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This book reveals an insider's view on how Hong Kong's land system, inherited from the British, has helped to create unrivalled wealth for the ruling class, how the lack of competition law has encouraged industrial and economic concentration in the same entities, and how these factors have given rise to a host of social and economic ills. The Chinese version has become the bestseller of non-fiction titles in Hong Kong in 2010.
This book borrows the concept of “high-definition” from digital broadcasting to highlight our unique approach to Hong Kong society, which gives a sharper image than analyses. It intends to highlight contrasts with many common and taken-for-granted stories, myths and representations of Hong Kong— which often presented with a low level of detail, lacking proper connections between grounded personal experiences and the macro social context. With chapters covering various salient dimensions of Hong Kong’s society, including migration, economy, inequality, identity and social movements, our “high-definition” approach presents images with high enough “resolution” to match multiple layers of experiences from walks of life of Hong Kong people, contributing to an understanding of how global transformation impacts local people’s experiences, as well as Hong Kong’s significance in the regional and global system.
Author : Ian Scott Publisher : Hong Kong University Press Page : 463 pages File Size : 41,53 MB Release : 2022-09-21 Category : Political Science ISBN : 9888754033
This book describes and analyses the role of the public sector in the often-charged political atmosphere of post-1997 Hong Kong. In this second edition, Ian Scott explores public sector accountability in terms of Hong Kong’s constitutional framework and the structure, functions, and personnel policies of its civil service system. He examines critical issues facing the administration of the public sector and the formulation and implementation of public policy with particular attention to the political challenges confronting the Hong Kong government over the past decade. A concluding chapter assesses how contested values in a changing political environment have affected the public sector in recent years. This edition has been fully updated to incorporate the latest statistics and research, including Scott’s work in such areas as integrity management, corruption prevention, and policing. This book is an essential resource for scholars and students of public administration and public policy in Hong Kong and more broadly for those who are interested in how a particular jurisdiction deals with common administrative problems such as centralisation, the role of statutory bodies, corruption prevention, and the redress of citizens’ grievances. ‘Professor Ian Scott’s book, The Public Sector in Hong Kong, now in a second much-expanded and up-to-date edition, offers a thorough and rigorous analysis of contemporary governance in Hong Kong, focusing on all the key stakeholders. The book is essential reading for government officials, politicians, journalists, academics, students, and the general public.’ —John P. Burns, The University of Hong Kong ‘The second edition not only updates the development in the public sector of Hong Kong, but also provides an important perspective to help readers understand the contexts that navigate its latest developments. This edition, along with Ian Scott’s earlier work, will be judged by many in the field to be among the best books on Hong Kong politics.’ —Hon S. Chan, City University of Hong Kong
This book gathers the voices of four local Hong Kong theologians to reflect on the 2014 democracy protests in the city from the perspectives of Catholic social teaching, feminist and queer intersectionality, Protestant liberation, and textual exegesis. The volume also includes an extended primer on Hong Kong politics to aid readers as they reflect on the theology underlying the democracy protests. September 28, 2014 is known as the day that political consciousness in Hong Kong began to shift. As police fired eighty-seven volleys of tear gas at protesters demanding “genuine universal suffrage” in Hong Kong, the movement (termed the “Umbrella Movement”) ignited a polarizing set of debates over civil disobedience, government collusion with private interests, and democracy. The Umbrella Movement was also a theological watershed moment, a time for religious reflection. This book analyzes the role that religion played in shaping the course of this historic movement.
How should we regard the contemporary proliferation of images? Today, visual information is available as projected, printed and on-screen imagery, in the forms of video games, scientific data, virtual environments and architectural renderings. Fearful and anti-visualist responses to this phenomenon abound. Spread by digital technologies, images are thought to threaten the word and privilege surface value over content. Yet as they multiply, images face unprecedented competition for attention. This book explores the opportunities that can arise from the ubiquity of visual stimuli. It reveals that 'technovisuality' - the fusion of digital technology with the visual - can work 'wonders'; not so much dazzling audiences with special effects as reviving our enchantment with popular culture. Introducing a new term for an entirely new field of academic study, this book reveals the centrality of 'technovisuality' in 21st century life.
