Abstract
Despite Hong Kong’s economic achievement, its housing crisis, exemplified by the increase of cage homes, is an open secret. The combination of strong public housing provision and free-market housing seemingly lost its balance as Hong Kong has witnessed decreasing social mobility and widening wealth gap in the past two decades. This paper examines Hong Kong’s strategy in tackling such a housing crisis within a reconfiguring regional-national economic framework during 2000-2014. It argues that the city’s neoliberal logic of housing production and increasing focus on mobility and connectivity with the mainland tends to displace rather than solve housing problem. Recently, the announcement of the Action Plan for the Bay Area of the Pearl River Estuary, upon which Hong Kong would turn the many agricultural lands in the New Territories into new towns - allegedly an effective measure to create housing in the lands bordering Shenzhen. This article reviews the ongoing debate over the plan and examines the ways in which such a planning as naturalizing displacement and mobility in its neoliberal logic.
Abstract I. Introduction II. A Review of Hong Kong’s Planning of Housing III. Placing Hong Kong in a reconfiguring regional-national economic framework IV. Redeveloping the Borderlands for Whom? V. Conclusion REFERENCES