Critical Sociology38(1) 89 –106

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Public Engagement as a Tool of Hegemony: The Case of Designing the New Central Harbourfront in Hong Kong

Wing-Shing TangHong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

Joanna Wai Ying LeeThe Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Mee Kam NgThe Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

AbstractHong Kong society nowadays is overwhelmed by the rhetoric of hegemony, but there is no serious attempt to discuss it, especially in the domain of urban development. This article expands on Henri Lefebvre’s concept of urbanizing Gramsci to resolve contradictions of space under increasing urbanization by urban specialists and applies it to investigate the public engagement exercise of Central harbourfront planning in Hong Kong. By dissecting its contents and procedures, the article illustrates how public engagement has insisted on technical rationality, thereby perpetuating the functioning of the land (re)development regime. In consequence, the ordinary residents may have been excluded from ‘rational’ consideration in the (re)development of Hong Kong.

Keywordsharbourfront planning, hegemony, Hong Kong, Lefebvre, public engagement, technical rationality

Introduction: The Problematic of HegemonyHong Kong society nowadays is overwhelmed by the rhetoric of hegemony. Given his popularity in cultural studies, Gramsci’s problematic of hegemony has for a long time been applied to Hong Kong (e.g. Cartier, 2008; Cheung and Ngai, 2009; Fung, 2007; Ku, 2001; So, 2000; Tse, 2007). But

Corresponding author:Wing-Shing Tang, Department of Geography, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong Email: wstang@hkbu.edu.hk

408363 CRSXXX10.1177/0896920511408363Tang et al.Critical Sociology

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never has this literature been able to attract so much societal attention as the recent publication of the Chinese translation of Poon’s (2005) informative book, Land and the Ruling Class in Hong Kong, with the sexy title of The Hegemony of the Real Estate Industry (Dichan Baquan). The latter’s publication was timely, when the society has gradually become exasperated with the domi-nance of the sector. There is a high concentration and centralization of capital to such an extent that almost all economic activities and all walks of life, from housing, transport, food, utility, telecom-munication to media, fall within the ambit of landed and property capital. It was estimated that by March 2010, the directors of the six major land developers took up a total of 54 positions in all statutory consultative bodies, a big increase over the number of 16 in 1998 (Cheung, 2010). Such concentration and centralization is mutually reinforced by the relentless urban redevelopment activities in the city, with the detrimental effect of displacing a considerable number of residents from their homes and tranquil neighbourhoods without decent negotiation. Fuelled by cumulated media footage in the last year or so, allegations of government–business collusion start to prevail in society (see Goodstadt, 2005). Poon’s (2005) original argument relies on Henry George for insight, underscoring the significance of perfect competition in the landed and property market. Not surprisingly, then, it has elaborated nothing on hegemony, Gramsci in particular. There is nothing on how the government and the landed and property capital collude to construct the common sense of the society so as to dominate others and why the people have remained the silent majority and been exploited.

To make up this deficiency, one needs to elaborate Gramsci’s problematic of hegemony. Discontented with the Marxist concept of false consciousness, Gramsci has identified hegemony, in addition to the repressive apparatus, as an organizing principle. Hegemony diffuses through socialization, as common sense, into all walks of life. Constituted by a set of related ideologies, it is produced by the supposedly non-coercive social institutions such as churches, schools and trade unions and by individual agents like priests, teachers, civil servants, managers, professionals and scientists (organic intellectuals). In doing so, historic blocs, the contingent constellations of state and civil society, are formed, perpetuating the control of the ruling class over the society.

Kipfer (2002, 2008) has recently drawn our attention to Lefebvre’s (1991) call to urbanize Gramsci. Lefebvre queried the world back in the early 1970s that ‘[i]s it conceivable that the exer-cise of hegemony might leave space untouched?’ Indeed, The Production of Space is the treatise that ‘show[s] how space serves, and how hegemony makes use of it, in the establishment, on the basis of an underlying logic and with the help of knowledge and technical expertise, of a “system”’ (Lefebvre, 1991: 11). Besides, due to his open Marxism (see also Kipfer, 2009), Lefebvre, accord-ing to Charnock (2010: 1283), has avoided treating the state ‘as a supra-temporal, trans-historical empty box, open to capture by any configuration of social forces aligned to a “hegemonic project”’. We contend that an urban view of hegemonic construction, situated contingently, should be an invaluable contribution to our understanding of Hong Kong.

It is the objective of this article to elaborate how hegemony is perpetuated both in and via the production of urban space in Hong Kong by drawing on the case of Central harbourfront plan-ning. Situated in the Central Business District (CBD), Central harbourfront is considered strategic to the continuation of the land (re)development regime. Given the current social developments, the Hong Kong Government acknowledged the need for an alternative public participation exer-cise as a gesture of a democratic society. This article attempts to analyze the contents and proce-dures of the public engagement exercise of the Urban Design Study for the New Central Harbourfront (UDSNCH). Instead of investigating the voices of those subordinated by hegemony, or the subalterns in Gramsci’s other renowned problematic, this article focuses on the extent to

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which the public engagement exercise is used as a tool of hegemony by the Hong Kong Government to control, via urban specialists, harbour reclamation in a pretentiously ‘rational’ way.

This objective is to be achieved in the following way. The second section interrogates Lefebvre’s urbanizing hegemony by discussing how he develops his idea from a critique of everyday life to the production of space. The latter has to be supplemented by a parallel discussion, in the third section, of the emergence in Hong Kong of a land (re)development regime that deems property development as the norm of the society. The continuation of this regime requires the implementa-tion of a rich array of political technologies to invoke, construct and concretize a set of ideologies to resolve the contradiction between the relentless quest for land and the stipulated limited supply of land. A brief overview of the socio-political developments in Hong Kong leading to the recent developments related to UDSNCH is provided in the fourth section. The latter briefly analyzes the development of the authority space since the 1967 riots that relied on technical rationality cum colonial administrative practice. By highlighting the interstice developed especially since 1994, this discussion elaborates the emergence of a changing spatio-temporal context that required a modified form of public participation. The fifth section deciphers the public engagement contents and procedures as a political technology. The final section concludes with a discussion of the prob-lematic of hegemony within the context of Hong Kong.

