In the 1880s, Hong Kong was a booming colonial entrepôt, with many European, especially British, residents living in palatial mansions in the Mid-Levels and at the Peak. But it was also a ruthless migrant city where Chinese workers shared bedspaces in the crowded tenements of Taipingshan. Despite persistent inequality, Hong Kong never ceased to attract different classes of sojourners and immigrants, who strived to advance their social standing by accumulating wealth, especially through land and property speculation. In this engaging and extensively illustrated book, Cecilia L. Chu retells the ‘Hong Kong story’ by tracing the emergence of its ‘speculative landscape’ from the late nineteenth to the early decades of the twentieth century. Through a number of pivotal case studies, she highlights the contradictory logic of colonial urban development: the encouragement of native investment that supported a laissez-faire housing market, versus the imperative to segregate the populations in a hierarchical, colonial spatial order. Crucially, she shows that the production of Hong Kong’s urban landscapes was not a top-down process, but one that evolved through ongoing negotiations between different constituencies with vested interests in property. Further, her study reveals that the built environment was key to generating and attaining individual and collective aspirations in a racially divided, highly unequal, but nevertheless upwardly mobile, modernizing colonial city.

Colonial powers in China and northern Vietnam employed the built environment for many purposes: as an expression of imperial aspirations, a manifestation of supremacy, a mission to civilize, a re-creation of a home away from home, or simply as a place to live and work. In this volume, scholars of city planning, architecture, and Asian and imperial history provide a detailed analysis of how colonization worked on different levels, and how it was expressed in stone, iron, and concrete. The process of creating the colonial built environment was multilayered and unpredictable. This book uncovers the regional diversity of the colonial built form found from Harbin to Hanoi, varied experiences of the foreign powers in Asia, flexible interactions between the colonizers and the colonized, and the risks entailed in building and living in these colonies and treaty ports.

Rewriting Hong Kong's history from the bottom up, the chapters investigate vital, but hitherto obscured, aspects of the colony's rise. They cover the Chinese collaboration with the colonial regime, legal discrimination and intimidation, rural politics, social movements, government-business relations, industrial policy, flexible manufacturing and colonial historiography. Drawing together contributions from historians, sociologists and political scientists, the book highlights the role played by a variety of social actors in Hong Kong's history and differs both from recent celebrations of British colonialism and anti-colonial Chinese nationalism.

Standing close together in a compound overlooking Victoria Harbor, the Central Police Station, Central Magistracy, and Victoria Jail were a bastion of British colonial power and a symbol of security, law, and punishment. The magistracy administered a form of cheap summary justice heavily adapted to the needs of colonial Hong Kong, which led to well over a million predominantly Chinese people being sentenced between 1841 and 1941. In the overcrowded and unsanitary Victoria Jail, the regime vacillated uneasily between a belief in harsh deterrent punishment and an optimistic faith in reform and rehabilitation. Today, those monumental buildings still stand, forming Hong Kong's "Tai Kwun" complex, an international arts and entertainment hub. Richly illustrated and informed by a wealth of sources, Crime, Justice, and Punishment in Colonial Hong Kong revisits the Tai Kwun complex's past by offering a vivid account of those three institutions from 1841 to the late twentieth century and telling the stories of people whose lives intersected with them, including captains, superintendents, and magistrates, jailers and constables, thieves and ruffians, hawkers and street boys, down-and-outs, and prostitutes, gamblers, debtors, and beggars--the guilty as well as the innocent.

This insightful book provides a comprehensive survey of urban development in Hong Kong since 1841. Pui-yin Ho explores the ways in which the social, economic and political environments of different eras have influenced the city's development. From colonial governance, wartime experiences, high density development and adjustments before and after 1997 through contemporary challenges, this book explores forward-looking ideas that urban planning can offer to lead the city in the future. Evaluating the relationship between town planning and social change, this book looks at how a local Hong Kong identity emerged in the face of conflict and compromise between Chinese and European cultures. In doing so, it brings a fresh perspective to urban research, providing historical context and direction for the future development of the city. Hong Kong's urban development experience offers not only a model for other Chinese cities but also a better understanding of Asian cities more broadly. Urban studies scholars will find this an exemplary case study of a developing urban landscape. Town planners and architects will also benefit from reading this comprehensive book as it shows how Hong Kong can be taken to the next stage of urban development and modernisation.

