Constructing enclaves: Residential reservations in interwar Hong Kong

Abstract

This paper explores how the utopian vision of the “garden city” was adopted and appropriated by Hong Kong’s Portuguese and Chinese immigrant communities in housing practices in the 1910s and 20s -- a period marked by speculative land booms, simmering social tensions and rising Chinese nationalism. While considerable critical analysis has been made of the injustice of racial segregation under colonial rule, few studies have examined how the concept of residential reservation was utilized by local constituencies as a means to secure their economic interest and solidify ethnic and class identities. The lack of such investigation continues to sustain the long assumed dichotomy between “European” and “native” settlements, thus eliding the complex processes and multiple agents involved in the shaping of the colonial built environment and construction of social hierarchies.

This paper illustrates some of these complexities by tracing the history of two “garden cities” conceived along racial lines. The first was initiated by a Portuguese businessman seeking to provide a segregated settlement for the “poor whites” – Portuguese middle class who were under threat of dispossession due to escalating rents and property speculation. The second project was promoted by a Chinese syndicate aiming to provide wealthy Chinese immigrants a modern, well-designed residential district that would rival those of the British and European elites. Notwithstanding their different intents, both projects invoked similar sets of architectural imaginaries for arousing a sense of pride and emerging nationalist aspirations amongst specific diasporic communities. By examining the competing narratives of these projects and their inscribed meanings and values, this paper will elucidate the mutual constitution of architecture, cultural identity and the ongoing realignment of class interests in Hong Kong’s colonial capitalist development.