Lefebvre’s Urbanizing Hegemony1

While Gramsci concentrates on common sense and consent, Lefebvre reformulates hegemony in terms of everyday life as mediated by the production of urban space. In particular, the production of abstract space becomes hegemonic once everyday life is incorporated into it. In Critique of Everyday Life, Lefebvre elaborates elegantly how everyday life is crushed by commodified capitalism and state administration and planning, best exemplified in the contemporary city. The introduction of new commodities like the car, the mass-produced bungalow, the popular beach resort, café life, TV and radio, advertising and women’s magazines in post-WWII capitalism have modified the routines of our life, work, leisure, family life, cultural production and politics. The diffusion of bourgeois culture through commodification is so pervasive and effective that everyday life is saturated, thereby discouraging revolution.

Later, in The Production of Space (and The Urban Revolution), Lefebvre formulates that the urban is an intermediary instance that mediates the micro-reality of everyday life and the macro-dimensions of the social order. Space, which is socially produced (Gottdiener, 1985: 123), could only be understood in the way Marx analyzed commodity production and exchange. According to the oft-cited trialectics of space, which is proclaimed to be an improvement over Marx’s and Hegel’s dialectics, the production of space is a three-dimensional process, beyond the materialist and idealist ones. Produced space has three aspects: the material (perceived) space, the ideological/representational (conceived) space and the affective-symbolic (lived) space, or, spatial practices, representations of space and spaces of representation, respectively (Lefebvre, 1991: 38–9). The dominant form of produced space under capitalism is abstract space. Unlike in the past, when absolute space (space of nature, one that had not been colonized by economic, military, political and imperial pollution) prevailed, abstract space, a space of modernism, is the product – the materialization – of what is conceived. Expanding on Marx’s notion of abstract labour, Lefebvre deciphers that whatever is concrete, useful and particular in space becomes abstract, money-driven and universal, as space everywhere is repetitious, homogeneous, commodified and gender-biased. It is conditioned only by the logic of money (and so the exchange value) that has no real concern

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for qualitative difference. Nevertheless, abstract space has its material expression in specific buildings, places, activities, and modes of market intercourse over and through space.

Abstract space is hegemonic when the lived space is fused with processes and strategies of producing conceived and perceived space. This happens when the abstract space envelops and incorporates the daily dreams and aspirations of the underprivileged population (in Gramsci’s parlance, the subalterns) as well as when it has become part and parcel of their everyday life. Incorporation may arise from, in Lefebvre’s oft-cited examples, the construction of bungalow and high-rise tower blocks in the suburbs, which, though standardized in design and output, embody some of the hopes, or symbolic promises, for the improvement in housing conditions, the quest for social harmony and the desire to live with nature. These aspirations may be the self-projections from their spaces of representation, or something in a totally alienated world of the bourgeoisie, the representations of space, constructed abstractly and popularized as that of the society as a whole. If the latter is the case, hegemony may exist. Hegemony may also be achieved if, in the pursuance of daily routine activities, spatial practices, residents equate their lived space with their conceived counterpart. What is so powerful about abstract space is its ability to produce spatial consensus, which Lefebvre (1991: 56) exemplifies by means of a tacit agreement of nonviolence in a street:

In the street, each individual is supposed not to attack those he meets; anyone who transgresses this law is deemed guilty of a criminal act. A space of this kind presupposes the existence of a ‘spatial economy’ closely allied, though not identical, to the verbal economy. This economy valorizes certain relationships between people in particular places (shops, cafés, cinemas, etc.), and thus gives rise to connotative discourses concerning these places; these in turn generate ‘consensuses’ or conventions according to which, for example, such and such a place is supposed to be trouble-free, a quiet area where people go peacefully to have a good time, and so forth.

When such consensus between space and its users occurs, hegemony is achieved.The achievement of hegemony depends on the processes and strategies of producing the

abstract space. Like Gramsci, Lefebvre assigns an important role to organic intellectuals in these processes and strategies; but unlike Gramsci, Lefebvre concentrates more sharply on urban specialists, including architects, urban planners, urban designers, developers, urban theoreticians, and marketing researchers and analysts, for the obvious concern for the production of urban space. Having subsumed ideology, knowledge and power almost barely undistinguishable in it, representation of space, Lefebvre argues (1991: 45), ‘supplants the concept of ideology and becomes a serviceable (operational) tool for the analysis of spaces, as of those societies which have given rise to them and recognized themselves in them’. Informed by their respective disci-plinary, fragmented knowledge of modern sciences, these urban specialists substantiate represen-tations in various ways and with different effects. Instead of criticizing vulgar modernist planning for consisting of a totalized vision, Lefebvre considers these architects, urban planners and urban designers problematic for they have reified urban space as a thing-like object (see also Harvey, 1996: 50–1) and, concomitantly, presumed that social engineering could be accomplished through the engineering of physical form. A case in point is the urban planners’ system of localization, which assigns an exact spot to each activity. Utopian spatial form, in Harvey’s (2000) terminology, can be a substitute for utopian social process. Other urban specialists, like specialized academics in business and management and market researchers (especially those working for developers), produce market research and advertised images of a ‘model urban lifestyle’, which invite urban residents to identify their dreams and desires with them. The sculptures and monuments erected by artists and cultural performers in relevant places have the similar function of inducing people to think in alignment with the dominant representation. In short, these urban specialists have

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deployed disciplinary, fragmentary knowledge and symbolic forms to formulate representations with the effect of depoliticizing users of space.