This book focuses on the transformation from colonial to global – the formation, mechanism, events, works and people related to urban architecture. The book reveals hardships the city encountered in the 1950s and the glamour enjoyed in the 1980s. It depicts the public and private developments, and especially the public housing which has sheltered millions of residents. The author identifies the architects practising in the formative years and the representatives of a rising generation after the 1980s. Suffering from land shortage and a dense environment, the urban development of Hong Kong has in the past 70 years met the changing demands of fluctuating economic activities and a rising population. Architecture on the island has been shaped by social demands, the economy and technology. The buildings have been forged by the government, clients, planners, architects, many contractors and end-users. The built environment nurtures our life and is visual evidence of the way the city has developed. Hong Kong is a key to East Asia in the Pacific Era. The book is a must-read for a thorough understanding the contemporary history and architecture of this oriental pearl. Endorsement: “Hong Kong sets an extreme example of hyper-density living. MTR’s Kowloon Station project offered my firm the unique opportunity to contribute to a new type of fully integrated three dimensional transport mega-structure, conceived as a well-connected place for people to live, work and play. Through Charlie Xue’s book, one can see how a compact city works and high density integrated development indicates a sustainable path for modern city making.” Sir Terry Farrell, CBE, Principal, Farrells "Well researched and refreshingly well structured, Charlie Xue's latest book comprehensively shows how Hong Kong's post-war urban architecture both tracks and symbolizes the former British colony's rise to success - a must read for architecture and culture buffs alike." Peter G. Rowe, Raymond Garbe Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor. “An essential addition to the growing literature on Chinese architecture, the title of the book belies the full scope of Xue’s extensive history. Covering Hong Kong’s postwar transition from defeated colony to Pacific Age power house, Xue expertly traces the evolution of the city’s ambitious and innovative programs of integrated high density urban design and infrastructure, as well as changing architectural fashions. In a time when many Western governments have all but abandoned public housing programs, Xue’s book is a timely reminder of what can be achieved.” Professor Chris Abel, author of Architecture and Identity, Architecture, technology and process and The Extended Self.“/p>

Hong Kong Public Housing provides the first comprehensive history of one of the most dramatic episodes in the global history of the modern built environment: the vast public housing programme sponsored by successive Hong Kong governments from the 1950s, in a quest to build up the territory into a lasting ‘people’s home’. And unlike many of its counterparts elsewhere, this is a programme still ongoing today – a case of ‘history in progress’ – as Hong Kong now boasts one of the world’s longest-lasting public housing programmes. During that time, it has been not just a mirror of the cultural and economic values of Hong Kong society but also a reflection of more nebulous, fast-changing perceptions of identity – and a testament to the community-building achievements of Hongkongers over these years. This authoritative study combines architectural history with the broader social, political, and cultural aspects of housing production – particularly the geo-political issues of sovereignty and decolonisation that uniquely, and fundamentally, structured the trajectory of Hong Kong public housing and territory development. Exploring the relationship between built form, ideology, and administrative governance, it shows how massive state intervention interacted at times uneasily with Hong Kong’s dominant laissez-faire ethos, to help maintain the legitimacy of successive administrations during an era of ‘auto-decolonisation’, and support an interstitial society suspended between two sovereignties. Following more recent political changes, Hong Kong’s public housing heritage has also become a focus of nostalgic community pride – a monumental achievement of ‘home building’ which this book documents and celebrates for posterity.

In Edge of Empires, Carroll situates Hong Kong squarely within the framework of both Chinese and British colonial history, while exploring larger questions about the meaning and implications of colonialism in modern history.

This book investigates what the history of Hong Kong’s urban development has to teach other cities as they face environmental challenges, social and demographic change and the need for new models of dense urbanism. The authors describe how the high-rise intensity of Hong Kong came about; how the forest of towers are in fact vertical culs de sac; and how the city might become truly ‘volumetric’ with mixed activities through multiple levels and 3D movement networks incorporating ‘town cubes’ rather than town squares. For more information, visit the authors' website: http://www.makingofhk.com/makingofhk.swf

Essays examine the relationship between Hong Kong and China.