Gateways, corridors and peripheries

Southeast Asia's cities have always been gateways to and from the wider world. Gateways and corridors provide a useful framework for understanding the emerging structure of urban and regional development in Southeast Asia. When Southeast Asia's island periphery was opened up to international trade more than a millennium ago, the lure was exotic spices and jungle products, then in the early twentieth century rubber and copra. An historical geography of urban and regional development in Southeast Asia sought to transcend the crude nationalization of space by foregrounding cities in several dimensions. In Mainland Asia there is already an established economic corridor between the gateways of Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. The functions of the Asia-Pacific gateways on this global axis are also designed to serve as a 'power switch' for the cul-de-sac of Oceania in much the same way as European gateways serve Africa and North American gateways serve Central and South America.