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Safety has long been regarded as one of the most important functional requirements of buildings. However, building safety in Hong Kong has long been jeopardised by the proliferation of unauthorised building works (UBWs), which are essentially works constructed without any prior approval or consent of the government. Due to the acute problem of housing supply–demand imbalance, the numbers of illegal subdivided units (ISUs) in the city have been increasing since the early 2010s, frequently resulting in injuries and deaths amongst the residents. It is therefore a matter of urgency for the government to tackle the problem. Speculative property owners construct ISUs in their premises for economic gain so the government needs to enforce rules against the construction of ISUs. Building inspection should be carried out to uncover cases of illegal construction for subsequent enforcement actions. In this article, a game-theoretic model for the strategic control of existing buildings in Hong Kong is developed to illustrate that, when the level of punishment against ISU increases, the less frequent ISU inspections needed by the government will be, and concurrently, the chances of ISU construction by property owners will decrease. The model offers valuable insights into why Hong Kong’s building control system fails to solve the problem of ISU proliferation in the city. more...

Since the early 2010s, sub-divided flats have been proliferating in Hong Kong—one of the world’s most compact and expensive cities to live in. The growth of informal housing in the city has long been attributed to the shortage of housing supply. Apart from developing new land for housing, one possible approach to deal with the land supply constraint is to speed up the redevelopment of old buildings in the city centre in order to maximise the land use potential. Yet, this approach brings about many socio-economic issues that drive up the transaction costs for its implementation. To get around the hurdles of urban redevelopment, a land management technique called land readjustment (LR) has been recommended, but its use has never been institutionalised in the city. Using declassified archival documents and maps, this article argues that LR was already implemented—albeit informally—in Hong Kong during the 1960s–70s within the Kowloon Walled City. With the historical experience of the City of Darkness, the aim of this article is to shed light on the in situ resettlement of original site residents—very much at the heart of land readjustment—as a means to bring down the transaction costs of deep urban redevelopment. more...