Many have criticized Lefebvre for being vague on details of his theorization. For example, Merrifield criticizes Lefebvre for not explaining clearly ‘how spatial practices mediate between the conceived and the lived’ and ‘about how spatial practices keep representations of space and spaces of representation together, yet apart’ (Merrifield, 2006: 110–11; emphasis in original). While Allen (2003: especially 159–88) focuses on Lefebvre’s treatment of modalities of power in operation, the former criticizes the latter specifically for emphasizing domination at the expense of other modalities. Where there is a clash over the meaning of space, there are spatial contradic-tions. When the latter exist, what really counts is the ability to represent space in a particular way at the expense of many others, or the ability to smother difference. The power of abstract space to erase traces of others is never complete. There are many spatial practices to negotiate the domi-nant coding. These modalities would have different spatial reaches, of which we should take note. Instead of arguing for the importance of plurality – besides domination/authority, there are coercion, persuasion, manipulation, seduction, induction, negotiation, etc. – Allen (2003: 171; emphasis in original) highlights the significance of place constitution:

This is not because power is endowed with some kind of vapid plurality, where the different modalities take it in turn to act out their display. On the contrary, it is the nature of the places themselves, how they are constituted through the practices and the rhythms of the different groups which inhabit them, which gives rise to tangled arrangements of power and their execution.

It is the special relational ties that are the crux of the issue. The implication for our study is the emphasis on how the place of public engagement is constituted by the entanglement of a rich array of modalities of power, performed by various actors, so that it can achieve some kind of hegemony.

There is a growing literature on public participation exercises of one form or other (see Purcell, 2008: 33–74; Silver et al., 2010). Kohn (2000) challenges arguments informed by deliberative democracy, such as collaborative planning and public engagement (Centre for Civil Society and Governance, 2007), for permitting only particular voices and versions. Informed by Foucault’s power/knowledge based on the idea of confinement (see Elden, 2004: 239–40), Kothari (2001) contends that participation encourages a reassertion of power and control due to normalization and self-surveillance, reifies social norms through consensus building, shapes the narratives of par-ticipants by purifying the knowledge, and excludes or rejects certain people due to the state-designated meeting place. Collective action outside the state has then been ‘colonised’ by state programmes (Cooke and Kothari, quoted in Jupp, 2008: 334). Couched in the terminology of Bruno Latour’s ‘science in action’, planning rationality as a modality, the technical form of con-structing and maintaining facts, can be turned into a black box that cannot be open (therefore classified as ‘positive’); conversely, it invites more contest (‘negative’) (Murdoch et al., 1999). Jupp (2008), however, concurs with the idea that a more empirically focused approach to partici-pation might produce an understanding of the specific power relations operating within these contexts, which enables the possibilities for positive change through participatory practices. While quoting Lefebvre approvingly that there is always a potential for positive change, Jupp does not get into the details of Lefebvre’s discussion between minimal differences (individualism informed by property divisions [owners vs tenants; high- vs low-class], transport routes [more vs less acces-sible] and planning zones [new vs old neighbourhood; mixed vs pure residential]) and maximal differences (creative, unalienated and fully lived form of individuality). Instead she turns to Nigel Thrift’s ‘non-representational theory’ for insights, emphasizing feelings, sensations and practices

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within politics so as to explore the complexities and possibilities within particular contexts, or ‘particular spatialities’ (Jupp, 2008: 333). In other words, participation, which is co-produced by citizens and the state, is something that has to be constructed and explained spatially. Unlike formal forums held in formal community centres or town halls, which are only information-giving and -collecting, more informal meetings coincide with everyday socializing and part of the rhythm of the everyday lives of residents, draw on skills and resources from participants’ domestic lives, connect the concerned groups through shared material practices, nurture individual and collective confidence and actions, celebrate achievement and, ultimately, promote empowerment. Finally, enlightened by Lefebvre, Cornwall (2004) proposes situating participation and views it as a spatial practice. But she proceeds to draw on instead the concept of governmentality to configure contingent contestation and resistance. This emphasizes subjectivity and discourses at the expense of, as insisted by Lefebvre, contingent, structural contradictions.

What we can conclude from this brief literature review is the necessity to situate the production of public engagement space within spatial contradictions. The latter may be induced by develop-ments, at various levels, in the larger political economy and in the everyday life of residents. When spatial contradictions exist, the state is interested in representing space in a particular way to smother difference. It could no longer solely rely on the usual modality of power such as authority to monopolize the production of representations of space and domination to coerce others to embrace them without reservation. Besides, it could not ignore others’ spaces of representation. It needs to seduce some people and organizations to support the representations of space, pretending that it has paid serious attention to their stakes and claims and then incorporated them into its own. To do so, it may need to create a new socio-spatial setting that allows it to manipulate the informa-tion distributed for deliberation, persuade some members of the society to participate while banning others literally by physical force from doing so, mould the agenda of discussion and induce some to dominate the discussion. The objective is to incorporate various lived spaces into the abstract space by restricting the concern to minimal difference. Of course, various participants, drawing on their respective spaces of representation, participate in the socio-spatial setting, by invoking an equally rich array of modalities of power stretching across various levels. Whether these participants may transform their respective minimal differences into maximal differences is a contingent question of researching into the working of this socio-spatial setting, whether one’s minimal aspirations may clash with other’s realities of everyday life and whether mobilization may overcome the minimal differences. In other words, hegemonic construction is a contingent ques-tion. It is to the contingent question in Hong Kong that we now turn.

