Reclaiming Hong Kong

Reclaiming Hong Kong The Central & Wan Chai reclamation controversy from an Actor-Network perspective Joeri Nortier November 2011 1 2 Reclaiming Hong Kong The Central & Wan Chai reclamation controversy from an Actor- Network perspective Author J.A. Nortier [email protected] Utrecht University Prof. dr. T. J. M. Spit Professor in Urban & Regional Planning City University of Hong Kong dr. B. Wissink Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Public & Social Administration RESPACE 2011 - Debating Hong Kong Oisín Devlin Syd Jordaan Anne Sanders Jessie Vols Cover Photo: Central phase III Reclamation under construction in september 2010. Source: Stanley_Wong < http://www. flickr.com/photos/stanley-wong/4982125563/> 3 [PREFACE] When I started my Master of Urban & Regional Planning at Utrecht University in September 2011, I had no idea that I’d be finishing my thesis about harbour reclamation in Hong Kong exactly one year later. In fact, I was gearing up for a master thesis about a planning subject in The Netherlands, combined with an internship at a municipality or private company. But then, after just one week of lectures, something special came along; I was introduced to the RESPACE project 2011, taking place in Hong Kong. I had heard about this research project before. A small group of students would, together with project coordinator and Utrecht University teacher dr. Bart Wissink, visit an Asian city to research these changing urban environments. This year, the focus would be on urban conflicts in Hong Kong and 5 students would be able to enrol. Such a research project would fit perfectly with what I was and still am interested in; con- temporary issues in large urban areas, urban planning’s increasing difficulty to deal with a fast-changing civil society and the extremely fast growth of Asian cities. It didn’t take long me for to decide that I wanted to enrol in this project. A few months later, in February 2011, I landed in Hong Kong with 4 fellow Utrecht University students. Within 4 months, we had to gather as much information as possible about my research subject, the Cen- tral & Wan Chai reclamation scheme. So the next few months were all about gathering a large number of newspaper articles, papers and governmental plans and combining them into a first draft of an empirical description so we could slowly start to understand what our projects were about and how Hong Kong is changing. And to complement this information, a number of key people had to be found and interviewed. In the end, it was mostly interviewing key people that really introduced us to how urban planning really works in Hong Kong. Combined with a number of excursion in Hong Kong and the surrounding region, this gave me the feeling that I got to know Hong Kong and that I was slowly starting to understand how the city works. Time flew fast and before I knew it, I was back in The Netherlands. It was now time to combine all the information I had collected in Hong Kong into one thesis and to find an answer to the main question. Something that proved to be harder than I thought; hours worth of interviews had to transcribed, hundreds of newspaper articles had to be read and all this had to be written down with a very interesting but difficult theory on how the social world is being created. And now, as I’m writing this preface, this project has come to an end. It completely blew away my expecta- tions and it has taught me a great deal. Not just how research should be done (or how not), but also about urban planning in general. Witnessing how an urban planning system is actively changing due to societal changes has made me think about the future or urban planning. And even though Hong Kong’s urban planning can hardly be compared to urban planning in the Netherlands, it has made me wonder if both would be able to learn something from each other. Both are struggling with an increasingly ineffective urban planning systems and both rely heavily on large infrastructural projects to keep the economy in a healthy state. And throughout this project, it continued to strike me that what is happening in Hong Kong right now, looks very much like the social processes that changed society and thus also urban planning in the 1960 and 1970’s in Western Europe and North America. It will be interesting to see how urban planning will develop in Hong Kong during the next decennia. 