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Like other concepts, gentrification must be situated in the socio-historical context in which it was produced. Since its coinage the concept has travelled widely, yet it has been applied unevenly, and in some cases uncritically, in various locations now including Asian cities. This essay challenges the application of the concept of gentrification to Hong Kong, as attempted by an article previously published in this journal. It responds through two main lines of inquiry. First, it demonstrates how the absence of historical, geographical and socio-political context weakens the basis for a critical urban geography. Second, in constructing a historical baseline, this essay proposes to conceive urban redevelopment through hegemony-cum-alienation, which is a more complicated process than displacement of the working class. Alienated hegemonic redevelopment perpetuates systemic reproduction and associated power politics, yet with the primary source of contradiction residing in landed and property relations. Conclusions suggest the urgency of developing new approaches instead of relying on more empirical studies as evidence for an already over-developed concept. Analysis of the Hong Kong case suggests how the spent concept of gentrification could be superseded by alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high property price syndrome in Hong Kong has led to heightened concern about the role of landed capital in property development. Recently, the hegemony of the real estate industry has become a buzzword in local literature, but unfortunately there is neither adequate theoretical articulation nor informed understanding of the concept of hegemony. There is widespread misunderstanding of hegemony, equating it to domination by property tycoons. The local literature has overlooked the government-business collusion in constructing the common sense of society so as to dominate others. Through an empirical investigation of the redevelopment of ‘Government/Institution or Community’ (G/IC) land in Hong Kong, this article attempts to offer an alternative explanation to the land question of G/IC redevelopment by highlighting that the everyday life of the silent majority and of professionals has in fact perpetuated the hegemony of the real estate industry in Hong Kong. It is argued that the government, property developers, professionals, charitable organisations and the general public have altogether participated, in different ways and to different extents, in the capital accumulation projects of leading developer conglomerates in Hong Kong. A land (re)development regime has thus contributed to the property boom in Hong Kong.

Culture-led urban regeneration has been the buzzword of many cities around the world nowadays. There are two related ways to interrogate this problematic. First, it is about the extent to which it is a real urban future for cities. Second, it is about its applicability to cities other than those in the West. This article attempts to tackle these related queries by, first, invoking Lefebvre's concepts of utopia vs isotopia and, then, drawing on two cases of cultural regeneration in an industrial district and an old residential neigbourhood in Hong Kong. The conceptual discussion of utopia highlights the imperative of spatial contradictions as the prerequisite for the emergence of concrete utopia; otherwise, it only results in isotopia. As such, it is difficult for cultural regeneration to produce utopia. This, in turn, calls for greater attention to the historical–geographical processes that have produced the conditions for the concerned city. It is these processes that differentiate Hong Kong from many others in the West. The prevailing land (re)development regime has favoured some processes at the expense of others. The two empirical cases have confirmed that either spatial contradictions were not there, or if they ever emerged, they were time and space specific. These conditions rendered it difficult to nurture creativity and to really relegate the decision-making power to the people, thereby denying the possible applicability of the problematic of cultural regeneration to Hong Kong.

Henri Lefebvre has enjoyed wide currency over the past two decades. One of his path-breaking contributions to urban research is the thesis of complete urbanization, producing an urban society that is not only real but also virtual. This thesis has enlightened research on urbanization across the world. Nevertheless, like other great thinkers at any time, Lefebvre, being a Frenchman born at the turn of the twentieth century, as well as someone who experienced the rapid rise of industrial capitalism since the 1950s, the turbulent years of the 1960s and the signicant change in the nature of state intervention since the 1970s, is very much spatiotemporally bounded (Gardiner 2000: 10-17; Merrield 2006: 8). Smith (2003: xx-xxi) has objected that The Urban Revolution is incapable of addressing the rapidly expanding urbanizing world as well as the more complex web of capital and the state in the present day. In response, there are numerous attempts either to defend Lefebvre by commenting that he had already foreseen these ‘anomalies’ or to explore seriously the ways to extend Lefebvre over time and across space. As an example of the latter, Kipfer et al. (2008: 299) think that it is straightforward: just extend Lefebvre by taking into account colonialism and patriarchy. Globalizing Lefebvre entails ‘linking considerations of everyday life to a broad critique of the imperial and patriarchal aspects of capitalist world order’. How feasible is this task?

Hong Kong society nowadays is overwhelmed by the rhetoric of hegemony, but there is no serious attempt to discuss it, especially in the domain of urban development. This article expands on Henri Lefebvre’s concept of urbanizing Gramsci to resolve contradictions of space under increasing urbanization by urban specialists and applies it to investigate the public engagement exercise of Central harbourfront planning in Hong Kong. By dissecting its contents and procedures, the article illustrates how public engagement has insisted on technical rationality, thereby perpetuating the functioning of the land (re)development regime. In consequence, the ordinary residents may have been excluded from ‘rational’ consideration in the (re)development of Hong Kong.

The city of Beijing has increasingly been re-integrated with the world since the 1980s, thereby entering into closer, but more complex relationships with the global system. To understand the implications for urban planning, it is important to appreciate that Beijing is handling these global–local relationships amid delicate 'local' relationships with the Chinese state, in ways that are obviously different from those of the West. The objective of this paper is to throw light on how new global and local forces have influenced planning in Beijing, first by understanding the nature of urban government in Beijing and then by examining master plans for the city. From a Foucauldian perspective, it tries to describe state practices, including urban planning, of the Chinese governmentality. It focuses on the effectiveness of government during this new era, taking into account non-state practices, including those adopted from the outside world. It argues that the state needs to invent new toolkits and conceive urba...

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....

Four organised car sharing schemes (the YORKSHARE schemes) were established and monitored in West Yorkshire between 1979 and 1981. Three of the schemes were based on a employment sites and one on a residential suburb. Differences in site characteristics and in procedures allowed conclusions to be drawn as to the determinants of scheme performance and impact on the transport system. The proportion of the target population participating in new car sharing arrangements as a result of the YORKSHARE promotion varied from 2% to less than 0.5%. Impacts on car use for the work journey were minor and the main result was an abstraction of public transport patronage. The indirect impacts of car sharing appeared to be unimportant. The paper reports on a detailed analysis of costs and benefits and includes comments on the proper role of ridesharing promotion within transport policy.