Contenu du sommaire : Mutations économiques et recompositions territoriales en Asie du Sud

Industrialisation and mega-urbanisation : Bangkok's South-Eastern Seaboard corridor Bangkok is one of the largest big cities in the world. This article shows how, during the decades 1970 to 2000, the public policies for opening up the economy and furthering the industrialisation of Thailand combined with the existence of specific comparative advantages to make the Southeastern coastline of the Central Region the cornerstone of the country's development. The corresponding spatial growth, as a result of a structuring effect of urban development corridor processes at work, offers an ideal viewpoint to observe the forms contemporary megapolisation takes at the interface of the combined dynamics of globalisation, industrialisation and metropolisation.

New economic activities and metropolitan restructuring : the case of the southern periphery of Chennai Chennai is one of the four important Indian “ megacities ” that have become centres of metropolitisation and it ranks 3rd as a federal economic power. As the capital of the most highly urbanized Indian state, Chennai is an interesting case study which offers insights for understanding of the impact of global forces and of new post-liberal development strategies for metropolitan restructuring. Thanks to the determination of the Government of Tamil Nadu to develop economic sectors such as computer science and automotive industries, as a result of economies linked with the reorganization of past activities across the agglomeration (chemical industry, iron and steel industry, textile and leather industry), and on account of a high standard of education and the existence of qualified jobs, the city of Chennai is now inscribed in the global movement. It is all the stronger in that it is the Indian megacity that has attracted the greatest number of direct foreign investments during the last few years. This growing internationalization, combined with incentive-based town planning policies, has furthered a specialization of localities along urban corridors. Such a strategy, creating from start to finish new industrial estates, special economic zones, teaching and research institutes as townships (small closed towns), takes part in the process of decongestion and reorganization of both economic and residential functions from the city towards the urban peripheries. This contributes to a polycentric type of urban development.

Thailand, nodal core of the Greater Mekong Subregion The Greater Mekong Subregion, which embraces the countries of the Indochina Peninsula and two provinces of southern China, is the focus of one of the most dynamic transnational integration programmes in Asia. The Asia Development Bank, taking part in the process of regionalisation of globalisation at the scale of Eastern Asia — the Asian façade of the Pacific — took advantage of the post-Cold War reversal of national development planning strategies to promote and work with this regional integration initiative. In this situation where countries are opening up again after substantial periods of enclosure, one country stands out as an exception : Thailand. That country, already well positioned as one of the Peninsula's core economic nodes during the Indochinese wars, has taken advantage of the return to peace to transfer competition for the field of battle to the scene of market-induced integration. It has thus reinforced its regional leadership, enhancing its position at the outlets or connection points between the major development corridors promoted by the Greater Mekong Subregion programme. In the strength of its uncontested economic power Thailand has become the indispensable economic partner for neighbouring countries to finance the sections of corridors crossing their territory, countries which have paid a heavy cost for decades of war or isolation. It is also a strong financial partner sought after by Asia's great regional powers (China, Japan and more recently India), who find in the Greater Mekong Subregion a new arena for asserting their ambitions for hegemony at the whole scale of Asia. The continuing political crisis which is currently destabilising Thailand could put Vietnam, lagging behind up to now, back into a stronger position in the play of geopolitical forces in the Indochina Peninsula.

Spatial diffusion of urbanisation and industrialisation and the structuring of an urban region : the case of Surabaya, Indonesia Surabaya is one of the second rank cities of metropolisation and one of the large regional capitals of Southeast Asia. The increasing internationalisation of its regional and urban economy has accelerated the process of metropolisation and the spatial diffusion of industrial activities, responsible for the formation of an urban corridor connecting the coast and the inland territories. Becoming more complex, this corridor tends to form an urban region which is structured by a main north-south axis and two secondary east-west axes. This process is to be related to the transformations that occur in the city centre. The emergence of this urban region is the result of tensions that occur between several spatial tendencies : strongly anchored in its regional space as the main pole of the East-Java province, Surabaya shares the role of port services provision of the eastern part of Indonesia with Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, and is a potential node for structuring shipping route patterns connecting Australia and Asia. The process of redistribution of functions between the poles of this urban region concerns essentially the production and residential roles, with the urban region broadly working still according to the centre-periphery model. However, it does foreshadow the redistribution of commanding functions, which might lead to a reorganization of the urban region towards a more polycentric pattern and modify again the position of Surabaya within the spatial systems.

