Power-knowledge in district-based planning : the case of regeneration in Kowloon City District

Abstract

For the past decade, Hong Kong’s redevelopment strategy has been dictated by property-led urban regeneration. This approach is highly controversial as it often neglects the voices of people in the plan-making process. The growing desire for transparency and public involvement in the city’s governance system prompted the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government to introduce broad-based public engagement (PE) procedures to its institutional framework. In 2011, the new Urban Renewal Strategy (URS) endorsed a “People First, Districtbased, Public Participatory” approach to strengthen urban renewal at the district-level. Subsequently, the pilot District Urban Renewal Forum (DURF) was established in Kowloon City (KC) to foster a bottom-up, district-based approach to urban regeneration planning.

This change in Hong Kong’s urban regeneration strategy is highly relevant to Foucault’s concept of governmentality that emphasize on how contemporary arrangements and structures are developed to govern society, which raise important questions when it comes to the distribution of power and knowledge in the planmaking process. Foucault argued that knowledge is power and vice versa, but it is rather difficult to determine where power truly resides in the plan-making process. This dissertation will examine the power-knowledge nexus in the first pilot KC DURF programme, and analyze whether the newly implemented procedures will set unprecedented improvements in carrying out urban regeneration.

Hung Hom and To Kwa Wan in Kowloon City District are chosen as case studies to investigate whether the proposed mitigation measures in the URP for KC could truly respond to residents and key stakeholders’ concerns, needs and aspirations, which are key knowledge inputs documented in the Planning Study (PS), Social Impact Assessments (SIA) and PE Reports. The issues of incompatible land uses in Hung Hom and To Kwa Wan sub-districts demonstrate that key public comments advocating for stronger social renewal initiatives are clearly neglected in the URP for KC. Despite efforts to promote a people-centred model, the analysis reveals that power derives from two main sources: the existing power structures of the KC DURF within Hong Kong’s current top-down institutional framework and authorized knowledge, i.e. situated knowledge generated from dialogues of engagement activities.

The study further reveals important gaps between the nexus of power and knowledge in the pilot KC DURF framework where authorized knowledge is identified as an exploit of professional knowledge to justify the rationality of powerholders in districtbased planning. To justify discrepancy between the initial aspirations from the local community and the mitigation measures proposed in the final plan, responses from government officials are provided to rationalize what is deemed acceptable based on a rigid set of values and requirements set out in the existing institutional framework. The DURF is, nonetheless, a form of governmentality; and the incompetence for key stakeholders to affect plan-making decisions asserts the limits of power for the layman citizen. These factors subsequently contribute to the loopholes in the pilot KC DURF programme.