The creative city? : arts development within the urban renewal process in Hong Kong

Abstract

This research examines how Hong Kong's redevelopment of post-industrial spaces for arts and culture has impacted Hong Kong’s arts development over time. It investigates how different stakeholders’ interests intersect within these processes and generate various tensions and conflicts. Exploration of these dynamics enables a better understanding of the complex dynamics that shape Hong Kong’s ongoing urban transformation and evolving art ecosystem, particularly regarding the adaptive reuse of older industrial buildings in support for art practices.

In the late 1990s, artists in Hong Kong took advantage of the reduced real estate prices resulting from the financial crisis and transformed vacant industrial spaces into art studios. The repurposing of these spaces not only revitalized the areas but also fostered a vibrant and interconnected art community, facilitating increased collaborations, attracting more individuals to pursue artistic careers, and significantly contributing to the rapid development of Hong Kong’s art scene.

During this period, Hong Kong introduced new cultural policies aimed at positioning the city as a cultural hub through arts-urban development integration and public-private partnerships. Within this policy framework, heritage preservation and adaptive reuse of industrial buildings emerged as key initiatives, particularly in relation to tourism promotion. While policymakers and private enterprises embraced this arts and culture-driven approach, artists faced increasing difficulties as rising property prices and regulatory changes in industrial areas led to gentrification and displacement.

This research focuses on the perspectives and experiences of artists in the arts-and culture-led redevelopment process in Hong Kong in recent years, and by doing so deciphers issues of inequities in resource allocation and financial distribution perpetuated by policy practices. The dissertation includes four case studies, covering former industrial districts and newly developed arts venues in other districts of the city. Through archival research, on-site observations, and in-depth interviews, it seeks a comprehensive understanding of the forms and processes of spatial production of these sites. The research is approached from two interrelated dimensions. First, it traces how each industrial area underwent a distinct development process affected by its location, stakeholder groups and evolving activities and events. Second, by exploring artists’ everyday routines in these spaces and their dispositions, I analyze the power relationships between them and other institutional stakeholders within Hong Kong’s art ecosystem. The research acknowledges the mutual influence of these two dimensions and identifies that artists, as fundamental constituents of arts production, are often overlooked in policy discussions of arts and culture-led development. The dissertation thus provides empirical evidence and insights into the complexities and contradictions of Hong Kong’s urban redevelopment processes, which can only be fully understood by connecting them to the city’s capitalist economy shaped by specific historical trajectories.