A sociological analysis of urban renewal in Hong Kong

Abstract

Regime theories have stressed that urban renewal policy is more than an issue of physical decay management of old urban areas. In addition, it is rested on the contested processes of problem identification and issue framing involving different actors. In this sense, urban renewal policy can then be regarded as a platform of various collaboration and confrontation to take place among government, private developers, professionals and grassroots. The urban redevelopment projects which were launched by Hong Kong Government has stressed highly on "finance principle" since 1960s'. Urban renewal policy was utilized as ways to maximize land values and to generate a stream of profits to public coffer. Government-land developers' partnership and economic-led attitudes of urban renewal were noted and these features were made even stronger in 1990s' as the establishment of Land Development Corporation and Urban Renewal Authority. This overemphasis on market-led urban redevelopment has always led the affected residents to bear the negative impact brought by the urban renewal projects. Therefore, different urban movements emerged to challenge this economic-led urban renewal with different demands and the most dominant type is "compensation and rehousing". Some social groups include social workers, professionals and academics intend to wage challenge beyond the strife for material benefits by including the right of public participation in early stage of urban renewal planning. In this paper, two cases, which were pioneer projects gearing on the demand of "public participatory planning" in Hong Kong urban renewal context, will be studied. It first aims at demonstrating how different actors such as professionals, academics, social workers and residents attend to different framing tasks to widen the agenda of urban renewal policy. It also explores the prospect of changes initiating or inhibiting by dynamic and competitive regime processes in these alternative projects to the existing approach of urban redevelopment.