Kristin Stapleton analyzes how concepts and practices associated with the 'modern city' were received, transformed, and contested in Asia over the past 150 years. In the early twentieth century, activists took advantage of the new significance of the city to pursue a wide variety of goals. Thus, the concept of the modern city played an important role in Asia, despite much critical commentary on the ideals associated with it. By the 1940s, the city yielded its political centrality to the nation. Still, modern cities remained an important marker of national achievement during the Cold War. In recent decades, cities have continued to play a central role in economic and cultural affairs in Asia, but the concept of the modern city has evolved. Asian ideas about urban governance and visions of future cities are significantly shaping that evolution.

Popular Culture in Asia consists studies of film, music, architecture, television, and computer-mediated communication in China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore, addressing three topics: urban modernities; modernity, celebrity, and fan culture; and memory and modernity.

First published in 1980, The City in South Asia is a collection of papers which were presented at an inter-disciplinary seminar on The City in South Asia: pre-modern and modern, held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, under the auspices of the Centre of South Asian Studies. Some of the papers in this volume are comparative; others are concerned with specific cities – Allahabad, Dacca, Delhi, Karachi, Lucknow and Murshidabad. They deal with three main themes: the city and the state, the city and society, the city and the surrounding country. The book is appropriately embellished with maps and contemporary illustrations, and will be of interest to students of history, ethnic studies, and South Asian studies.

Every student of the letters of Paul, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Book of Revelation will find much of value in 'New Testament Cities in Western Asia Minor',Ó writes W. Ward Gasque. The author investigates the status of the archaeological information which we now have about key cities of western Asia Minor during the early Roman EmpireÓ: Assos, Pergamum, Thyateira, Smyrna, Sardis, Philadelphia, Ephesus, Miletus, Didyma, Laodicea, Hierapolis, and Colossae.

The extended metropolitan regions of Southeast Asia are the dynamic cores of their national economies and societies and the frontiers of accelerating globalization. This title explores ways of moving beyond outmoded paradigms of the Third World City or a Southeast Asian city 'type'.

A comprehensive new survey tracing the global history of urbanism and urban design from the industrial revolution to the present. Written with an international perspective that encourages cross-cultural comparisons, leading architectural and urban historian Eric Mumford presents a comprehensive survey of urbanism and urban design since the industrial revolution. Beginning in the second half of the 19th century, technical, social, and economic developments set cities and the world's population on a course of massive expansion. Mumford recounts how key figures in design responded to these changing circumstances with both practicable proposals and theoretical frameworks, ultimately creating what are now mainstream ideas about how urban environments should be designed, as well as creating the field called "urbanism." He then traces the complex outcomes of approaches that emerged in European, American, and Asian cities. This erudite and insightful book addresses the modernization of the traditional city, including mass transit and sanitary sewer systems, building legislation, and model tenement and regional planning approaches. It also examines the urban design concepts of groups such as CIAM (International Congresses of Modern Architecture) and Team 10, and their adherents and critics, including those of the Congress for the New Urbanism, as well as efforts toward ecological urbanism. Highlighting built as well as unbuilt projects, Mumford offers a sweeping guide to the history of designers' efforts to shape cities.

Globalisation has long historical roots in South Asia, but economic liberalisation has led to uniquely rapid urban growth in South Asia during the past decade. This book brings together a multidisciplinary collection of chapters on contemporary and historical themes explaining this recent explosive growth and transformations on-going in the cities of this region. The essays in this volume attempt to shed light on the historical roots of these cities and the traditions that are increasingly placed under strain by modernity, as well as exploring the lived experience of a new generation of city dwellers and their indelible impact on those who live at the city’s margins. The book discusses that previously, cities such as Mumbai grew by accumulating a vast hinterland of slum-dwellers who depressed wages and supplied cheap labour to the city’s industrial economy. However, it goes on to show that the new growth of cities such as Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Madras in south India, or Delhi and Calcutta in the north of India, is more capital-intensive, export-driven, and oriented towards the information technology and service sectors. The book explains that these cities have attracted a new elite of young, educated workers, with money to spend and an outlook on life that is often a complex mix of modern ideas and conservative tradition. It goes on to cover topics such as the politics of town planning, consumer culture, and the struggles among multiple identities in the city. By tracing the genealogies of cities, it gives a useful insight into the historical conditioning that determines how cities negotiate new changes and influences. There will soon be more mega cities in South Asia than anywhere else in the world, and this book provides an in-depth analysis of this growth. It will be of interest to students and scholars of South Asian History, Politics and Anthropology, as well as those working in the fields of urbanisation and globalisation.

During the second half of the twentieth century, development in the Asia-Pacific region has been dominated by industrialization. However, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, services, in particular, finance, information and creative services, have become deeply embedded in the processes of urban growth. In Asia-Pacific the rise of service industries has lead to national modernization programmes and globalization strategies. Services are also driving change in the internal form of city regions and are being actively deployed as instruments of metropolitan reconfiguration and land use changes. These changes have created problems such as social polarization and the displacement of traditional industries and residential districts. Also, there are tensions between local and global processes in the development of service industries, and between the imperatives of competitive advantage and sustainable development. Service Industries and Asia Pacific Cities brings together a multi-disciplinary team of experts to explore and illustrate the theoretical, conceptual and practical issues arising from the transformation of Asia-Pacific cities by service industries.

Noted historian Ian Talbot has written a new history of modern South Asia that considers the Indian Subcontinent in regional rather than in solely national terms. A leading expert on the Partition of 1947, Talbot focuses here on the combined history of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh since 1757 and specifically on the impact of external influences on the local peoples and cultures. This text explores the region’s colonial and postcolonial past, and the cultural and economic Indian reaction to the years of British authority, thus viewing the transformation of modern South Asia through the lens of a wider world.