The book provides a comprehensive appraisal of the interplay between global structural adjustments and the changing role and configuration of Asia's world cities at the close of the twentieth century, with emphasis on the functional importance and complexity of world cities in the global and regional economies.

This book is the outcome of the Conference on Population Growth, Urbanization, and Urban Policies in the Asia-Pacific Region, held in Honolulu during 8-12 April 1985. It provides wide attention among development planners, urban managers, and scholars in the field of urban and development planning.

Between 1500 and 1900 there was a constant growth in the numbers of large cities and networks of smaller towns throughout the Pacific world in which traders and primary producers did business. The essays in Urbanization and the Pacific World explore the increasingly complex economic relationships that connected cities in and around the Pacific world to each other, and pay particular attention to the impact that growing cities had on the economies of their hinterlands. The volume also contains articles that examine the problems that city growth created and the ways in which people were able to cope with them. Along with the new introduction, the essays cover all of the regions of the Pacific world in which city growth took place, and will allow the reader to consider a wide range of common and contrasting urban experiences.

This book looks at local collective action and city government responses and its impact on the neighbourhood and the city in Pacific Asia.

Managing rapid urban growth presents a significant challenge in the small independent countries of the Pacific Islands. Although they originated in colonial times, the towns and cities are now distinctively post-colonial, with economies, environments and social structures that reflect unique island characteristics. This transformation has stimulated new concerns, such as the causes and effects of pollution, the need for employment for landless migrants, the need for adequate and affordable housing and the financing of expanding urban services. This book explores the diversity of the urban experience in the ten independent island states, focusing on strategies to secure long term sustainable development.