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This special issue originated from a similarly titled forum organized by the guest editor of this special issue at the Department of Geography, Hong Kong Baptist University, in November, 2013. The ...

This paper develops a nuanced understanding of town-country relations in China. Inherent in the current literature is the serious problem of randomly indigenizing experiences and concepts from the ...

There are various techniques for deforming three-dimensional objects in existing computer-aided design CAD systems. To maintain user-specified constraints in the deformation of a parametric and feature-based model is a new challenge in deformation modelling. This article presents a constraint-based deformation technique. Firstly, a deformed object is obtained with common deformation techniques such as free-form deformation FFD and axial deformation. Secondly, features defined with parametric are grouped into systems of primitive constraints based on user specification. Finally, features are reconstructed by the use of optimisation technique. The optimisation is to minimise the changes in the deformed model subjected to all the provided constraints. This method allows deformations like FFD and axial deformation to be performed without destroying the constraints in the model. This method combines the advantage of free-form modelling with feature-based modelling and allows engineering design to be performed in a free-form manner.

By applying the Lefebvrian lens, this paper tries to understand why unlike previous similar cases, the latest removal of the Star Ferry and Queen's Pier was so controversial. To Lefebvre, embedded in "spatial practices" that "secrete" a place are two contradicting spaces: "conceived spaces" produced by planners to create exchange values and "lived spaces" appropriated by citizens for use values. Applying Lefebvre's framework to examine the "Piers saga", it is found that the pre-Second World War (WWII) piers were "conceived" by spatial practices of a colonial and racially segregated trading enclave. The public space in the commercial heart that housed the previous generations of piers was not accessible to the Chinese community, thus denying them opportunities to appropriate them and turn them into "lived" spaces. It was only after WWII when the Government carried out further reclamation to meet the needs of an industrializing economy that inclusive public spaces were conceived in the commercial heart, enabling the general public to "appropriate" them as "lived" space. When the Government planned to remove this very first "lived" space in the political and economic heart of the city to conceive further reclamation for the restructuring economy, the more enlightened citizens were determined to defend it.

A Hong Kong—based human geographer presents a paper on the city's social development and its domination by land and real estate developers (a state of affairs he terms the "[re]development regime"). The author analyzes the route and composition of the participants of an Olympic torch relay in the city, which demonstrates the influence of that regime. Before focusing on the regime's role in impeding alternative options for urban (and distorting societal) development, the paper discusses Hong Kong's social rankings, including a comparison with China and the United States, as well as the increasing social inequality, the rising cost of living (particularly food and energy prices), and the prohibitive cost of apartment rentals. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, L85, O15, R14, R31. 8 figures, 3 tables, 37 references.

This paper argues that before 1978, the Chinese state, a "police state" in the Foucauldian concept of governmentality, aimed at total administration of the economy and society. Central investments determined local spatial development. Economic reforms and administrative decentralization after 1978 allowed local authorities to pursue their own development, leading to many planning problems. To regain control over spatial development, the state now employs urban system planning to regulate development in city regions. The Pearl River Delta Urban System Plan (PRDUSP) is a case in point. To overcome myopic regional development and environmental issues, the PRDUSP lays out a development strategy in which cities are organized into hierarchies around three metropolitan areas, have different functions, and are connected by development and growth axes. Various measures and policies also are recommended. All these suggest that the Provincial Government of Guangdong is searching for a new way of regional governance....

This paper studies the political economy of urban governance and land‐use planning mechanisms in the ‘one country, two systems’ of mainland China and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR). It is argued that the market economy of Hong Kong had, over the years as a British colony, established an efficiently‐run regulatory system of land‐use planning. The current land‐use planning mechanisms are biased toward economic growth as a result of its executive‐government‐led and business‐interests‐dominated political structure. The challenge for Hong Kong as a relatively autonomous SAR, therefore, is to incorporate the social and environmental dimensions in planning for territorial development within a wider regional context as a result of economic and political integration with China. In mainland China, the reforming socialist planned economy has now embraced privately and foreign‐owned enterprises though the Communist Party and the government have retained strong political control. A ‘dual’ l...