Hong Kong Public and Squatter Housing: Geopolitics and Informality, 1963-1985

By Alan Smart and Chi Keung Charles Fung

In Public Housing and Formalizing Squatting in Hong Kong, 1963-1985, Alan Smart and Fung Chi Keung Charles trace two decades of development of squatting in Hong Kong. The authors reconstruct the government policy on squatting through both ethnographic and archival research. The book sheds new light on the consequences of various attempts to control encroachment on scarce urban space. It argues that intersecting policy agendas resulted in decisions that were often not desired, but which emerged as practical solutions from prior failures. The authors address the challenges of explaining confidential policy decisions and offer new approaches applicable in other contexts. Overall, Smart and Fung make an important contribution to the understanding of how public housing and squatting interacted in influential ways that have been poorly understood and offer new perspectives on the challenges of urban governance and housing problems.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9888805649
• ISBN13: 9789888805648
• Release Date: September 2023
• Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
• Length: 340 Pages