In Public Housing and Formalizing Squatting in Hong Kong, 1963–1985, Alan Smart and Fung Chi Keung Charles trace two decades of development of squatting in Hong Kong. The authors reconstruct the government policy on squatting through both ethnographic and archival research. The book sheds new light on the consequences of various attempts to control encroachment on scarce urban space. It argues that intersecting policy agendas resulted in decisions that were often not desired, but which emerged as practical solutions from prior failures. The authors address the challenges of explaining confidential policy decisions and offer new approaches applicable in other contexts. Overall, Smart and Fung make an important contribution to the understanding of how public housing and squatting interacted in influential ways that have been poorly understood and offer new perspectives on the challenges of urban governance and housing problems.
Price: £32.00
Pages: 340
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Imprint: Hong Kong University Press
Series: Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Studies Series
Publication Date:
01 June 2023
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9789888805648
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Urban, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / City Planning & Urban Development, HISTORY / Asia / China
“The definitive history of how resettlement policies evolved as the squatter population swelled and as London and Beijing moved closer to signing the 1984 Sino-British Declaration. A masterful combination of theorizing and documentary sleuthing, a landmark in contemporary debates over the optimal responses to the formalization of informal property.”
—Deborah Davis, Yale University
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Map of Hong Kong in 1984
1. Introduction
2. Informality
3. Evaluating the Geopolitical Explanation
4. The Situation in the Early 1960s
5. Riots and Reforms
6. The Mangle of Policy Practice
7. Supply, Demand, and Failures
8. Hong Kong Identity and Squatter Exclusion
9. Squatter Area Improvement
10. The Squatter Occupancy Survey
11. Managing Squatting in Other Asian Cities
12. Conclusions
Notes
Bibliography
Index