The professional practice as well as the academic discipline of planning has been fundamentally re-invented all over the world in recent decades. In this astonishing transition, the thinking and scholarship of Patsy Healey appears as a constantly recurring influence and inspiration around the globe. The purpose of this book is to present, discuss and celebrate Healey’s seminal contributions to the development of the theory and practice of spatial planning. The volume contains a selection of 13 less readily available, but nevertheless, key texts by Healey, which have been selected to represent the trajectory of Patsy’s work across the several decades of her research career. 12 original chapters by a wide range of invited contributors take the ideas in the reprinted papers as points of departure for their own work, tracing out their continuing relevance for contemporary and future directions in planning scholarship. In doing so, these chapters tease out the themes and interests in Healey’s work which are still highly relevant to the planning project. The title - Connections - symbolises relationality, possibly the most outstanding element linking Patsy’s ideas. The book showcases the wide international influence of Patsy’s work and celebrates the whole trajectory of work to show how many of her ideas on for instance the role of theory in planning, processes of change, networking as a mode of governance, how ideas spread, and ways of thinking planning democratically were ahead of their time and are still of importance.
HOUSING BOOMS IN GATEWAY CITIES “David Ley examines the development of housing booms, and policies intended to stimulate or limit them. Utilising a comparative approach in five gateway cities, he provides a superb understanding of the politics of booms, lifting the debate beyond narrow housing and real estate studies. This book is required reading for anyone interested in global cities, housing markets, or comparative urbanism.” —Manuel B. Aalbers, Professor of Human Geography, KU Leuven, Belgium “A stellar contribution to housing and its financialisation as central to the capitalist project globally, Housing Booms offers a wonderful window into the ascendancy of the secondary circuit of real estate in Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney, Vancouver, and London. Critically, through careful, empirically rigorous comparison, an eminent urban social scientist urges us to understand the importance of placing urban housing theoretically.” —Loretta Lees, Director of the Initiative on Cities, Boston University “Mastering a wealth of information and insights from five gateway cities, David Ley provides fresh and inspiring explanation of both common global logics and diverse local trajectories of housing booms in the era of financialisation and asset-based accumulation. A timely and ground-breaking contribution, (re)positioning housing to the centrality pervasively felt in everyday life but largely unacknowledged in mainstream social science.” —George Lin, Chair Professor of Geography, University of Hong Kong In Housing Booms in Gateway Cities, renowned geographer Dr. David Ley delivers a detailed exploration of housing markets in Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, Vancouver, and London and explains why these gateway cities have seen dramatic increases in residential real estate prices since the 1980s. The author describes how the globalization of real estate has rapidly inflated demand and uncoupled local housing prices from local wages, causing acute problems of affordability, availability, and inequality. The book implicates government policy in massive real estate price inflation, describing a shift from welfare-based to asset-based societies. It also highlights the relatively unique experience in Singapore, where asset-based housing policy has encouraged the dispersion of ownership and accumulation through an increased supply of subsidized leasehold apartments and the regulation of disruptive investment flows. Housing Booms in Gateway Cities is an ideal resource for academics, students and policymakers with an interest in urban geography, sociology, and planning, housing studies, and any of the cities discussed in the book. It is an innovative treatment of housing as a central category in wealth accumulation in urban economies and societies.
Governments around the world are wrestling with the problems of enormous debts, low growth, high unemployment and a gap between the demands of public expen-diture and what can be raised through taxation. This problem has been acute since the financial crisis, but has been a hallmark of western economies for decades.Only a few countries have been able to avoid this pattern, mostly those blessed with vast natural resources such as oil. However, there are two small islands with no natural resources which have also enjoyed high growth combined with low taxation: Hong Kong and Singapore. Nor do they have any public debts, in fact, on the contrary, they generally run a budget surplus, and investment income is a feature of their government revenue.Andrew Purves, who grew up on the island of Hong Kong, has gone beyond the conventional analysis of taxation, and asked what each jurisdiction has in common, to bring about this happy state of affairs.The result is quite surprising for two countries which sit at the top of the table for promoting free markets and other capitalist ideals of small government.All land in Hong Kong is owned by the government, who makes it available for use by lease in return for a Government Rent, while Singapore now controls over half of its land area, as well as significant stakes in its strategic industries, which deliver a steady stream of unconventional income. Although in Hong Kong this situation has developed almost by accident, Purves suggests that here lies a model for generating public revenue that could be adopted in other countries to allow a shift in taxation from production and consumption to the Economic Rent of land, as advocated by Adam Smith over two hundred years ago.As a businessman in London, Andrew Purves, is keenly aware of the damaging impact of current taxation on economic activity.
This book brings together writing from activists and scholars that examine leftist and decolonial forms of resistance that have emerged from Hong Kong’s contemporary era of protests. Practices such as labor unionism, police abolition, land justice struggles, and other radical expressions of self-governance may not explicitly operate under the banners of leftism and decoloniality. Nevertheless, examining them within these frameworks uncovers historical, transnational, and prefigurative sightlines that can help to contextualize and interpret their impact for Hong Kong’s political future. This collection offers insights not only into Hong Kong's local struggles, but their interconnectedness with global movements as the city remains on the frontlines of international politics.
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>