IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envirc/v33y2015i6p1618-1638.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The emergence of a multiscalar growth regime and scalar tension: the politics of urban development in Songdo New City, South Korea

Author

Listed:
  • HaeRan Shin
  • Se Hoon Park
  • Jung Won Sonn

Abstract

This study approaches the politics of urban development from within the framework of the emergence of a new multiscalar growth regime and the path dependence of the Korean developmental state. Through a case study of the Songdo New City development in South Korea, this study looks at how the scalar division of labor among various actors has interacted with the emergence of a multiscalar growth regime. We focus on the logic by which different scales of governmental and nongovernmental actors cooperate and, at the same time, compete with one another for authority over economic development. Our findings demonstrate, first, that the new regime resulted from the emergence of downward state rescaling to the local scale and of private business as a key actor. Second, the regime actors have been involved in scalar tensions and have constantly negotiated the scalar divisions of labor among them. This research provides a contextualized example of a spatiotemporal logic in which statehood has been transformed into a network.

Suggested Citation

  • HaeRan Shin & Se Hoon Park & Jung Won Sonn, 2015. "The emergence of a multiscalar growth regime and scalar tension: the politics of urban development in Songdo New City, South Korea," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 33(6), pages 1618-1638, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envirc:v:33:y:2015:i:6:p:1618-1638
    DOI: 10.1177/0263774X15614442
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0263774X15614442
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0263774X15614442?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Abidin Kusno, 2015. "Power and time turning: The capital, the state and the kampung in Jakarta," International Journal of Urban Sciences, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 53-63, March.
    2. Brenner, Neil, 2004. "New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199270064.
    3. Martin Jones & Mark Goodwin & Rhys Jones, 2005. "State modernization, devolution and economic governance: An introduction and guide to debate," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(4), pages 397-403.
    4. Gais, Thomas L. & Peterson, Mark A. & Walker, Jack L., 1984. "Interest Groups, Iron Triangles and Representative Institutions in American National Government," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(2), pages 161-185, April.
    5. Gordon MacLeod, 2001. "Beyond Soft Institutionalism: Accumulation, Regulation, and Their Geographical Fixes," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 33(7), pages 1145-1167, July.
    6. Thomas Stratmann & Martin Baur, 2002. "Plurality Rule, Proportional Representation, and the German Bundestag: How Incentives to Pork-Barrel Differ Across Electoral Systems," CESifo Working Paper Series 650, CESifo.
    7. John Allen & Allan Cochrane, 2007. "Beyond the Territorial Fix: Regional Assemblages, Politics and Power," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(9), pages 1161-1175.
    8. Gordon Macleod & Martin Jones, 2007. "Territorial, Scalar, Networked, Connected: In What Sense a 'Regional World'?," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(9), pages 1177-1191.
    9. Yooil Bae & Jefferey M. Sellers, 2007. "Globalization, the Developmental State and the Politics of Urban Growth in Korea: A Multilevel Analysis," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(3), pages 543-560, September.
    10. Mark Goodwin & Martin Jones & Rhys Jones, 2005. "Devolution, constitutional change and economic development: Explaining and understanding the new institutional geographies of the British state," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(4), pages 421-436.
    11. Jung Won Sonn & Dongheon Lee, 2015. "Heterogeneity as the source of the state's resilience: the case of spatial planning under state-led neoliberalization in South Korea," International Journal of Urban Sciences, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(3), pages 364-378, November.
    12. Bae-Gyoon Park, 1998. "Where Do Tigers Sleep at Night? The State’s Role in Housing Policy in South Korea and Singapore," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 74(3), pages 272-288, July.
    13. Andrew E.G. Jonas & Kevin Ward, 2007. "Introduction to a Debate on City‐Regions: New Geographies of Governance, Democracy and Social Reproduction," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 169-178, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Coletta, Claudio & Heaphy, Liam & Kitchin, Rob, 2017. "From the accidental to articulated smart city: The creation and work of ‘Smart Dublin’," SocArXiv 93ga5, Center for Open Science.
    2. Shin, HaeRan & Chae, Sangwon, 2018. "Urbanisation and land use transition in a second-tier city: The emergence of small factories in Gimpo, South Korea," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 534-541.
    3. J Miguel Kanai & Seth Schindler, 2019. "Peri-urban promises of connectivity: Linking project-led polycentrism to the infrastructure scramble," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 51(2), pages 302-322, March.
    4. Kitchin, Rob & Coletta, Claudio & Evans, Leighton & Heaphy, Liam & MacDonncha, Darach, 2017. "Smart cities, urban technocrats, epistemic communities and advocacy coalitions," SocArXiv rxk4r, Center for Open Science.
    5. Cardullo, Paolo & Kitchin, Rob, 2017. "Being a ‘citizen’ in the smart city: Up and down the scaffold of smart citizen participation," SocArXiv v24jn, Center for Open Science.
