The Blame Game: How colonial legacies in Hong Kong shape street vendor and public space policies By Andrea Kyna Chiu-wai Cheng A.B. Economics Bryn Mawr College (1993) Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in City Planning at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY June 2012 © 2012 Andrea Cheng. All Rights ReserVed The author here by grants to MIT the permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of the thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. Author_______________________________________________________________________________________________ Department of Urban Studies and Planning May 24, 2012 Certified by _________________________________________________________________________________________ Associate Professor Annette Kim Department of Urban Studies and Planning Thesis SuperVisor Accepted by__________________________________________________________________________________________ Professor Alan Berger Chair, MCP Committee Department of Urban Studies and Planning 1 2 The Blame Game: How colonial legacies in Hong Kong shape street vendor and public space policies By Andrea Kyna Chiu-wai Cheng Abstract Hong Kong has seen seVeral social moVements emerge since 2003 that haVe focused on saVing quotidian public spaces, such as traditional shopping streets and markets, from redeVelopment. This thesis explores how the most important form of public space in Hong Kong, streets and sidewalks, has been shaped by the regulatory framework for street vendors and markets, which in turn bears the imprint of Hong Kong’s colonial heritage. I seek to identify contradictions between the ways society currently uses space and the original intent of the regulations, and establish if these can explain current frictions over public space expressed as protests. In turn, I also argue that locating the contradictions helps to identify alternatiVe approaches to mediating conflicting claims on space, which thus far haVe been analyzed through a “right to the city” perspectiVe. This paper utilizes informal economy analysis and studies of colonial urbanism as additional lenses through which to interpret past policy choices. A case study applies this approach to analyze goVernment responses to the deaths of nine people in fatal fire in a tenement building on Fa Yuen Street, which plays host to a liVely street market in Mongkok, a bustling lower-income district in the heart of Hong Kong. NarratiVes about the causes of the fire assign blame to the street Vendors rather than building owners whose renoVations left fire escapes blocked and inaccessible. This narratiVe fits a pattern of associating Vendors with public health or safety risks. While this characterization is common world-wide, in Hong Kong it is exacerbated by its colonial legacy of combining laissez-faire goVernance and paternalism. The dialectic between laissez-faire and paternalism can be recognized as playing a role shaping street vendor policies. Thesis superVisor: Annette Mae Kim Title: Associate Professor of Urban Planning Thesis reader: Tunney Lee Title: Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies and Planning, Emeritus 3 Acknowledgements Thanks must go first to my advisor, Annette Kim, for her guidance, her talent for provoking students into new ways of thinking and interpreting the world around them, and her unwavering encouragement. I also extend my gratitude to my reader Tunney Lee for proViding grounding and perspectiVe for my Views with his inValuable expertise. This thesis would not haVe come to fruition without the generosity of the scholars, planning practitioners, journalists, and actiVists in Hong Kong who took the time to share with me their Views on the state of public space and urban planning in Hong Kong: Wallace Chang Ping-hung, Chris DeWolf, Billy Lam Chung-lun, Christine Loh, Ng Mee Kam, Michael Siu Kin- Wai, Anthony Yeh Gar On and Paul Zimmerman. I am grateful to my DUSP classmates, in particular the members of the 11.306 studios, 11.483 with Annette Kim, 11.470 with Diane DaVis, and PED375 with Martha Chen at the Kennedy School of Government, who all shared in my voyage of discoVery as it wound its way through Hong Kong’s land use issues, property rights, political economy, and street vendors to arriVe at this thesis. Lastly, thanks to my family for taking such an interest in my thesis: to my parents for exploring the markets of Hong Kong with me, to my sister Vania for her painstaking proofreading, and my sister Faith for coaching me through the thesis-writing process. 4 Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................ 7 Methodology and aim ..................................................................................................................................... 8 Why does this question matter? ............................................................................................................. 11 Conceptual framework .................................................................................................................. 12 Sidewalk rights ............................................................................................................................................... 13 Informal economies ..................................................................................................................................... 14 Colonial urbanism ......................................................................................................................................... 16 Thesis outline ................................................................................................................................... 19 Notes on timeline and nomenclature ................................................................................................... 20 Chapter 2: History of public space in Hong Kong ....................................................... 23 A history of urban form ................................................................................................................. 25 What did public space mean to the British colonists? ................................................................... 25 Public health and segregation ................................................................................................................ 28 Colonial governance: Neglect, indifference or liberal tolerance? ............................................. 31 Public space for the Chinese population ................................................................................. 33 The modernist era ........................................................................................................................... 35 Admission of Chinese to the goVerning classes ............................................................................... 36 Impact on the built enVironment ........................................................................................................... 37 Space as creator of modern society – and policy making ........................................................... 40 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 41 Chapter 3: The political economy of public space ..................................................... 43 Physical form of Hong Kong ........................................................................................................ 45 Housing and transport ............................................................................................................................... 46 Enter the dragonhead: Economic integration with the Pearl River Delta ................... 49 Feeling the effects of globalization ........................................................................................................ 50 The tourist tide and public space ........................................................................................................... 53 The economics of land in “Asia’s World City” ........................................................................ 55 Building “Asia’s World City” ..................................................................................................................... 56 One property to rule them all: one property to bind them ........................................................ 59 Property hegemony ..................................................................................................................................... 60 The practice of public space ........................................................................................................ 63 Chapter 4: Evolution of public space regulations ...................................................... 67 Institutional legacies ..................................................................................................................... 67 Colonial philosophies of space and Vending ..................................................................................... 68 The policing of public space ........................................................................................................ 71 Hawker specific governance ....................................................................................................... 74 Official policy