Asian Alleyways

Book excerpt: Alleyways are an urban form historically shared by most cities in Asia, yet understudied. Our book critically explores "Global Asia" and the metropolization process, specifically from its alleyways, which are understood as ordinary neighbourhood landscape providing the setting for everyday urban life and place-based identities being shaped by varied everyday practices, collective experiences and forces. This turns the traditional approach of "global cities" upside-down and contributes to a renewed conception of metropolization as a highly situated process, where forces at play locally, in each alleyway neighbourhood, are both intertwined and labile. Beyond the mainstream, standardising vision of the metropolization process, the book offers a nuanced overview of urban production in Asia at a time of great changes. As such, the book will be welcomed by an array of scholars, students, and all those interested in the modern transformation of Asian cities and their urban cultures, including new approaches to social life, urban change and urban governance.