With the chaotic pace of development and expansion of global metropolises, traditional fabric of cities have become hybridized with the new to form mutant and hybrid species of the urban terrain. The new metropolitan city is a site of natural selection between the new, the old, the new old, and the old new through processes of transition, negotiation, mitigation, preservation, erasure and reconstruction. And within the informal dynamic of cities like Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul, fueled by forces of globalization, discussions of preservation and
cultural identity can only progress under the rubric of nationalism, tourism and marketability. As biologists who embark on travels to far distant lands to discover new and hybrid species of the ecological system, we embark on a trip to the old and new cities of China, Japan and Korea to investigate and document the conflicts and negotiations between the traditional fabric of the city and the new urban transformations of globalization and its agencies.
