The City in the Developing World and the Example of South-east Asia

Abstract

In seeking to generalise about the city in the developing world, using examples drawn largely from South-east Asia, it is not the intention to adopt here the attitude which is becoming increasingly prevalent in geography: that if it cannot be graphed, reduced to an equation or put through a computer it is rather old-fashioned and intellectually suspect because of its lack of precision. Neither will there be exhibited, however, the traditional concern of the urban geographer with what Emrys Jones¹ has perceptively called ‘the empty shell of the city’, that is the examination of the site, situation and physical layout of the city and the evolution through time of its town plan. Despite this latter reservation, it is a useful starting point to call attention to the most fundamental distinction in physical form within the fabric of the South-east Asian city, namely the contrast between what might be called, albeit somewhat loosely, its Western and non-Western parts.