Multifaceted Ideas and Approaches: An Overview of Presented Papers

The ongoing urban transformation process in some Asian countries appears to be intensifying over the last two decades, and the negative effects of which are affecting urban livability and raising concerns about a sustainable urban future. In line with the shifting trends in the theoretical and planning paradigms in the Asian context, as discussed earlier in the volume, a tendency to search for more inclusive and innovative approaches to address the complex, inter-connected, and universal (yet contextual) issues facing Asian cities is becoming more evident in the literature. In this introductory chapter to Part III, I present a set of twelve studies, which in one form or another, reflect several aspects of these changing outlooks, including an integrative, trans-sectoral, and participatory planning focus, and attention to environmentally friendly ‘green’ infrastructure and amenities. About half of the contributions are more focused on the physical and practical aspects of urban livability, while the rest are more non-physical or conceptually oriented. However, despite the diversities in scale, context, topic, method, and focus of research, urban livability concerns, as well as the integrative focus of the sustainability principles, are either readily apparent or implicitly present in most papers. Overall, the contributions support the idea that the search for sustainably optimizing urban livability of the large cities and their hinterlands in Asia will require collaborative, integrative, and fresh approaches to addressing urban developmental issues.