Divergent Local Responses to Globalization: Urbanization, Land Transition, and Environmental Changes in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia, a vast area of 4.5 million km2 with more than 641 million people, experienced rapid urbanization, doubling the urbanization ratio from 24% in 1976 to 48% in 2016, with several cities doubling urban built-up land in just two decades (HCMC, Hanoi, and Yangon from 1990 to 2010) coincident with severe degradation of the urban environment. Globalization has been recognized as one of the most significant driving forces of land transitions in Southeast Asia. It includes flows of commodity (international trade), capital (foreign direct investment (FDI)), money (remittance and overseas aid), and people (rural-urban migration, and international workers, and tourists). Our objective is to examine how diverse local responses to globalization affected land transitions, particularly urbanization, and urban environmental changes across 7 SEA countries, i.e., Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam and 12 case cities, with 3 particular tasks of data processing and hypothesis testing:
Task 1. Urban land transition and its relationship to other land transitions
We will evaluate urban land changes, including volumetric change, and its coupled relationships with other types of land from 1990s to 2020s, analyzing how globalization leads to hot spots of land transitions.
Task 2. Urban environmental changes (air pollution) patterns, drivers, and impacts
We will extract urban green space, surface air pollution data of PM2.5 and NO2, and urban heat island and examine how their spatio-temporal patterns have been associated with urban land transformation, traffic congestion, and socio-economic activities, especially those related to local responses to globalization, in Bangkok, Manila, and Jakarta, compared with benchmark cities of Tokyo, Taipei and Shanghai.
Task 3. Divergent local responses to globalization
We will use partial least squares structural equations to model the relationships of globalization, urbanization, and the environmental. We also develop a driving force-flow-land transition-effect-feedback (DFLEF) model to examine 7 types of local responses to globalization:
(1) FDI-driven industrialization (Metro Bangkok, HCMC, Laguna near Metro Manila)
(2) FDI-driven service development (business processing outsourcing in Metro Manila)
(3) Resource extraction export (Vientiane in Lao PDR)
(4) Tourism driven development (Chiang Mai, Bagan in Myanmar, Bali in Indonesia)
(5) International migration driven development (Cambodians and Burmese workers in Bangkok)
(6) Remittance driven development (overseas remittance to Metro Manila)
(7) Overseas aid driven development (Phnom Penh and Yangon)
This project contributes to the knowledge frontier and generates theories and models for the co-evolved relationships among urbanization, economic development, and
environment under globalization at multiple spatial scales. It integrates remotely sensed measurements with LCLUC, atmospheric models, and socioeconomic analysis and assists Southeast Asia to cope strategically with urban, land, and environmental changes under globalization.