Hyun Bang Shin’s body of work provides a nuanced exploration of urban growth politics through the lens of mega-events and megaprojects, with a focus on Asia’s dynamic political economies. By examining the intersection of state-led development, neoliberal transformations, and urban restructuring, Shin reveals how these phenomena operate as instruments of capital accumulation and socio-political control. However, they often have profound and unequal impacts on local communities, exacerbating existing inequalities.
His work on mega-event politics offers a critical examination of how such events drive urban transformation while embedding profound social inequalities. Focusing initially on the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Shin highlights the high social costs of reinvestment in the city’s urban fabric, including the displacement of poorer residents and the loss of affordable housing, which disproportionately benefited wealthier groups. Expanding his scope, he critiques China’s “mega-event triad”—the Beijing Olympics, Shanghai Expo, and Guangzhou Asian Games—as mechanisms for socio-political stability, where patriotic spectacles masked deep inequalities and displaced structural tensions rather than resolving them. Comparing Guangzhou and Incheon’s approaches to the Asian Games, Shin underscores the speculative and debt-driven nature of megaproject investments, revealing the interplay of developmentalist state strategies and neoliberal market pressures in shaping urbanisation. Broadening his scope, Shin examines the political economy of mega-events in the “global East,” including the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, Tokyo Summer Olympics, and Beijing Winter Olympics. He argues that these events are deeply embedded in the political economy of their host nations and operate beyond the city scale. By linking the lifecycle of mega-events—from their inception to their societal impacts—to broader processes of state transformation and capital accumulation, Shin re-theorises mega-events as spectacles that serve both economic and political objectives.
Hyun Bang Shin’s work also critically examines state-led urban governance in China, highlighting the persistent entrepreneurialism that drives large-scale investment in the built environment. In Beijing, he shows how property-led redevelopment projects, despite policy shifts promoting affordable housing, continue to prioritise profit-driven land-based accumulation, with local governments acting as de facto landlords. In Guangzhou, the 2010 Asian Games exemplify how event-led development facilitates urban restructuring and real estate investment, enabling the city to align local ambitions with national goals while navigating the constraints of centralised authority through a “negotiated scale-jump.” More recently, Shin further explores the concept of “entrepreneurial neo-managerialism” through shantytown redevelopment in Luzhou, revealing how local states balance entrepreneurial land accumulation with central mandates for social redistribution. This interplay, he argues, characterises contemporary urban governance in China, where profit motives are tempered by the need to address social disparities under tightening central control. Much of the state intervention in China’s urbanisation builds, Shin argues, on rendering “official urbanism” as a state project, illustrated by his work on how policies like Beijing’s green belt impose ideological visions of urban life that sustain land-based accumulation while marginalising grassroots voices.
Hyun Bang Shin’s work examines the politics of property-led urban development across East Asia, showing how real estate capital underpins urban transformation. In South Korea, he reveals how an authoritarian developmental state forged a property-based model reliant on displacement, verticalisation, and rent accumulation, sustained by alliances between real estate capital and a rising middle class. His work on Seoul also reveals how redevelopment projects exploited rent gaps to drive profit-led gentrification, displacing residents in favour of high-rise housing estates. Shin’s analysis of Songdo International City illustrates how speculative interests shaped this megaproject during periods of economic crisis, with local and transnational actors leveraging the city as a space for real estate accumulation. While often framed as an innovative global urban model, Songdo remains rooted in the developmental state’s legacies, underscoring the resilience of local politico-economic structures.
In his edited volume on megaprojects in Asia, Shin synthesises insights from various case studies to explore the political economy of urbanisation in the region. Megaprojects, he argues, offer a lens to examine the interplay between developmental state functions and neoliberal tendencies. Elements of developmentalism persist across Asian economies, particularly in former tiger economies during periods of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation. Shin emphasises the multiscalar politics of state and non-state actors in driving these transformations, highlighting how the developmental orientation of state functions shapes interventions in the built environment. These dynamics reflect both the continuities and contradictions of state transformation.
Shin’s work illuminates the complex interplay of state power, capital, and urbanisation in Asia. Mega-events and megaprojects emerge as tools for achieving developmental goals, yet they expose the socio-economic inequalities and speculative risks embedded in these strategies. By focusing on the multiscalar politics of urban growth, Shin offers critical insights into the tensions between developmentalism and neoliberalism and re-theorises the role of these transformative events in the political economy of urbanisation in the global East. Extending his research to urban futures, Shin critiques the ideology of “fast urbanism” that has emerged from Asia’s compressed development experiences. He argues that this focus on rapid growth appropriates aspirations and displaces both present realities and future possibilities, consolidating politico-economic structures that perpetuate uneven outcomes. By addressing the politics of temporality, Shin calls for rethinking urban futures that resist the imposition of speed and prioritise more inclusive, sustainable development.
