Japan is hardly alone in this regard. Increasingly, Asia’s fate is being determined by its booming cities. From Karachi to Seoul, the region is undergoing one of history’s most remarkable transformations: an unceasing tide of urbanization, similar to that which revolutionized the West in the early 20th century. Twenty-five years from now most Asians will live in cities and towns. In fact, of the more than 2 billion people who will be added to the earth’s total population in that time, the vast majority will live in urban Asia. By 2015 Dhaka, Mumbai and Delhi will number among the world’s five largest cities–and Asia as a whole will account for 12 of the world’s 21 megacities (graphic).
The scale and the speed of this shift is unprecedented. Asia is becoming predominantly urban in half the time it took Europe and America. Rome was the first settlement to reach 1 million people, in 5 B.C.; only in 1800 did London become the second. By 2015 Asia alone will have 267 cities with 1 million or more residents. These metropolises are coming to dominate Asian economies: by some estimates, they will contribute at least 70 percent of East Asia’s economic growth over the next 20 years. And, through a new generation of brash, powerful mayors, they are demanding–and winning–an equivalent political clout.
Like Ishihara, these leaders are making waves by addressing a broad menu of urban concerns that, in the eyes of many city dwellers, national governments have ignored for too long. They’re making their cities more livable and more global–unsnarling traffic and untangling red tape, cleaning up slums and jetting around the world to seek out investment dollars. Millions are flocking to these metropolises because they are home to opportunity: age-old distinctions like race, sex, caste–even education–are less of a hindrance than ever before. And once they’re there, they have little patience for the caution of central governments. It was China’s thriving coastal cities that first began to quietly privatize their state-owned enterprises, years before the Communist Party was forced to sanction the policy.
According to Thomas P. Rohlen, senior fellow at the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, Asia’s cities are now the driving force behind change in the region. “What we’re watching is the transformation of an agrarian, peasant-centered East Asian world to an urban, outward-looking world,” he says. In fact, Rohlen argues, what is emerging are virtual city-states, islands of affluence that have more in common with each other than with their impoverished hinterlands–or with their own national governments.
Ishihara’s Tokyo, for instance, now stands in open rebellion against an economic order that for 50 years has been controlled by bureaucrats in powerful ministries–a system the governor denounces as “socialist.” The Japanese capital, Ishihara claims, receives only two thirds of the funding it’s owed by the central government, a charge that resonates with urban Japanese who believe they’re footing the bill for lavish pork-barrel projects in the countryside. Even when money is earmarked for Tokyo, such as for new highway construction, it often flows to projects envisioned by national, not municipal, authorities–meaning that Ishihara has no say. The system embodies “a kind of persecution,” he says, meted out by a “bureaucracy-controlled state.”
Other mayors are using cities as springboards to national power. The 2000 election victory of Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian represented the first orderly transfer of power away from the long-ruling Kuomintang Party (KMT). In fact, the process began years earlier in the capital, Taipei. An opposition lawmaker until 1994, Chen won the mayor’s office on a wave of popular discontent; once inaugurated, he cleared up traffic, shortened commutes by creating bus lanes on major roads and, in a populist masterstroke, opened his office to citizens with gripes. Taipei’s renaissance proved that a non-KMT chief executive could govern effectively–a lesson not lost on urban voters, who later elected Chen president. Today his chief political rival is Taipei’s incumbent mayor, KMT heavyweight Ma Ying-jeou, who is widely expected to run for the presidency himself next year on a record of exemplary rule in the capital.
A similar rebellion is brewing in another East Asian capital, Seoul. Mayor Lee Myung Bak hopes his “can do” image will carry him to the Blue House in 2007. Unlike South Korea’s three most recent presidents–all pro-democracy street fighters versed in opposing, not running, governments–Lee made a career as a hands-on executive for South Korea’s biggest chaebol, Hyundai. Known as “the Bulldozer,” he traveled the globe to keep far-flung road, bridge and power projects on schedule. As Seoul’s mayor, he undertook a risky pet scheme that entailed demolishing a four-mile-long elevated highway that ran through the heart of the old city. The cost: $300 million.
The goal was to create an urban greenbelt that would revive declining neighbor–hoods. Skeptics were quick to predict nightmarish gridlock that would lead to a backlash against Lee. But roadways now move as fast as they did before the old highway came down on July 1, according to new studies, and more commuters are riding the bus or subway into work. Leaders like Lee and Chen are fortunate to have popular mandates. An unelected city administrator like Manila’s Bayani Fernando faces opposition from 18 different district mayors when he tries to execute unpopular policies like clearing squatter camps or cutting down trees.
For his part, despite constant rumors to the contrary, Ishihara claims he’s not interested in higher office. And, in fact, he may be more powerful where he is; he’s widely credited with stiffening Tokyo’s attitude toward North Korea with the harsh diatribes he’d no doubt have to tone down as prime minister. During his re-election campaign last year, pro-Ishihara posters read a megacity revolution from tokyo. “All over Japan, people feel Ishihara is speaking for them,” says Kazuhiro Kobayashi, chief editorial writer for the influential Tokyo Shimbun newspaper. “Tokyo is regarded as the ultimate leading indicator.” Not just for Japan but for Asia as a whole. Which makes this show all the more intriguing to watch.
