research Council

"A refreshing and wide-ranging volume that makes a timely contribution to debates in urban studies, geography, and planning. Rather than attempt to identify the features of a 'global' city or trace the reproduction of 'Western' forms in Asian cities, this collection examines how projects of 'worlding' are actively assembled and urban futures envisaged. It uncovers diverse routes through which cities inter-reference one another and are produced as distinctive spaces of experimentation and aspiration in contexts of uncertainty and inequality."
—Colin McFarlane, Durham University, UK