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This paper examines efforts to remake Tokyo, the world's largest megalopolis, into an ecologically sustainable city. The analysis is framed by two visions: a general model of eco-effectiveness derived from industrial ecology and an empirically grounded conception of a zero waste city rooted in the lean production practices of Japanese firms and extended beyond the firm to the city by government policies. We specifically focus on Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) programs to reduce waste and especially greenhouse gases. We also examine how TMG's environmental efforts have been shaped by local politics and by the city's relations with the central state. Tokyo's environmental efforts are impressive but they still fall far short of ecological sustainability. The zero waste city is ultimately a political project and Japanese are still divided over how to prioritize and integrate economic growth and environmental quality goals. The eco-effective, zero waste model envisions transforming the current trade-off between economic development and environmental well-being into a virtuous circle whereby environmental improvements can be achieved through new urban designs, technologies, products, jobs and economic growth. The divisions between advocates of growth and conservation are in fact blurring in Japan. But the Tokyo experience suggests that vibrant political leadership and vigorous government action will be required to accomplish this symbiosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We need a more nuanced way of looking at the relationship between globalisation and the city; a framework that can accommodate substantial differences as well as growing similarities among world metropolises and give both global integration and local distinctiveness their rightful due. I propose and illustrate one such framework in this paper, based upon the principle of nested hierarchy. In the view espoused here, cities are lodged within an interdependent world order divided among differently organised regional formations and national systems. The economic base, spatial organisation and social structure of the world's major cities are determined by the entire multi-level configuration– global niche, regional formation, national development model, and local historical context– in which each city participates. Growing interdependence in the global whole is perfectly consistent with differentiationwithin and amongregional, national, and city levels of the system. As constituent elements of the global order, cities both facilitate the globalisation process and follow their own, relatively autonomous trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces a series of articles on the impact of globalization on social patterns, in the February 2003 issue of 'Urban Studies.'

The 'world city paradigm' assumes a convergence in economic base, spatial organisation and social structure among the world's major cities. However, Tokyo, capital of the world's second-largest national economy and the world's largest urban agglomeration, departs from the world city model on most salient dimensions. Seoul, centre of east Asia's second OECD member and the region's second-largest metropolis, exhibits the same anomaly. Tokyo and Seoul's departure from the world city hypothesis stem from late industrialisation and especially the relationship between industrial policy and finance institutionalised in a developmental state. Understanding Tokyo and Seoul necessitates a different conception of the world system from the globalist version of the world city argument. World cities differ from one another in many salient respects because they are lodged within a non-hegemonic and interdependent world political economy divided among differently organised national systems and regional alliances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western understanding of the post-war evolution of states in advanced capitalist societies envisions a moment of fundamental transition beginning in the mid 1970s and indexed by reduced government spending, the privatisation of public services and increased inequality among local governments. Regulation theory sees the process as a transition from a Keynesian welfare state to a Schumpeterian workfare state necessitated by the shift from a Fordist to a post-Fordist regime of capital accumulation. Japan, a member of the OECD, and the world’s second-largest economy, fits neither the political-economic trends nor the model put forward by Western regulation theorists. Japan has not experienced the decline in state spending, the privatisation of public activity or the rising inequality among local governments that characterises Western OECD nations. The Japanese have selectively incorporated Keynesian and Schumpeterian ideas, but in a spirit much closer to that of writers associated with the German historical school, and always within a framework rooted in Japan’s own historical traditions and exigencies. We document Japan’s departure from the Western model of state restructuring and explore the theoretical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign direct investment by Osaka's manufacturing firms has not boomeranged to hollow out the city's industrial base or stifled development opportunities in recipient countries. Osaka development officials assume transfer of capital and technology overseas should be connected to a strategy of industrial upgrading at home. Osaka's industrial strategies target the problems facing small and medium-sized producers and are couched within more encompassing national and regional development models. Developmental state institutions plus a dynamic and complementary regional division of labor enable Japanese cities to maintain a leading economic position in the Asia Pacific Rim while stimulating industrialization in the less developed Asian countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article responds to Philip Shapira's comments on the author's discussion of Osaka, Japan's economic links with other Asian economies. Response to Japan's rise in unemployment in the late 1990s; Response to the thesis that Japan's economy has stagnated since the burst of the financial crisis in the early 1990s; Declining competitiveness of Japanese firms; Impact of bureaucratic restrictions and government programs on business development; Discussion of efforts by the U.S. and Japan to promote small business development.

In this article the author comments on social theorist A.J. Fielding's study regarding social segregation in Japanese cities. Fielding spends most of his energy seeking to demonstrate that spatial distributions in Kyoto are nonrandom, he claims that Kyoto does have a social geography. The dampening of class inequality and the spatial mixing of classes in Japanese cities can be traced to state development policies. Under Japan's centralized administrative system, the national government controls the bulk of the nation's fiscal resources and allocates public goods to prefecture and city governments.

Responds to comments made by Saskia Sassen and John Friedmann on the authors' article 'Global Cities and Developmental States: New York, Tokyo and Seoul.' Role of the state in the global system; Legitimacy of global markets and national political regimes; Distribution of income among subareas of Seoul and New York.