Wing-Shing Tang

Public Engagement as a Tool of Hegemony: The Case of Designing the New Central Harbourfront in Hong Kong

Hong Kong society nowadays is overwhelmed by the rhetoric of hegemony, but there is no serious attempt to discuss it, especially in the domain of urban development. This article expands on Henri Lefebvre’s concept of urbanizing Gramsci to resolve contradictions of space under increasing urbanization by urban specialists and applies it to investigate the public engagement exercise of Central harbourfront planning in Hong Kong. By dissecting its contents and procedures, the article illustrates how public engagement has insisted on technical rationality, thereby perpetuating the functioning of the land (re)development regime. In consequence, the ordinary residents may have been excluded from ‘rational’ consideration in the (re)development of Hong Kong.

Beyond Gentrification: Hegemonic Redevelopment in Hong Kong

Like other concepts, gentrification must be situated in the socio-historical context in which it was produced. Since its coinage the concept has travelled widely, yet it has been applied unevenly, and in some cases uncritically, in various locations now including Asian cities. This essay challenges the application of the concept of gentrification to Hong Kong, as attempted by an article previously published in this journal. It responds through two main lines of inquiry. First, it demonstrates how the absence of historical, geographical and socio-political context weakens the basis for a critical urban geography. Second, in constructing a historical baseline, this essay proposes to conceive urban redevelopment through hegemony-cum-alienation, which is a more complicated process than displacement of the working class. Alienated hegemonic redevelopment perpetuates systemic reproduction and associated power politics, yet with the primary source of contradiction residing in landed and property relations. Conclusions suggest the urgency of developing new approaches instead of relying on more empirical studies as evidence for an already over-developed concept. Analysis of the Hong Kong case suggests how the spent concept of gentrification could be superseded by alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hegemony of the real estate industry: Redevelopment of ‘Government/Institution or Community’ (G/IC) land in Hong Kong:

The high property price syndrome in Hong Kong has led to heightened concern about the role of landed capital in property development. Recently, the hegemony of the real estate industry has become a buzzword in local literature, but unfortunately there is neither adequate theoretical articulation nor informed understanding of the concept of hegemony. There is widespread misunderstanding of hegemony, equating it to domination by property tycoons. The local literature has overlooked the government-business collusion in constructing the common sense of society so as to dominate others. Through an empirical investigation of the redevelopment of ‘Government/Institution or Community’ (G/IC) land in Hong Kong, this article attempts to offer an alternative explanation to the land question of G/IC redevelopment by highlighting that the everyday life of the silent majority and of professionals has in fact perpetuated the hegemony of the real estate industry in Hong Kong. It is argued that the government, property developers, professionals, charitable organisations and the general public have altogether participated, in different ways and to different extents, in the capital accumulation projects of leading developer conglomerates in Hong Kong. A land (re)development regime has thus contributed to the property boom in Hong Kong.

Chinese-language geography

Chinese human geography started its development more than 2500 years ago, recognizing a naive human–land relation based on Confucian and Daoist constituted ‘human–heaven harmony’ cosmology. Unlike the West, this relation emphasized the dominance of human, yet paying heed to local conditions. Since then, human geography was widely practiced as Fang Zhi (local gazetteers), covering a wide range of practical topics, relying on concrete sense impressions as the methodology, and serving mostly for state governance. Undoubtedly, the discipline has interacted with the outside world, first via expeditions and Western missionary encounters in her dynastic past, and then in the contemporary period from challenges by modern geography. While spatial determinism at the beginning of the last century might have concentrated efforts on physical geography, Soviet geography in the 1950s might have reinforced the practical orientation, and Western geography since the 1980s might have introduced post-Enlightenment concepts, human geography in China as a discipline has not departed much from its original course. It has continued emphasizing the objective of deploying geographical knowledge to revitalize the nation, relying on the methodology of sense impressions at the expense of abstract speculation and showing a distaste for critical scholarship to avoid possible conflicts with the state. Nevertheless, the Wuxing principles enlighten us in that we should not de-contextualize the object of study and set up unnecessary, discrete boundary between human and nature. In short, its unique path, including conceptualization and emphasis, has rendered Chinese human geography relatively distinctive.