Contortions of the Unconsolidated: Hong Kong, Landslides and the Production of Urban Grounds

Abstract

This paper makes a case for the analysis of urban grounds as urbanizing agents at the intersections of the material and cultural. Through a case study of four decades of landslide management in Hong Kong, it casts new light on the role of urban nature as a participant in the generation of urban forms and conceptions of city life. It demonstrates the active role of anticipation, its differential distribution and materialization through a close study of how geotechnical engineers, film, literature and capitalists portrayed and operated on a territory on the verge of material collapse. In conversation with theories of urban assemblage, this paper contributes the process of ‘consolidation’ as it operated in geotechnical discourses in Hong Kong (and elsewhere) as a useful framework for analysing urban socio-natural interactions in contexts of volatile nature. This positions the city within fraught entanglements with a ground that is projected upon, surfaced, shaped and metamorphosing at variable rates.