The Problematic of Hegemony in Hong Kong: The Continuation of the Land (Re)development RegimeA land (re)development regime has developed in Hong Kong since the late 1960s, when Chinese real estate developers started to become more influential in the economy and society than their British counterparts (Tang, 2008: 351–8). The growing dominance of Chinese capital was pre-mised on the financialization of the real estate market in the late 1960s. Since then, the boom and bust of the two markets of real estate and stock equities are intertwined. At the private level, when people gained money from the stock market, they re-invested in the real estate market, and vice versa. At the urban societal level, while the real estate market can obtain from the stock market the indispensable capital for expansion, the former must raise the profit margin recorded in the com-pany’s annual ledger prepared for the latter. This can best be achieved by increasing the level of commodification of the real estate market, the sales volume of flats in particular. Part of the incurred land requirement was somehow coincidentally met by the gradual relocation of

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considerable industrial activities to mainland China. Part of it, however, was enhanced by the government’s response of configuring the annual supply of developable land in the territory. It set up the Special Committee on Land Production and correspondingly adapted the state apparatus relating to land supply and its uses since the end of the 1970s.

The signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984 signified that Hong Kong’s status as a colony of Britain was coming to an end. It marked the end of negotiation about the status of Hong Kong at the international level as well as the beginning of policy deliberation at lower levels. There was a compelling need to maintain economic prosperity in, for the British, the last colony as well as, for the Chinese, the lost child before re-unification. While the concerted actions were to employ the real estate sector as the source of the economic multiplier, the Chinese Government imposed a cap of 50 hectares on annual land sales. In response, the Hong Kong Government resorted to harbour reclamation (and urban redevelopment) for expanding the land supply, or the rhetoric of ‘back to the harbour’ strategy.

The contribution of urban specialists in constructing the then representations of space should not be underestimated. There were many planning studies in the 1980s, recommending harbour reclamation. They include the Study on Harbour Reclamation and Urban Growth, Territorial Development Strategy and the Metroplan. In the Metroplan, the task of planning claims to trans-form the physical landscape in many of the old urban districts to render the city a better place for the people to live and work. The inner city (due to reclamation and other projects) could release about 3,270 hectares of land for redevelopment (Strategic Planning Unit, 1989: 12). This amount is rather substantial in relation to the limited new land supply capped by the 50-hectare ceiling. Apparently, the urban specialists had employed knowledge to convey the ideology of economic prosperity. This rhetoric is most conspicuously documented in the propaganda government publi-cation The Shape of Things to Come (Planning, Environment and Lands Branch, 1995). Metroplan also identifies ‘pockets of decay’ in the inner city, which serve as a spatial barrier to both new urban growth and redevelopment. They could be turned into positive forces of development through their demolition and physical redevelopment. In short, because these were technological decisions with ample proofs, the people should accept them.

These representations turned into an abstract space due to the hegemony of the land (re)devel-opment regime. Most people upheld the ideology of economic prosperity, and that the government was pursuing it on behalf of the people. In the society, there was a widespread belief in rationality, objectivity and procedure. As Tang et al. (2007) argued earlier, this was the partial, but significant, outcome of the implementation of the spatial strategy of constructing new towns to counteract structural contradictions of the society back in the mid-1960s. Accordingly, Hongkongers expect urban development to be carried out in a particular ‘rational’ manner. Once the government has implemented relevant actions, they form the ‘rational’ practice of the society. It is expected that urban development should not deviate from this ‘rational’ course. Any course other than the desig-nated procedures is dismissed as irrational and therefore slated to be rejected out of hand. Because the government had exhibited the technical analyses and formal procedures to verify the impor-tance of harbour reclamation for the common good of economic prosperity, all walks of life should support it. All tended to favour the status quo, meaning harbour reclamation almost at any cost.

New Central Harbourfront: The Emergence of Broader Social-based IntersticesOne of the latest waves of reclamation in Victoria Harbour was initiated by the planning studies for the 1984 Territorial Development Strategy (Ng et al., 2010). In particular, the Central and Wanchai Reclamation Feasibility Study in 1989 proposed reclaiming a total of 108 hectares in five phases,

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three in the Central District and two in its neighbouring Wanchai District (Figure 1). The Central Reclamation Phase I (CRI) involving 20 hectares was completed in June 1998. The corresponding figures for CRII and Wanchai Reclamation Phase I (WRI) covering 5.3 hectares were completed in July 1997. Due to the intervention of the Protection of the Harbour Ordinance (PHO), which was enacted on 30 June 1997, CRIII and WRII were reduced to 18 hectares and 28.5 hectares, respec-tively (Ho, 2004: 216–17). Later, the Society for Protection of the Harbour Limited (SPH) even sued the government for violating the Ordinance. While the court ruled against WRII, it concluded that CRIII had gone through the due procedures of the Town Planning Ordinance and did not contravene the PHO. One of the results of these court cases and other events was the setting up of the Harbour Enhancement Committee (HEC) in 2004. After pressure from HEC and other organi-zations, the Planning Department eventually launched public engagement exercises for the new Central harbourfront in May 2007.

Conventional Public Participation within a Space of AuthorityBefore the launching of public engagement, the government relied on advisory and statutory bod-ies and district councils for conventional public consultation on urban policies. Public consultation was introduced by the colonial government to regain its legitimacy after the 1967 riots; violence should give way to consensus. Instead of focusing, as the simplistic concept of executive-led gov-ernment has done, on the concerned institutions, we delve into the rich array of modalities of power that government practices had invoked at that time to elaborate the nature of public consultation.

It was, then, widely recognized by the Hong Kong society that the government had the authority to rule until 1997. This authority mode of power was achieved by the promotion of technical rationality. The authority was delegated to discrete technical and administrative departments after

Figure 1. Harbour Reclamation in Central and WanchaiSource: Adapted from Planning, Environment and Lands Branch, Hong Kong Government (1995: 60), Figure 80.

