The Propensity of Land: Housing Crisis, Speculative Craze and the Advent of Modernist Planning in Hong Kong, 1912-1925

Abstract

The paper traces how ideas of modernist planning were adapted in real estate practices in Hong Kong between 1912 and 1925, a period in which the British colony experienced consecutive land booms that coincided with a housing crisis ushered by large influx of immigrants. While investors accumulated large profits from speculative housing practices, rising rent and property prices led to widespread discontent amongst the less wealthy, prompting various groups to agitate for their "rights to the city" and petitioned the government to exert control over the land and housing market. These demands led to protracted public debates over Hong Kong's longstanding commitment to laissez-faire capitalism and the need to help the disadvantaged in order to prevent social instability.

The opening up of New Kowloon after 1911 provided new hopes for many that the housing shortage would eventually be alleviated. While planners and social reformers envisioned New Kowloon to be a well-planned suburb that would act as a corrective to the earlier haphazard development, developers put forward ambitious housing schemes targeting the well-to-do. These include the emerging middle class Chinese, who wanted to live in modernist environments no less superior to those of their European counterparts. By tracing the competing visions of these projects, this paper will provide a historical perspective on the advent of modernist planning in Hong Kong and its intrinsic relationship with speculative housing practices. It will also illustrate how contingent forms of social consensus were enabled in a colonial city underscored by prosperity and profound inequalities.