State-led gentrification in Hong Kong

Abstract

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.

Social rental housing in HK and the UK: Neoliberal policy divergence or the market in the making?

“…The newly developed residential estates were thus to contrast with 'the danger, disease, filth, and chaos of the squatter settlements' (p.S328). Forrest and Yip (2014) agree with the explanation regarding the political nature of HK housing policy at the time (see also Castells et al, 1988;Yung, 2008), adding that the new SAR, post-colonial, non-elected governments also had political reasons to keep on producing more social housing in the city (see also La Grange & Pretorius, 2014). Stricken by poverty and facing an uncertain political future, under pressure from mainland China, riots and social uprisings that could prompt political instability were to be avoided as much as possible by the colonial governments.…”

“…It is thus dominated by private investors and speculators, many of whom, not surprisingly, also from abroad. La Grange and Pretorius (2014) show that, although Honk Kong is extremely unequal in terms of income distribution, governmentled land development, including that of housing, has had limited effect on gentrification, even considering its drive towards residualization. There are a number of reasons for this.…”

“…It is also important for public finances as 'sales' of public land (actually leases) and other land-related incomes account for a considerable part of HK fiscal revenues. La Grange and Pretorius (2014) address the issue about the importance of land to HK fiscal revenues in order to assess the extent to which government-led public and private (re)development is carried out and impacts gentrification. Hong Kong has a low tax regime and so relies heavily on revenues from land management and redevelopment (see also Wong, 2008).…”

Introduction: Locating gentrification in the Global East

“…peri-urban or outer rural spaces) (see Ghertner, 2015), it is important to have a longer-term perspective and under-stand how existing constraints are often dealt with by the state to clear the pathway to gentrification. Indeed, as La Grange and Pretorius (2014) acknowledge, the gentrification story remains incomplete. In Hong Kong, uncertainties loom over the city in terms of continuing with its current practices of heavy reliance on land sale for the government's revenue generation combined with developers' profit-making through new-build gentrification.…”

“…In East Asia in particular, such solidarity across boundaries provides a possibility for effective resistance against the aggressive power of the state and capital to extract exchange value from land and housing, a key characteristic of urbanisation and urban development in the Global East repeatedly emphasised in this special issue. Indeed, from the contributed papers, we come to understand that the fate of former villagers in Guangzhou (Shin, 2015) and of slum dwellers in Seoul (Shin and Kim, 2015) mirrors that of Taipei's inner-city residents (Jou et al, 2014) and of Hong Kong's residents living in dilapidated buildings subject to state-led new-build gentrification (La Grange and Pretorius, 2014). They have all faced the threat of displacement and of losing their right to stay put in the midst of the conversion of their properties into a higher and better use, while their tenure security saw a varying degree of protection reflecting variegated trajectories of regulatory practices and historic struggles.…”