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the streamlined corporate planning model recommended by the McKinsey Report in 1973. It became normal to approach separate departments for discrete social issues, as there were youth issues, employment issues, housing issues, etc. but not the social question of the colonized. The newly established Secretary for the Environment had the authority to deal with planning and land-related policies. In particular, the Town Planning Office, itself upgraded as an independent office in 1973, was empowered to formulate land use policies and implement development control as stipulated in the then 30-or-so-years-old Town Planning Ordinance. This authority power was fur-ther normalized by the promotion of technical knowledge. Because the latter is scientific and objective, the government tried to persuade the people that the decision must be rational and should be accepted. Professionalism called for strategic planning in the 1970s, thereby setting up the Strategic Planning Unit in 1981 (Bristow, 1984: 111, 133–4). Since then, knowledge started to feed the power of authority, forming the power-knowledge nexus.

To extend its spatial reach, the colonial government incorporated local business, traditional political and emergent professional elites (especially since the 1980s) into the colonial authority, ranging from the Land Development Policy Committee, the highest decision-making body on land-related policies, to other public consultation bodies at lower levels. Since 1982, these elites were even recruited into district boards and administration in preparation for the imminent retreat of the British. These consultation exercises undoubtedly allowed the authority to collect additional information regarding the reception of concerned policies by the general public, but they did more than that. While the authority manipulated knowledge – usually by withholding a substantive amount of it – to side-line, distract and deform the formation of other views, which were usually crushed as if they were irrational, it seduced the aforementioned elites to participate in these con-sultations (believing in the significance of their rhetorical role in cross-examining and fine-tuning policy proposals as well as the forthcoming lucrative business projects) and persuaded the general public not to violently resist the proposals, as in the 1967 riots (since their voices have already been heeded in these exercises). The latter was rendered possible by the introduction of a bundle of social welfare services including public housing, health and youth social services. As argued by Tang et al. (2007), the construction of new towns, for instance, was one of the means to induce the public to nurture the feeling of civic pride and the acceptance of objectivity, rationality and procedure.

In short, public consultation was introduced to extend the spatial reach of technical rationality. It invoked many modalities of power including manipulation, seduction, inducement and persua-sion. It was the entanglement of these modalities that had put people in place, that effectively added up to the production of the authority space of the colonial government and that eventually perpetuated its hegemony.

Interstice Started to Develop in 1994People started to resist this authority space with the onset of large-scale harbour reclamation in response to the aforementioned contradiction between land demand and supply. As reclamation works proceeded apace in early 1994, some people saw, felt, experienced and then talked about harbour reclamation in their daily life. These loose and sporadic, personal perceptions gradually converged on a conception amenable to collective discussion on 22 October 1994, when govern-ment planners were forced to submit a blueprint to the Town Planning Board (TPB) unveiling a series of large-scale reclamation projects at Kowloon Point, Kowloon Bay, Green Island, Central and Wanchai. It was the first time that the government disclosed a full-scale picture of the recla-mation projects to the public – up until then it had been restricted to the business, political and

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professional elites. This visualization of harbour reclamation, though still being manipulated in terms of information, invited debates and resistance. There were a proposed Private Member Bill ‘Protection of the Harbour Bill’ to the Legislative Council on 30 October 1996, a veto of the recla-mation plans by the unofficial members of TPB on 10 November, a rejection of further reclamation by the Advisory Council on the Environment on 11 November and an extremely cautious reaction by the Chinese Government. In response to these resistances, the then Planning, Environment and Lands Branch (PELB) of the colonial government held a series of exhibitions, briefing sessions and consultation meetings, leading to the publication of propaganda documents, including The Quest for Land, Hong Kong – City of Vision, and The Shape of Things to Come (Lai, 1996: 353–4). These resistances and counter-resistances accumulated in the enactment of PHO on 30 June 1997, restricting reclamation in Victoria Harbour to overriding public needs only.

What happened was the development of an interstice in the authority space. Never before was there negotiation with the government’s representations of space. It is necessary to add, however, that negotiation was not so much by spaces of representation as by yet other representations of space formulated by some of the elites. In the early 1990s, reclamation was considered by the PELB as significant to enhance the hub functions of Hong Kong and reinforce its international image as a ‘City of Vision’. Later in the decade, informed by the branding of Hong Kong as Asia’s world city, harbour reclamation was even justified more specifically as a means to produce new land in the CBD for the economic well-being of the city. The ideology of economic prosperity was translated with the aid of technical knowledge of travel demand analyses, hydraulic studies, economic forecasts, etc. into land use zoning and technical design matters. For example, in the first Central District (Extension) Statutory Outline Zoning Plan (OZP) No. S/H24/1 for CRIII, nearly 20% of the total area is proposed for commercial and commerce-related developments, allowing the construction of high-quality office buildings, hotel and retail shops in Commercial (‘C’) and Comprehensive Development Area (‘CDA’). In the amended OZP (S/H24/2), an amendment as a response to the 70 objections received on the draft OZP, the number is still 12.64%.

