1st Edition
Hong Kong Public Housing An Architectural and Policy History
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.
Introduction - A mirror of identity? Public housing in Hong Kong
PART 1: TOWARDS A PUBLIC HOUSING DRIVE
Chapter 1
1945-1953: Laying the foundations
Chapter 2
1954-1957: Shek Kip Mei and the Resettlement revolution
Chapter 3
1958-1964: Robin Black and incremental reform
Chapter 4
1964-1971: Trench’s governorship – pragmatism and tentative reformism
PART 2: THE MACLEHOSE YEARS
Chapter 5
1971-1973: Building a ‘model city’? The MacLehose Revolution
Chapter 6
1973-1976: Utopia on hold - from crisis management to programme planning
Chapter 7
MacLehose’s ‘brainchild’: The Home Ownership Scheme
Chapter 8
1977-1982: Consolidating the revolution
PART 3: COUNTDOWN TO THE HANDOVER
Chapter 9
1982-1986: Youde’s governorship – from sovereignty to stabilisation
Chapter 10
1987-1992: The Wilson years - accelerated decolonisation and the Housing Strategy
Chapter 11
Living in ‘Harmony’: a revolution in Hong Kong housing design
Chapter 12
1992-1997: The last Governor – from constitutional impasse to housing boom
PART 4: JULY 1997 TO THE PRESENT DAY
Chapter 13
1997-2005: The Tung administration - building a ‘new identity’ through public housing?
Chapter 14
2005 to the present: a frustrated recovery?
Conclusion
Hong Kong housing - a monumental heritage of the Lion Rock Spirit
Biography
Miles Glendinning is Professor of Architectural Conservation at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