Selected work on urban growth politics
Shin, H.B. and Gimm, D-W. (eds.) (2025) The Political Economy of Megaprojects in Asia: State Power, Land Control, Financial Flows, and Dispossession. Regions and Cities Series. Routledge
Shin, H.B. and Oh, D. (2025) Coping with crises in (post-)developmental urbanisation: The case study of Songdo International City, South Korea. In: Shin, H. B. and Gimm, D-W. (eds.) The Political Economy of Megaprojects in Asia: State Power, Land Control, Financial Flows, and Dispossession. Regions and Cities Series. Routledge
Jin, Y. and Shin, H.B. (in press) Revisiting urban governance in China: The manifestation of entrepreneurial Neo-managerialism in shantytown redevelopment in Luzhou. Urban Studies [View]
Oh, D. and Shin, H.B. (2023) University as Real Estate Developer: Comparative Perspectives from the Global East. Geoforum 144, 103764
Shin, H.B. (2023) The political economy of mega-events as spectacles in the global East. In: Aramata, M. (ed.) Political Economy of the Tokyo Olympics: Unrestrained Capital and Development without Sustainable Principles. London: Routledge, pp. 30-48
Shin, H.B. (2021) Urban transformation ‘Korean Style’: Lessons from property-based urban development. In: Park, S.H., Shin, H.B. and Kang, H.S. (eds.) Exporting Urban Korea? Reconsidering the Korean Urban Development Experience. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, pp. 58-80
Shin, H.B., Zhao, Y. and Koh, S.Y. (2020) Whither Progressive Urban Futures? Critical Reflections on the Politics of Temporality in Asia. CITY: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action 24(1-2): 244-254 [View]
Shin, H.B. and Zhao, Y. (2018) Urbanism as a state project: Lessons from Beijing’s green belts. In: Jayne, M. (ed.) Chinese Urbanism: Critical Perspectives. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 30-46
Shin, H.B. (2017) Envisioned by the state: Entrepreneurial urbanism and the making of Songdo City, South Korea. In: Datta, A. and Shaban, A. (eds.) Mega-urbanization in the Global South: Fast Cities and New Urban Utopias of the Postcolonial State. Abingdon; New York: Routledge, pp. 83-100. Translated and reprinted in: Park, B-G., Lee, S-W. and Cho, S-C. (eds.) (2017) Spaces of Exception in East Asia. Seoul: Alt, pp. 325-342 [In Korean: 신현방 (2017) 국가에 의해 상상되다: 기업가주의 도시화와 송도 신도시 만들기. <특구 : 국가의 영토성과 동아시아의 예외공간>. 박배균, 이승욱, 조성찬 엮음. 알트, 325-342쪽]
Shin, H.B. (2016) China meets Korea: the Asian Games, entrepreneurial local states and debt-driven development. In: Gruneau, R. and Horne, J. (eds.) Mega Events and Globalization: Capital and Spectacle in a Changing World Order. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 186-205
Shin, H.B. (2014) Urban spatial restructuring, event-led development and scalar politics. Urban Studies 51(14): 2961-2978 [View]
Shin, H.B. (2014) Elite vision before people: State entrepreneurialism and the limits of participation. In: Altrock, U. and Schoon, S. (eds.) Maturing Megacities: The Pearl River Delta in Progressive Transition. New York: Springer, pp. 267-285
Shin, H.B. (2012) Unequal cities of spectacle and mega-events in China. CITY: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action 16(6): 728-744 [View]. See also its French translation version: Shin, H.B. (2016) Spectacles urbains, méga-événements sportifs et inégalités en Chine. Alternatives Sud 23: 121-146 [View]
Shin, H.B. (2010) Urban conservation and revalorisation of dilapidated historic quarters: The case of Nanluoguxiang in Beijing. Cities 27 (Supplement 1): S43-S54 [View]
Shin, H.B. (2009) Residential redevelopment and entrepreneurial local state: The implications of Beijing’s shifting emphasis on urban redevelopment policies. Urban Studies 46(13): 2815-2839 [View]
Shin. H.B. (2009) Property-based redevelopment and gentrification: the case of Seoul, South Korea. Geoforum 40(5): 906-917 [View]