At the centre of the dispute by the elites was their inability to negotiate with the government. Disapproving of manipulation, they believed in a two-way process of communication leading to reciprocal benefits: the elites can contribute more effectively to formulating the representations of space so that government practices can excel. In the current authority space, they argued, there should be less manipulation of information, rendering it more readily available. One of the ardent reclamation critics, Winston Chu, himself once a senior member of TPB, complained that even the TPB was not fully informed about the reclamation projects. In the conventional public consulta-tion, the opinions collected during public forums or views solicited from relevant advisory and statutory bodies and district councils were usually not included later to improve the proposed draft plans or policies. The elites called a halt to this manipulation practice too. Besides, the current authority manipulated the criteria of keeping some policy domains open or closed to public partici-pation. Although people always queried – albeit not necessarily justifiably – the ability of the grassroots to participate in technical discussion, the government had actually ignored them in any public consultation exercises. This was the case for the Metroplan and harbour reclamation consul-tations, as only those elites who had the resources participated. Another example is the fact that the urban planning system has divided policy and related matters into statutory and non-statutory ones (Cuthbert, 1991). While the former are susceptible to limited forms of public scrutiny, the latter are not mandated to be so; very often, they are reduced to a matter of professional consideration internal to concerned departments or offices. By categorizing some rather than other policies as non-statutory, the government could in fact manipulate discussion. That policies on harbour reclama-tion before PHO were non-statutory is a case in point. The elites negotiated to open up as many domains and issues for public discussion as possible.

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While the elites had challenged various aspects of manipulation, they were silent on other modalities of power. They still believed in technical rationality, with a dominant role being played by the professionals. Hong Kong is proclaimed to be a society defined by the rule of laws. It is widely believed that laws and ordinances not only protect private ownership but also regulate governmental practices. Like urban space, however, laws and ordinances are characterized as objective, rendering them especially opaque to critical insight (Bromley, 2004: 5). Upholding law and order may solidify the technical rationality underpinning the society. When the elites – represented predominantly by lawyers – tried to negotiate with the government on how much of the harbour that it can reclaim by, first, enacting PHO and, then, suing the government in defiance of it, they were in fact silent on technical rationality. Most seriously, being mostly land-related professionals, including architects, engineers, landscape architects, urban planners, surveyors and lawyers, these elites, especially those with close working relations with developers, offered their judgements disguised with their vested interests in reclamation. Many of the elites merely expressed their dissent while staying within the authority space. In the end, the two worlds of the government and the elites were entangled, yet remained apart. As the interstice was left intact as a crack rather than developing into a contradiction, the hegemony of the land (re)development regime was perpetuated.

Broader Social-based Interstices Gradually EmergedThe authority space started to change after the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in July 1997. To expedite the return to the motherland, the first Chief Executive (equivalent to city mayor) Tung Chee Hwa was interested in developing an authority space in which people recognized the mainland China regime as the ruling party. This sounded natural and easy, but in fact was an uphill battle given the prevailing colonial identity and value. What was required was to erase the old identity and construct a new civic pride among the residents. As a corollary, he wanted to persuade the people to believe that unlike its colonial counterpart, the new Hong Kong Government was a government for the people and that the Hong Kong economy could prosper even better under Chinese rule. This ‘urban utopia’ was to be achieved, first, by inducement. Residents were to be rewarded with improvements in their daily living. The latter included the policy of providing 85,000 housing flats each year, counteracting the soaring property prices as well as raising the homeownership level to 70% by the year of 2007; the policy of strengthening the deployment of the mother tongue in primary and secondary school education, consolidating the Chinese identity; and the policy of providing the elderly with community support services and residential care, nurturing the Chinese custom of respecting the elderly. Besides, it continued inducing the elites, perpetuating the land (re)development regime. This was achieved by branding Hong Kong as Asia’s world city, upgrading the Land Development Corporation to the Urban Renewal Authority and the corresponding enactment of the Urban Renewal Strategy, and launching a number of infrastructural projects like the technology park, the science park, a Chinese medicine centre and the Disney theme park. The reliance on technical rationality persisted, however. The usual manipulation of information and discussion could be identified with the high-handed and top-down implementation of policies. This was best illustrated by the famous, but highly problematic, vision that Hong Kong was an economic city without politics.

Hegemony Became ProblematicThe ‘urban utopia’ sketched above turned out to be a disaster during implementation due to a com-bination of internal and external relations. By the time Hong Kong was handed over to the Chinese,

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the property market had already passed its peak. The beginning of a downturn overlapped with the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis. Instead of acknowledging the significance of these mecha-nisms, the general sentiment was that the implementation of the policy of 85,000 flats was the root cause underpinning the bursting of the property market bubble in late 1997. Many homeowners, including speculators, were caught in the negative equity trap, causing personal and corporate bankruptcies, then mass unemployment and, finally, a stagnant troubled economy. The developers called upon the government to put a halt to supplying land and stop building public housing and putting the newly constructed flats on sale. Many citizens and other residents reacted with anger, which led to street demonstrations. The economy and the society received another heavy blow with the outbreak of the SARS epidemic. In the spring of 2003, the whole city was quiet, with negative economic growth and much loss of human life, and then grievance. The untimely proposal of enacting Article 23 of the Hong Kong Basic Law, to be in alignment with the State Security Law, outraged people, bringing half a million of them to the streets on 1 July 2003. Meanwhile, the situation in mainland China had changed, as the runaway economy had widened social inequality, causing grievance and resistance. When Hu Jintao, the new party chief, took office in 2002, he reluctantly, but instantaneously, emphasized social harmony as the mission. The 2003 development in Hong Kong was a concern for Hu, who was quoted emphasizing the maintenance of social sta-bility in Hong Kong. While it was announced later in September 2003 that Article 23 legislation was withdrawn, the unpopular Tung was finally forced to step down for health reasons in March 2005. His ‘urban utopia’ was quietly shelved by the new Chief Executive.

