Adrienne La Grange

Hong Kong as a global city? Social distance and spatial differentiation

This paper draws on on-going work on Hong Kongs socio-spatial structure to explore the extent to which it fits the dominant image of the global city. While there is a considerable literature on Hong Kongs changing social structure, there is relatively little on the spatial dimensions of social difference and division. The paper situates the available commentaries and analyses of Hong Kongs income, class and employment structure within the global cities debates. It then analyses census data at the tertiary planning unit level (TPU) to explore the spatial dimensions of social distance in Hong Kong. The conclusion focuses on the distinctive mediations which have shaped the socio-spatial structure of the territory. The integrative role of public housing is argued to be of particular importance in this context.

The Commodification of Land and Housing: The Case of South Korea

The developmentalist state in South East Asia has played an important role in guiding and promoting economic growth. Although an implicit theme of much of the discourse is the role of the state in controlling the factors of production, this is not located within the decommodification/commodification debate. Proceeding from the premise that underlies much of economic theory, namely that land values at a time reflect the residual (or surplus) of economic activity that requires land as a factor input, the purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which the Korean state has managed the commodification of urban development and the distributional effects of this process. In spite of private land ownership the state has had a major impact on the processes by which land has become commodified, using extensive land expropriation and land‐use planning powers. The Korean state used different strategies to manage trends to commodification at different times: land readjustment projects were used from the 1950s to the 1970s and Public Management Development projects were the main mechanism of urban development from the 1980s. The urban development system was feasible because of the states extensive control over access to housing finance (decommodified money). In the mid‐1990s there was a shift towards greater private sector involvement in urban development. The distributional effects of the urban development process have been highly inequitable. Subsidised home ownership for middle‐income families has been favoured over provision of public rental housing for low‐income families, driven in major part by cash flow considerations of the developmentalist state. Further, the basis of selecting beneficiaries has been very arbitrary. The system has promoted significant land concentration and land speculation particularly by private companies, including the large chaebol (corporations).

State-led gentrification in Hong Kong:

The specificity of Hong Kong’s gentrification trajectory reflects its urban morphology, political institutions, and social and economic structure. While continuously renewing itself economically, much of the city’s inner urban area building stock is old and functionally obsolete, whilst nevertheless providing affordable, well-located housing for lower-income and disadvantaged groups and small-scale commercial clusters. Constrained redevelopment is not the result of economic decline but rather of formidable frictions that make land assembly and vacant possession of buildings difficult. Hong Kong’s executive-led, quasi democratic government articulates with the public ownership of land and its management through the leasehold system, and leads inner-city redevelopment through the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) supported by various institutional and statutory arrangements. (Re)development is favoured because it generates significant state revenue from physical and economic intensification of sites. Although gentrification is not an agenda of the URA, it is a significant outcome of its redevelopment activities.

Privatising Public Housing in Hong Kong: Its Impact on Equity

Three processes are examined to assess the impact on equity of policies to privatise public housing in Hong Kong. These are changes in the inter-sectoral distribution of subsidies, changes in the quality and quantity of public rental housing, and changes in access to public housing. It is found that housing subsidies have remained concentrated in the public rental sector, and the quantity, quality and amenity of housing in this sector has actually increased. The Hong Kong Government has not sought to reduce eligibility for and access to public housing; the lengthy waiting list to join this tenure reflects increases in demand since the privatisation policy was introduced. Thus, unlike the experiences of many other countries, the Hong Kong Governments policy to privatise public housing has not had a notably adverse impact on housing equity to date.

Private Rental Housing in Hong Kong

This paper examines selected aspects of housing policy and its influence on private rental housing in Hong Kong. Its ambitions are modest, in part because so little research has been conducted on the sector, as a consequence of the small size of the sector as well as the concentration of socio-political, economic and policy analyses on the other major housing sectors, namely public renting and home ownership. It is argued that a fundamental function of private renting, to provide a functional substitute and counter-balance to distortions in the market for private home ownership, has been systematically undermined in Hong Kong. In spite of its historical importance in meeting Hong Kong peoples housing needs, the sectors decline has been steep and it can now be fairly described as a marginalised tenure, despite incomplete structural adjustment post- Asian Financial Crisis. It is suggested that a fundamental reason for the decline of the private rental sector has been the impact of government policy, which undermined the private rental sector and thus an important element of the market mechanism in housing provision. The governments ideology of home ownership has also functioned to transfer lower middle-income families into the owner occupied sector. Although the Hong Kong government has not been as overtly hostile to this sector as governments have been elsewhere, it nevertheless also seems to envisage no real role for the private rental sector in a housing delivery system molded by policy preference for home ownership, rather than fostering viable economic competition by also facilitating an efficient private rental sector.

Poverty and single elders in Hong Kong

This paper proposes a methodology for measuring poverty among people aged 60 years or more and living alone in Hong Kong. It uses a lifestyle approach and is based on an index of subjective perceptions of deprivation consisting of 79 indicators. These cover the main expenditure categories of single elders in Hong Kong: housing, food, clothing, durable goods, fuel and water, entertainment and social activities, medical care and transport. We tentatively identify a poverty threshold of HK

Neighbourhood and Class A Study of Three Neighbourhoods in Hong Kong

7,000 per month in regard to these expenditure categories. With incomes below

Cohort Trajectories in Hong Kong's Housing System: 1981–2001

6,000, respondents reduce spending on miscellaneous items and, at incomes of

Shifts along the decommodification - Commodification continuum: Housing delivery and state accumulation in Hong Kong

5,000, they reduce spending on clothing, entertainment and social activities and transport. At incomes below

Aging in a tiger welfare regime: the single elderly in Hong Kong.

4,000, they cut down on food, durable goods, and fuel and water expenditure. As incomes drop below