Scott Beyer’s Post

For my final post, I bring you the bright lights of Tokyo - the last of 38 stops on my 1.5-year Global South trip. The trip's now done and I'm back in the U.S., trying to figure out next steps as I delve into several ventures. Hope you enjoyed this photo essay series, and reach out if you have questions about anything I posted.

Startup City 32 on my Global South tour: Rockwell Center A mixed-use business district with this illuminated yellow outline, making it an icon of the Manila skyline. Built by Rockwell Land Corp, a public company on the Filipino stock exchange. Rockwell's building lots of megaprojects like this through the Philippines.

“Industrial hellscape” could be used to describe much of the 3rd World. Factories locate in certain areas due to tax breaks and 1st World outsourcing. The areas become huge business ecosystems. Shanty neighborhoods follow. They start with no electricity, sewage treatment, running water, etc., but gradually obtain these as vote-seeking politicians extend services. Industrial hellscapes aren't pretty, but are a natural outgrowth of cities and allow millions to escape rural poverty. Here's one, Baseco Compound, that grew around the shipyards of Manila Bay.

The Chinese do massive investment throughout SE Asia. Here's a typical way that looks: Country Garden, a beleaguered Chinese megadeveloper that faces a property bubble in its own country, wants to diversify by building private cities in nearby countries. Lake City in northside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is a typical blueprint. 80-acre mixed-use development going around a man-made lake and fashion mall.

Startup City 30: One Bangkok This is a city-within-a-city, which is a common RE megaproject format in Asia. It's perched in the heart of Siam, Bangkok's nicest neighborhood, but will have many of its own internal services.

Thailand is the land of awesome markets. "Night markets" run deep into the AM hours along the crowded alleys of Bangkok. "Rail markets" hover over the tracks and are lifted briefly for each passing train. "Floating markets", pictured here, run along the nation's many swamps and canals.

Asia’s seen the rise of what I wish were more common in America: superapps. These group multiple services that would normally be spread across separate apps. Main one is Singapore-based Grab. Imagine if Uber, Grubhub, Paypal, Expedia, Robinhood, Lime and Amazon merged. Grab’s even delving into shuttle buses. Other superapps include Gojek, SEA and Didi. Some people think becoming a superapp is actually a weakness; a way for startups to cover their ridehail losses by expanding to other services. But I see it as a way to make customers need their preferred superapp multiple times daily. Grab's the most visibly dominant one in SE Asia. Backers include Softbank, Microsoft and Uber, which found that competing here was futile and decided to consolidate, buying 27.5% of Grab. 

Startup City 29 on my Global South tour: PIK 2 There's an effort in the developing world to decentralize megacities. Governments back private efforts for "new cities" on suburban outskirts that have better infrastructure and a blank slate. PIK 2's among the main new cities outside Jakarta. Includes industry, mega nightclubs, a Chinatown (due to all the Chinese investors), and efforts to build the "Indonesian Miami Beach".

The Global South (namely Asia) is full of "superblocks" - large land plots with no thru-roads, but heavily subdivided by alleys. It's a market outcome - the historical default for almost all large-scale slum development - and results from spatial negotiations between property owners.

Indoor malls are a dying, out-of-fashion RE asset in the U.S. But they're popular in the Global South, seen as places that provide better security/atmosphere than crowded outdoor markets. Some malls are fancy, with all the same luxury retail we have. But quite a lot are like this clothing market in central Jakarta: traditional, old-school, no-frills, appealing to locals.