Sham Shui Po: A Marginal Neighbourhood in the Centre of Hong Kong (original) (raw)

Sham Shui Po: The Centre of Poverty in Hong Kong

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, 2013

For most people, the urban neighbourhood is within easy reach by Hong Kong’s efficient transport system. It is a convenient place where one can buy cheap products and then leave. However, for those living in the poorest neighbourhood in one of the most unequal cities in the developed world, residents may not necessarily think about it this way. Residents of this underprivileged neighbourhood are relatively immobile, and their experiences of ‘mainstream’ urban life limited. Hence this article describes the spaces significant to them as it recounts a distinctive way of life in post-industrial Hong Kong that makes Sham Shui Po Hong Kong's centre of poverty.

Flanagan, Patricia, Hong Kong – Cultural Transformation of the Public Sphere

IN: Curry, Janel; Hanstedt, Paul, (ed.) Reading Hong Kong Reading Ourselves, City University of Hong Kong Press, pp. 64-89. ISBN 978-962-937-235-4 This book, written by fourteen reflective scholars about living and learning from Hong Kong,builds on the growing interest of using place as text while providing a model of deepening crosscultural encounters. Each chapter is written in a personal and experiential style, exploring Hong Kong through the lenses of a range of disciplines that shaped individual author s perceptions and encounters. The city is like a text one reads and deciphers, linking one s sense of other cities with one s present experiences of this city in this moment of time. In reading the city, readers discover not only what is out there in the ever moving surround of Hong Kong s urban life, but also what is inside oneself as newcomer and as from another city and culture.

The study of Chinatown as an urban artifice and its impact on the Chinese community in London

2008

Sociologists claim that the ethnic Chinese community in the United Kingdom cannot be spatially defined. The first reason is that the widely scattered Chinese catering businesses–still the main source of employment for incoming Chinese migrants – makes the Chinese community too dispersed to form residential enclaves. Secondly, the evasive nature of the ethnic Chinese population towards government assistance and strong sense of ethnic solidarity also makes them an “invisible community”. The Confucian philosophy governing their way of life further reinforces patrilineal links oriented towards ancestral villages in China. Recent renewed interests in the future of London’s Chinatown as the result of a recent development plan has prompted this report to investigate whether a spatial pattern of occupation by the Chinese community exists in Chinatown, or if it is simply an intelligent urban artifice exploited for touristic and commercial purposes. Unlike its historical East End predecessor which has never been exclusively Chinese, present day London Chinatown can be qualified as a “persistent enclave”. Whilst it crucially accommodates co-ethnic businesses and facilities for the oriental population, it is not the sole centre for the Chinese community. At the outset, studies on the Chinese have been confounded by their lack of assimilation into host society, inconsistent methods of data representation from the population census and high levels of suspicion by the immigrant community when conducting fieldwork. By first understanding historical developments in London’s two Chinatowns and concepts pertaining to Chinese ethnography, this helps substantiate the demographic data, changing land use and household occupation by the Chinese community in Limehouse around 1890 and Soho today. The global and local relationship for these two areas are also analysed syntactically through spatial maps derived from Booth’s Map of Poverty of 1889 and a current axial map of London respectively. The spatially-oriented case study of Soho’s Chinatown identifies through a public survey a collective mental representation of its neighbourhood area that differs from its administrative designation. Pedestrian movement studies suggest that there is a distinct spatial and temporal pattern of occupation amongst the ethnic Chinese which differs from non-Chinese tourists and locals which can be syntactically measured. The findings support the view that a complex social and spatial relationship exists between the two disparate groups that utilise Chinatown. Whilst its commercial success is crucial to maintaining Chinatown’s public profile, it also allows it to continue to function as an important centre for the Chinese community.

Neighbourhood in a high rise, high density city: some observations on contemporary Hong Kong

Sociological Review, 2002

Most of the contemporary literature on the neighbourhood comes from US or European sources where there are sharp contrasts with East Asian cities in terms of the physical form, residential densities and in relation to ideas of community and kinship. This paper reports on a study carried out in Hong Kong which was designed to explore the extent to which western preoccupations with neighbourhood resonate in a high rise, high density Chinese city. As a precursor to a larger scale study interviews were carried out with fifteen individuals in three contrasting locations: a New Town estate, an older, inner city area and a middle class housing estate. The interviews explored inter alia neighbourhood perceptions, ideas of community, sense of belonging and sense of place among contemporary Hong Kong residents.

The City in a Building: a Brief Social History of Urban Hong Kong

Studies in History and Theory of Architecture, 2017

Arising from the intensive urban development of mid-twentieth century Hong Kong, the composite building, defined as one with domestic and non-domestic functions, embodies the historical tensions between city and home, public and private, producer and consumer, colonial and Chinese, real and ideal, masculine and feminine realms. Between 1959 and 1979, over 1,500 composite buildings above fifteen stories were built throughout the city. Intended to accommodate the emerging industrialized middle class population, the largest composite buildings housed over ten thousand inhabitants within an agglomeration of shops, factories, temples, clinics, crèches, dormitories, hostels, flats, and other spaces. Their architecture and planning demonstrate how developers, planners, architects and builders projected the notions of a consumerist society. Yet a closer analysis of the multifarious programs, spatial adaptations and contestations within, reveals the human caprice that drives and defines the city. How did these tensions and everyday acts of resistance shape the spaces in the composite buildings and in turn, define and redefine the city? In examining the brief social history of a commonplace building in Hong Kong, this paper unpacks the tropes of the modern Asian metropolis to seek an alternative framework to understand the precarious limits between the urban and the domestic. *For an expanded version of this essay, please refer to Ch4 - "Composites: The City in a Building," and Chp5 - "Narratives: Composite Building Studies," In Resistant City (WSP, 2020), 95-134.