STATES OF COMPULSION: Reassessing ‘State-Led’ Neighborhood Change in Hong Kong

Abstract

This article provides a critical reassessment of the role of the state in processes of neighborhood change in Hong Kong, based on mixed-methods research conducted in the rapidly changing Sai Ying Pun neighborhood. We argue that common narratives of ‘state-led’ processes of neighborhood change often overstate, oversimplify or unduly assume the influence of state agencies, especially the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) and other ‘usual suspects’, obscuring the complex ways that states facilitate and compel the actions and agendas of other actors. By elaborating implications of several specific forms of state action, especially a 2010 amendment to Hong Kong's Land (Compulsory Sale for Redevelopment) Ordinance, we demonstrate that the state in Hong Kong plays many different roles in facilitating neighborhood transformation, creating an uneven geography of state intervention dependent on locally specific factors such as the particularities of architecture, housing types and residential density in different urban areas as well as existing configurations of policy, legislation and infrastructure. These many articulations of the state are of strategic value to a variety of elite interests, from property developers to wealthy residents and international consumers, whose distinct and competing agendas could hardly be so well served by a less dynamic state.