Situating megaprojects in Asia’s political economy of urbanization

In this introduction, we synthesize the learning outcomes of the contributing chapters while engaging with the relevant literature on megaprojects and the political economy of urbanization in Asia. Our focus is on the multiscalar politics of state and non-state actors, which drive the proliferation of megaprojects in Asia. We maintain the perspective that each national economy retains elements of developmentalism as an underlying characteristic of state functions. This characteristic is particularly pronounced among the former tiger economies of Asia, especially during their periods of condensed urbanization and industrialization. This volume explores how the developmental orientation of state functions interacts with or opposes the neoliberalizing tendencies of state transformation and shapes the rise of a particularist mode of state intervention in facilitating investment in the built environment. Megaprojects are taken as a lens to observe and explain these phenomena.