Thus, by the later days of his administration, there emerged spaces of representation along with his representations of space. The image of Asia’s world city, with the CBD consisting of iconic architecture and people living happily, was confronted with a sluggish economy full of bankrupted companies, negative-equity homeowners, unemployed workers and impecunious tenants. In other words, people lived a daily life that was different from the representations of space. What made this situation different from its previous counterpart was that the discontent was now widespread. It was no longer restricted to the elites but also spread to the whole society, partly fuelled by the increasing amount of redevelopment activities, as epitomized by the anti Wedding Card Street redevelopment project and the anti Star Ferry Clock Tower movement. It was this broad social base of resistance that some of the elites tried to mobilize. They started to form a ‘public’ representation of space that emphasized the provision of more public open spaces and criticized the government’s representation as a grand land sale project involving ‘develop[ing] offices and shopping malls with little relationship to the people’s enjoyment of the Harbour’.2 In addition, the designation of additional commercial land will attract more traffic to the CBD, which was against the purpose of alleviating traffic congestion in Central. Although the government was allowed to implement the CBD extension project through CRIII, the court cases made members of government realize the need for a new approach in securing public support and solving the crisis arising from numerous debates, rallies, protests and campaigns.

Against such a background, UDSNCH was commissioned by the Planning Department in 2007. The HEC, which was set up in 2004, would also provide inputs to this Study.3 HEC was made up of both official and non-official members from professional institutes, NGOs, academics and government departments. It mainly encouraged greater public participation and advised the government on planning, design and development issues along the waterfront. In particular, a Task Group on Urban Design Study for the New Central Harbourfront (TGUDS) was set up to give advice on the public consultation strategy and the study.

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UDSNCH: Public Engagement as a Tool of HegemonyUDSNCH comprised a two-stage public engagement exercise. Stage 1 public consultation included a Focus Group Workshop (FGW) for professionals and academic institutions by invitation only and a Community Engagement Forum (CEF) for the general public on 5 and 12 May 2007, respec-tively. Members of the TPB and HEC served as facilitators in group discussion on the general urban design and sustainability principles. There were 90 attendees and 150 participants in FGW and CEF, respectively. The formats of FGW and CEF, which were the same, included a briefing session by the consultant followed by group discussions. There were other consultations with TPB, HEC and relevant District Councils and other relevant advisory bodies, and a questionnaire survey. The aim of Stage 2 was to collect public views on the urban design vision, the refined urban design framework and the design concepts for the key sites. Besides a FGW (49 participants) and a CEF (142 participants), the public engagement exercises comprised two public exhibitions, seven rov-ing exhibitions, and public views through comment cards, telephone polls, face-to-face interviews and written submissions between April and July 2008. As usual, it was consulted in Legislative Council, TPB, HEC, 18 District councils, academic and professional institutes and relevant public and advisory bodies. In the CEF, the government designed two development options (Options A and B) for each of the eight key sites and members of the public were encouraged to choose between them.

It is apparent from the above that UDSNCH had enrolled and enlisted many individual interests, ranging from individuals, professional, social and political elites to professional bodies or NGOs like HEC, Harbour Business Forum, Citizen Envisioning @ Harbour and Designing Hong Kong. Where it differed drastically from conventional public participation was that it included a larger number of laypersons, on the one hand, and specific interest bodies like HEC, on the other. This greater diversity demanded that the government interact both face-to-face to iron out the differ-ences and arrive at some kinds of conclusion among the more enthusiastic interests within the stipulated two-to-three hours, and at a distance (via telephone, post, etc.) over a lengthier period of time to capture the general consensus of the more silent majority. Given the different purposes, the government invoked a rich array of methods from exhibitions, consultation, briefing, debates and interviews to written comments.

The Persistence of Technical RationalityTechnical rationality, however, still took up the reins of FGW. Before the commencement of UDSNCH, the Planning Department actually released an illustrative design concept as the basis of discussion. This was drawn on the design concepts of creating vibrancy and diversity, creating enjoyable public spaces and creating a green unifying edge. If the government planners were, apparently, criticized for contributing to the abstract space, the HEC’s agreed Harbour Planning Principles,4 which supposedly formed the basis of the illustrative design concepts, could not be immune from criticism either. Despite the proclaimed input of deliberative planning, they were equally abstract, but not lived.

The government was keen to ensure that the procedure of preparing the representations of space was right. The rational procedure should start with the approved OZPs, the output of the completed statutory procedures. As such, the government did not want any emerging challenges during the course of formulation. There is ample evidence of this insistence on rational procedure. For exam-ple, it was clearly stated in the draft Study brief for discussion in the LegCo that the public was

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allowed only to refine the existing urban design framework based on the planners’ vision for Central (LegCo Paper CB(1)2219/05-06(01): 3). Another example is about whether the OZPs themselves should be the topic of discussion. In the second meeting of the TGUDS, the Chief Town Planner of the Planning Department advised the members that ‘Grade A offices would be needed in the Central Business District in view of the limited new supply, low office vacancy rate, and strong demand’.5 Although some of the HEC members opined that amendment of the zonings was required to meet the public aspirations, the government planners re-emphasized that the scope of the Study was confined to urban design issues (Minutes of the Second Meeting of TGUDS). The final example relates to the reluctance of the Planning Department and the consultants to discuss development proposals for individual sites – the contents of individual zones within the OZPs (Minutes of the Third Meeting of TGUDS). In sum, there was limited scope for deviation from the rational procedure on which the authority space heavily relied and the technical concern of constructing a strong CBD.

ManipulationA large number of people attended CEF who had various spatio-temporalities and thinking and concerns about harbour reclamation. Some of them were even critical of the government’s inten-tion and method of harbour reclamation. Stage 1 CEF was held when the memory of the demoli-tion of the Star Ferry Clock Tower in December 2006 was still fresh. Accordingly, angry and outspoken voices were widespread. These imposed a daunting task upon the consultant responsi-ble for the public engagement exercise, who was certainly interested in ensuring a ‘soft landing’. While penetrating criticism had to be suppressed before it further developed, praise should be consolidated and accorded. Whereas opponents must be weakened, allies should be strengthened. This could be achieved by manipulating the tone, scope, intensity and authenticity of discussion.

