Ambiguous space, ambiguous rights - Corporate power and social control in Hong Kong

Abstract

The precursor to this article was published under the title of The right to the city (Cuthbert, 1995). In that work, the interactions between surveillance, private interest and the public domain in Hong Kong were investigated. The paper argued that a real confusion exists with regard to the delineation of social space, a situation underwritten by the processes through which development rights are granted to corporations and 'big capital' as a whole. In consequence, the idea of the citizen's right to occupy certain open spaces in the city is rapidly becoming obscured as corporate space becomes conflated to social space. The term 'ambiguous spaces' was coined to describe this situation. Below, we refine these ideas by examining in greater detail the actual methods by which ambiguous spaces come into being. Detailed studies have been made to investigate the specificities of this process - how development rights are granted, what conditions are agreed upon and how deals are struck. From this we build a clearer picture of how everyday life in the (post)modern world of Hong Kong has been circumscribed through the discretionary power of the local state, the corporate strategies which direct the form and content of social space, and the deliberate manipulation of the planning system to accommodate private capital. While specific mechanisms and practices are unique to Hong Kong's dynamic political economy, we expose below one aspect of a phenomenon which we would argue increasingly underwrites urban space in western societies as a whole. © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.