    6. Dominik Bartmanski & Seonju Kim & Martina Löw & Timothy Pape & Jörg Stollmann, 2023. "Fabrication of space: The design of everyday life in South Korean Songdo," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(4), pages 673-695, March.
    7. Yanpeng Jiang & Paul Waley, 2020. "Small horse pulls big cart in the scalar struggles of competing administrations in Anhui Province, China," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 38(2), pages 329-346, March.
    8. Jie Li & Rebecca Lai Har Chiu, 2020. "State rescaling and large-scale urban development projects in China: The case of Lingang New Town, Shanghai," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(12), pages 2564-2581, September.
    9. Jichuan Sheng & Michael Webber, 2019. "Governance rescaling and neoliberalization of China’s water governance: The case of China’s South–North Water Transfer Project," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 51(8), pages 1644-1664, November.
    10. Kitchin, Rob & Cardullo, Paolo & Di Feliciantonio, Cesare, 2018. "Citizenship, Justice and the Right to the Smart City," SocArXiv b8aq5, Center for Open Science.
    11. Kim, Hyungkyoo & Lee, NaYeon & Kim, Seung-Nam, 2018. "Suburbia in evolution: Exploring polycentricity and suburban typologies in the Seoul metropolitan area, South Korea," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 92-101.
    12. Khan Shahed & Khan Megumi & Kyung An Sang, 2019. "Response to urban challenges by global cities within developmental states: The case of Tokyo and Seoul," International Journal of Management and Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of World Economy, vol. 55(4), pages 369-390, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Roger Keil, 2011. "The Global City Comes Home," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 48(12), pages 2495-2517, September.
    2. Wilmsmeier, Gordon & Monios, Jason, 2015. "The production of capitalist “smooth” space in global port operations," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 59-69.
    3. John Harrison, 2008. "Stating the Production of Scales: Centrally Orchestrated Regionalism, Regionally Orchestrated Centralism," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(4), pages 922-941, December.
    4. David Clelland, 2020. "Beyond the city region? Uneven governance and the evolution of regional economic development in Scotland," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 35(1), pages 7-26, February.
    5. Andrew E. G. Jonas & Andrew R. Goetz & Sutapa Bhattacharjee, 2014. "City-regionalism as a Politics of Collective Provision: Regional Transport Infrastructure in Denver, USA," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(11), pages 2444-2465, August.
    6. Allan Cochrane, 2012. "Making up a Region: The Rise and Fall of the ‘South East of England’ as a Political Territory," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 30(1), pages 95-108, February.
    7. Gordon MacLeod, 2011. "Urban Politics Reconsidered," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 48(12), pages 2629-2660, September.
    8. Graham Haughton & Philip Allmendinger, 2015. "Fluid Spatial Imaginaries: Evolving Estuarial City-regional Spaces," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(5), pages 857-873, September.
    9. Gordon MacLeod & Martin Jones, 2011. "Renewing Urban Politics," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 48(12), pages 2443-2472, September.
    10. Beall, Jo, 2020. "Whither the region? Re-thinking the space and place of regions and cities in international comparative perspective," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 102507, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Willem Salet & Federico Savini, 2015. "The political governance of urban peripheries," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 33(3), pages 448-456, June.
    12. Monios, Jason & Wilmsmeier, Gordon, 2013. "The role of intermodal transport in port regionalisation," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 161-172.
    13. Adolf K.Y. Ng & Zaili Yang & Stephen Cahoon & Paul T.W. Lee & Jason Monios, 2016. "Intermodal Transport as a Regional Development Strategy: The Case of Italian Freight Villages," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(3), pages 363-377, September.
    14. Krisztina Varró, 2012. "Reconsidering the English Question as a Matter of Democratic Politics and Spatial Justice," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 30(1), pages 29-45, February.
    15. Stephen M McCauley & James T Murphy, 2013. "Smart Growth and the Scalar Politics of Land Management in the Greater Boston Region, Usa," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(12), pages 2852-2867, December.
    16. Jacob Salder, 2013. "Redeveloping local economic strategy for the post-regionalist era: A contextual benchmarking approach," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 28(7-8), pages 752-769, November.
    17. lain Deas & Alex Lord, 2006. "From a New Regionalism to an Unusual Regionalism? The Emergence of Non-standard Regional Spaces and Lessons for the Territorial Reorganisation of the State," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 43(10), pages 1847-1877, September.
    18. Tassilo Herrschel, 2013. "Competitiveness AND Sustainability: Can ‘Smart City Regionalism’ Square the Circle?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(11), pages 2332-2348, August.
    19. Xiaobo Su, 2014. "Multi-Scalar Regionalization, Network Connections and the Development of Yunnan Province, China," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(1), pages 91-104, January.
    20. Jean-Paul D. Addie & Roger Keil, 2015. "Real Existing Regionalism: The Region between Talk, Territory and Technology," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(2), pages 407-417, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envirc:v:33:y:2015:i:6:p:1618-1638. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.