Harbour Planning in Hong Kong: normative rationality vs strategic politics

Abstract

In Healey's Collaborative Planning (1997), interactive planning process is seen occurring in complex institutional environments, shaped by wider economic, social and environmental forces (2003, p.104). As argued by Alexander (2001), interdependence… links up the Habermasian communicative practice based on normative ethical stance with the Foucauldian realpolitik power analysis that focuses on strategic rationality. Contextual characteristics, however, will determine the specific blend of strategic and communicative action in each situation (Alexander, 2001, p.316). The recent controversy about central harbour reclamation in Hong Kong and the consequent establishment of an experimental tripartite partnership-based Harbourfront Enhancement Committee that endeavours to practice collaborative planning in the executive-led governance structure of Hong Kong provides a good case for in-depth understanding of how normative planning ideas work (or not work) in a world of unequal power and politics. The former British colony has become a Special Administrative Region in China in 1997. Years of economic restructuring prompted the government to generate different reclamation plans for Victoria Harbour. However, in 1997, the Protection of the Harbour Ordinance was introduced as a private member's Bill in the Legislative Council and the Society for the Protection of the Harbour (SPH) was established to object to further reclamation in Victoria Harbour. At the same time, a loose coalition (Citizen Envisioning@Harbour) of 18 organisations was formed to advocate collaborative planning in 2003. In 2004, the government set up an advisory Harbourfront Enhancement Committee (HEC) the membership of which include government officials, business representatives and civil society groups such as SPH and CE@H. This paper will focus on one of the projects under HEC which involves the planning review of a bypass involving reclamation: while the project is clothed with strong rhetoric of citizen engagement for consensus building, strategic politics can be observed in the executive-led non-democratic polity of Hong Kong.