States of Compulsion: Reassessing 'State-led' Neighborhood Change in Hong Kong

Keywords: Hong Kong, neighborhood change, urban renewal, gentrification, urban geography
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 43

Abstract

This paper aims to provide a critical reassessment of the role of the state in processes of neighborhood change in Hong Kong, based on mixed-methods research conducted in the rapidly changing Sai Ying Pun neighborhood on Hong Kong Island in 2021 and drawing on companion research conducted in several other parts of the city. We argue that common narratives of ‘state-led’ processes of neighborhood change (usually labeled gentrification) often overstate, oversimplify, or unduly assume the influence of state agencies, especially the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) and other ‘usual suspects’, reifying such agencies and obscuring the complex ways that state actions entice, enable, and enhance the actions and agendas of other actors, especially private capital. By elaborating the implications of several specific forms of state action, including especially a 2010 amendment to Hong Kong’s “Land (Compulsory Sale for Redevelopment) Ordinance” and the geography of major URA projects, we instead demonstrate that the state in Hong Kong plays many different roles in facilitating neighborhood transformation across the city, creating an uneven geography of state intervention dependent on locally-specific factors such as the particularities of architecture, housing types, and residential density in different urban areas as well as existing configurations of policy, legislation, and infrastructure. As we further demonstrate through examples, these many articulations of the state are of strategic value to a variety of elite interests, from property developers to wealthy residents and international consumers, whose distinct and competing agendas could hardly be so well served by a less dynamic state.