5 However, before we move over to the first chapter of this thesis, I would like to get rid of the impression that this thesis is solely my own work. I couldn’t have done this without the support of a lot of people. First of all, I’d like to thank dr. Bart Wissink for giving me this opportunity, for helping me getting my thesis on the right track and for showing me what great place Hong Kong is. Next, I would also like to thank the students who joined me in Hong Kong (Jessie Vols, Syd Jordaan, Oisín Devlin and Anne Sanders) for their help in this project, all the people in Hong Kong who were so patient to be interviewed by me and the KF Hein Foundation for their financial support. And finally, I would like to thank my mother and my girlfriend for their support and their love, even while I was almost on the other side of the world. Joeri Nortier November 2011 6 7 [TABLE OF CONTENTS] 8 PREFACE 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS 8 [1] INTRODUCTION 10 1.1 Researching Urban Conflicts 11 1.2 The Role of Controversies 12 1.3 Researching urban Conflicts in Hong Kong 13 1.4 Structure of This Thesis 15 [2] RECLAMATION & HONG KONG: A STRONG ALLIANCE 18 2.1 Reclamation in Urban Areas 19 2.2 A History of Hong Kong 20 2.3 Urban Planning in Hong Kong 23 2.4 Reclamation in Hong Kong 26 2.5 Conclusions 28 [3] THE ACTOR-NETWORK THEORY 30 3.1 Searching for a Theory 31 3.2 Absolute vs. Relative Space 32 3.3 The Actor-Network Theory 35 3.4 Actor-Network Theory: Implications for This Research 39 [4] RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 40 4.1 Designing a Research Project with ANT 41 4.2 A Case Study Revealed 44 4.3 Seven Steps to Knowledge 44 4.4 Limitattions: Why Not Even This Study Is Perfect 47 [5] THE CENTRAL & WAN CHAI RECLAMATION 48 5.1 Introduction 49 5.2 Gentle Translation: A New Scheme Is Planned 49 5.3 An Association Is Breaking Up: The Birth of a Controversy 56 5.4 An Unexpected Mobilization: The Ordinance under Fire 70 5.5 The Controversy Continues: A Legal Battle 75 5.6 Government’s Interessement; Changing Attitudes 85 5.7 An On-Going Conflict 99 5.8 Conclusions 104 [6] CONCLUSIONS 108 6.1 Theoretical & Methodological Conclusions 109 6.2 Empirical Conclusions 110 6.3 Discussion 114 SUMMARY 119 BIBLIOGRAPHY 124 APPENDIX 141 9 [1] [INTRODUCTION] 10 1.1 Researching Urban Conflicts Since the 1970’s, urban planning has been in a bit of a slump. Grand plans of new cities, infrastructure projects and urban redevelopments are still being made, but the implementation of these plans has become an ever growing problem. There has been a widening gap between wishes and reality (Van der Cammen, 1986). Scientists often blame this gap on the individualization and the emergence of the network society, in which public action could no longer be legitimated by a universal centre of shared values (Castells, 1996, Boelens, 2009). Urban controversies sprang up, as people contested the government’s planning ideals and no longer cooperated with the government. The old modernist idea of the malleable society no longer holds true and since the 1970’s, urban planning has been struggling to reposition itself in this changing world. This modernist planning was based on using scientific knowledge and reason in urban planning to construct a better world; society could, according to modernist planning, essentially be moulded into a more perfect form (Healey, 1992). Within this planning theory, planning itself was seen as an activity for national governments. Governments did include other actors in the planning process, but in the end, the government was in control of the whole process; the government organized the society (McLoughlin, 1969). In post-war Europe and North-America this view gained a strong foothold as it ‘presented planning as a progressive force for economic and social development in a world where democracy and capitalism were seen to co-exist in comfortable consensus’ (Healey, 1992). However, from the 1970’s and onwards, this modernist view of planning became increasingly contro- versial. Neo-Marxists concluded that this form of planning only led to a power hegemony of capitalists, while others concluded that they could not deal with the problems of an increasingly heterogeneous society, the so called ‘wicked problems’, and that planning had lost its touch with society (Healey, 1992, Rittel & Webber, 1973, Salet, 1983). New forms of planning emerged to combat the growing ineffectiveness, such as communicative or interactive planning, in which the government became more of an actor in the world instead of a director of the world and in which public participation received more attention (Innes, 1995). But on the other hand, these urban controversies also relate to a more specific concept, which Peter Hall (1980) dubbed the ‘Great Planning Disasters’ (Hall, 1980). In this book, Hall describes a number of projects from the 1960 and onwards which cost a lot of money to plan or to execute and to which, after the project had been finished or sometimes even cancelled, the general consensus was negative.

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