The peri-urbanisation of Hanoi. Dynamics in Vietnam's urban transition and metropolisation Because of its very nature (spatial confinement) and its recent political history (about 30 years of collectivisation), the Hanoi periurbanisation process reveals the different actors' strategies in a period of economic conciliation. This process gives insights for understanding the Hanoi's metropolitanisation process and the Vietnam's urban transition. One particularity of Vietnam or Hanoi is that its urbanisation has been planned. Contrary to a number of countries of the South in which urban expansion has been developed in a relatively anarchic way, Hanoi favoured control over its urban growth. While Hanoi is shifting towards a new scale, through a process of metropolitanisation, one can examine how the Vietnamese authorities are going to deal with this new urban transition, in the current administrative, legislative and economic contexts.

Spatial reorganisation in Vientiane : between economic opening and importation of Cuban development models The proclamation of Lao PDR and the establishment of the incoming regime cut off the country's relations with almost all the other South-East Asian countries. for over ten years. From 1986 onwards the gradual opening of the regime led to increased economic trade, essentially with Thailand judging by the levels of direct foreign investment. At the same time, the Asia Development Bank, through the Greater Mekong Subregion Programme started to promote a transnational and regional integration plan, and, as a consequence, to link the Lao PDR and Vientiane with other territories. The opening up of the economy and the insertion of Lao PDR within regional networks, but also the impact of application of Western urban configuration models, produced extensive changes in the capital's functional and spatial structure, long characterised by a pattern of villages. The Thai northeast development corridor extended onto Lao territory, from the Mekong Bridge to the capital. This spatial development indicates a clear integration of Vientiane within Bangkok's economic orbit.

Economic dynamics and territorial restructuring in a traditional industry in South India. Taking on the challenges of globalisation Like in other traditional manufacturing activities in India, the structure of the leather industry in Tamil Nadu is dominated by small-scale enterprises. This is a direct result of policies aimed at protecting employment and ensuring balanced regional development, within the broad framework of an import substitution strategy. However, the liberalisation of India's economy in the 1990s has exposed its manufacturers to the stringent demands of increasingly global markets, while enhancing competition among firms and territories within the country. Within this difficult context, this article examines the restructuring of the leather industry of the Palar Valley, which produces largely for export markets, with an emphasis on local capacities to adapt to the increasingly stringent demands of globalised markets for leather and footwear. This analysis underscores the importance of local partnerships and territorial embeddedness for achieving competitiveness in this century-old industry organised in clusters closely resembling industrial districts. Indeed, over the last few decades, local firms have developed strategies based on comparative local advantages, which include solid roots in the local territory and social capital based on strong social and ethnic ties. By analysing the articulation of various spatial and temporal processes, notably the impact of industrial policies, the main objective of this article is to identify the social and spatial transformations that are redefining the rural-urban relationship and bringing to the fore new challenges.

Market, State and Thai rice competitiveness This paper evaluates the bases for the competitiveness of rice growing in Thailand. The analysis shows that rice farmers' ability to face the competition in international markets is largely a function of the resources (land, water, credit) available to them, for which economic policy has brought significant means and had considerable effect. Public intervention at macro-economic level as well as at the sector scale strongly influenced the profitability of rice growing, movements of capital and labour towards or away from rice farming, and the rate at which farmers adopted new techniques. In particular, the unequal geographic dissemination of State investments led to a heterogeneous distribution of public goods such as the hydraulic infrastructure, road and railway network density and financial services. The existence and the quality of these public goods strongly influenced the range of choices for the combination of factors of production which have, in turn, acted upon the competitiveness of Thai rice growing.