Creating mixed-income neighbourhoods unintentionally: Public housing residualisation and socio-economic segregation in Hong Kong

Abstract

Hong Kong has one of the largest and most successful public housing systems in the world - roughly 30 per cent of the city lives in public rental housing and another 20 per cent in publicly built ownership housing. This strong state involvement in housing exists in spite of the fact that in almost all other areas, Hong Kong is recognised as a bastion of markets and limited regulation. Given that public housing in Hong Kong makes up a significant share of the city’s built environment, and much of the common understanding of the relationship between public housing and segregation is that supply-side housing policies lead to more segregated cities, this understanding is based primarily on research in the United States, and the case of Hong Kong provides a strong counter-example to the common understanding of the spatial impacts of supply-side housing policies.