Desakotas’ and Beyond: Urbanization in Southern China
Author(s)
Guldin, Gregory Eliyu
Abstract
To some analysts of Asian urbanization, developments might reflect the emergence in China of a new pattern of Asian urbanization, the desakota process. Desakotas (the term is derived from the Bihasa Indonesian terms for village and town) are transformed areas that are no longer clearly urban or rural areas, but a blending of the two. Research throughout the continent, and particularly Southeast Asia, has noted the spread of this phenomenon. If desakotas are becoming the dominant mode in China’s late-twentieth-century urbanization transformation as well, then the world is witnessing a significant new path of human settlement and development.
