Urban Renewal, Sense of Community and Social Capital: A Case Study of Two Neighbourhoods in Hong Kong

Abstract

Through comparing and contrasting two neighbourhoods in Hong Kong, this chapter aims to examine how the broader evolving socio-economic and political contexts affect competing place-framing discourses. It is argued that in a liberal political economy dominated by the state, urban renewal adopts primarily a ‘slash and burn’ approach, redeveloping the physical fabric for more intensive growth, breaking up communities and diminishing the sense of place and community. The Kwun Tong Town Centre Redevelopment Project was announced in 1997 but due to financial reasons, actual redevelopment did not take place until 2012. As landlords stopped maintaining the buildings, the district suffered from serious urban blight and a vicious cycle of poor environmental conditions, faltering social capital and sense of community. The story is completely different in the Blue House, a cluster of tenement buildings providing various services to the community. When the renewal authority announced in 2006 a HK$100 million project to displace residents and transform the 80+ years old building into a shopping mall, local residents and civil society organisations worked together to change the place-framing discourse to a need of enriching the urban fabric with creative and entrepreneurial uses, strengthening of bonding, bridging and linking capitals among different stakeholders and their sense of community. Eventually, the Government was persuaded to include the Blue House building cluster into the Revitalising Historic Buildings Through Partnership Scheme. The local alliance eventually succeeded in bidding for the project, turning the building cluster into residential cum community facilities to serve local socio-economic needs.