The Rise of Progressive Cities for Human and Planetary Flourishing: A Global Perspective on Asia’s Urban Transition

Abstract

As Asia adds more than 2.5 billion people to its urban population from 2000 to mid-century, attention turns to cities as spheres of governance for meeting pressing human concerns and aspirations for better lives. To assess the performance of cities in the context of Asia’s accelerated urbanization, this chapter presents a holistic concept of progressive cities that proposes inclusion in public life, distributive justice, conviviality, and environmental well-being as the four principal pillars of urban governance in support of human flourishing. Using this framework, our research on contemporary cities in Asia finds that the dominant trend toward “globopolis” that is transforming cities from a theater of social action into platforms for a state-assisted global corporate megaprojects manifests pervasive retreats in all dimensions of progressive governance. Variations among cities are appearing, however, and grassroots mobilizations in some are resulting in the rise of cities that, in varying degrees, are successfully pursuing cosmopolis ideals encapsulated in the progressive cities concept. As cities show themselves to be effective scales of participatory governance, the progressive turn discloses possibilities for collective human agency to steer urbanization along alternative pathways that have no single destiny but are instead open to people making their own histories through the production and uses of urban space.