<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Tokyo and Seoul, the two leading East Asian global cities, operate under “<italic>developmental states</italic>.” They often struggle for control over major urban initiatives against their strong state government agencies as they seek prominence in the global city hierarchy. Through comparative review of approaches to national policy development, this paper traces the similarities of the two countries in approaching national economic development and how that influences their capital city’s capacity to manage growth and urbanization pressures. We focus on some major urban development initiatives in Tokyo and Seoul between 1970 and 2010 to test the notion whether global cities get “<italic>disembedded</italic>” from their state or national context as they integrate into the globalized economy. We contend that national and local societal developments continue to drive the cities’ growth patterns, albeit influenced by overall global forces, while the global cities and their nation states evolve ways to compete and collaborate in the pursuit of common interests.</p></abstract>

Tokyo and Seoul, the two leading East Asian global cities, operate under “developmental states.” They often struggle for control over major urban initiatives against their strong state government agencies as they seek prominence in the global city hierarchy. Through comparative review of approaches to national policy development, this paper traces the similarities of the two countries in approaching national economic development and how that influences their capital city’s capacity to manage growth and urbanization pressures. We focus on some major urban development initiatives in Tokyo and Seoul between 1970 and 2010 to test the notion whether global cities get “disembedded” from their state or national context as they integrate into the globalized economy. We contend that national and local societal developments continue to drive the cities’ growth patterns, albeit influenced by overall global forces, while the global cities and their nation states evolve ways to compete and collaborate in the pursuit of common interests.

Response to urban challenges by global cities within developmental states: The case of Tokyo and Seoul

International Journal of Management and Economics

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Tokyo and Seoul, the two leading East Asian global cities, operate under “developmental states.” They often struggle for control over major urban initiatives...

	1986–1988	1989–2001	2002	2003–2010
Key actors	City government	City government, nation-state	Nation-state, city government, international developer, domestic developer	Nation-state, city government, international developer, domestic developer, civic organizations
Scales	Local	Local, national	National, local, global	National, local, global

Response to urban challenges by global cities within developmental states: The case of Tokyo and Seoul

Article Category: Conceptual Paper

Published Online: Dec 31, 2019

Page range: 369 - 390

Received: Jul 31, 2018

Accepted: Aug 06, 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ijme-2019-0023

Keywords
global city, developmental state, global projects

© 2019 Shahed Khan et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

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Changing of key actors in Songdo development

Response to urban challenges by global cities within developmental states: The case of Tokyo and Seoul

Article Category: Conceptual Paper

Published Online: Dec 31, 2019

Page range: 369 - 390

Received: Jul 31, 2018

Accepted: Aug 06, 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ijme-2019-0023

Keywordsglobal city, developmental state, global projects

© 2019 Shahed Khan et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

Figure 6

Figure 7

Figure 8

Figure 9

Figure 10

Figure 11

Figure 12

Figure 13

Figure 14

Changing of key actors in Songdo development

Keywords
global city, developmental state, global projects