To begin with, the idea of dividing the people to be consulted into the two groups of FGW and CEF was itself a tactic of separation. It reified the social norm that the expert is superior to the layperson by avoiding any possible challenge being waged at the former by the latter. Besides, the format of FGW and CEF began with a briefing session by the technical consultants, which was followed by group discussions. The technical consultants usually explained the rationality and procedure behind the findings. Because they were derived technically, which was objective, the knowledge should not be challenged in the first place. If there was any discussion, the focus should be more on information collection and clarification than on challenging the rationale. Accordingly, while the socio-political significance of technical knowledge was confirmed, technical language manipulated at the outset the overall tone of discussion.

Moreover, to manipulate the discussion, the harbourfront was conceived as discrete, abstract spaces. Instead of presenting it as a continuous strip of land, the harbourfront was partitioned into eight discrete zones with little interrelationship in terms of economic, social, cultural and environ-mental aspects. Without a holistic view, the public were asked to discuss the major urban design issues of each zone. Focusing on the minute details depoliticized the cumulative impacts of harbour reclamation, which were highly contentious. The scope of discussion was thus manipulated.

Furthermore, it was the normal practice for members of the TPB, HEC and status quo bodies to serve as facilitators in group discussions. Because of their affiliation, they may have brought along their organizational bias in directing the discussion. They were the ones that may have already reached some kind of consensus with the government before the public engagement exercise or those on a similar wavelength as the government. It was, then, common for them to perform the gatekeeper’s role on behalf of the government: they promoted positive views for reclamation, and

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intercepted and calmed negative ones. In Stage 2, for instance, the government designed two development options for each of the eight key sites. The facilitator of CEF led the discussion on concepts A and B only, and participants were asked to cast votes on the preference on these con-cepts of each of the eight sites. As reflected in the public consultation report, the group discussion was directed towards the technical items of concepts A and B such as permitted GFA, building height, land uses and building layout. Development of a site was reduced to technical issues related to building form and mass.

There were manipulations of opinions too. In Stage 1, participants of FGW and CEF were invited to rate, among others, the importance of a list of urban design objectives. Although neither the FGW nor CEF participants rated the stipulated objective, the government still put it as the first item on the proposed list of urban design objectives. It was also presented accordingly at the TGUDS meeting. Another example is that despite the urge for low-rise and low-density develop-ment along the waterfront by FGW and CEF participants, the government still proceeded with the preferred options. This clearly reflects that the findings of Stage 1 did not serve as the basis for the formulation of development options in Stage 2. The government has selectively manipulated opinions.

What manipulation had done was to avoid heterotopia (of differences) from developing. Heterotopia is where difference is accentuated and where spatial and social uniformity is contra-dicted. At the end of the day, after all these public engagement exercises, the government managed to come up with a consensus, which was successfully legitimized as the collective view of harbour reclamation.

Summary and ConclusionWe have reported the case of public engagement in UDSNCH in Hong Kong, expanding on Lefebvre’s concept of hegemony to resolve contradictions of space under increasing urbanization by urban specialists. Where there is a clash over the meanings of space, there are spatial contradic-tions. The urban specialists must take remedial measures to resolve them. Whether hegemony can be achieved depends on the processes and strategies to induce people to think in alignment with the dominant representation. This in turn hinges on the invocation of various modalities of power, their constitution in place in particular. It is from this angle of entanglement of various modalities that public engagement can be elaborated and the achievement of hegemony can be evaluated.

In Hong Kong, public engagement was needed to smother broader social-based interstices that developed in the land (re)development regime. The contradiction between the relentless quest for land in the regime and the artificially stipulated, limited supply of land called for large-scale har-bour reclamation as well as urban redevelopment. Some people started to air their objections and negotiate with the government. Nevertheless, the conventional public participation could no longer function effectively in relation to the recent developments within Hong Kong and in China as well as the rest of the world, from the return of the sovereignty to the Chinese, the bust of the property market, China mainland’s quest for social harmony, the Asian Financial Crisis to the SARS out-break. These forces collided, enlarging the divergence between the representation of space of the government and the daily experiences of many people, forming interstices with increasing broader social bases, but there were full-fledged spatial contradictions, with no well developed spaces of representation. Yet, the government still realized that to ensure the hegemony of the regime, it must introduce public engagement to the authority space so as to generate consensus.

This case has illustrated how public engagement has not really challenged the hegemony of the land (re)development regime. The government invoked many techniques, some face-to-face and

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others at a distance, to enlist, enrol and mobilize them, including exhibitions, consultation, brief-ing, debates, telephone interviews and postcard written comments. Most significant of all were FGWs for invitees and CEFs for the general public. What is conclusive from our findings is that the government never gave up the technical rationality, the backbone of the land (re)development regime. The approved statutory OZP was claimed to be the basis of deliberation, and the illustra-tive design concept released depicted the abstract space of a world-class waterfront. The govern-ment also invoked a rich array of techniques manipulating the composition of groupings in each engagement exercise, the assignment of group leaders, the setting of agenda, the configuring of contents of discussion and the reporting of engagement results. Accordingly, the following ‘facts’ were re-confirmed as consensus: that experts are superior to laypersons is the social norm; techni-cal knowledge is objective; technical knowledge is the normalized type; the minute details of individual sites rather than the whole stretch of the harbour are contentious; the engagement fora are ‘inclusive’ exercises for all interested parties; and the report of consultation is the true reflec-tion of the deliberation. After all these efforts, the government was proud to legitimize the recla-mation projects as the public project, because the public, who had been engaged in the decision-making, ‘supported’ it. For the public, since they had participated in it, they should abide by the decision made. Some people may have had high hopes of the urban professionals, as the deliberative planning argument would like us to believe. But they have turned out to be powerless to negotiate with the government, whose concession was just too minimal. In other words, once the abstract space of the government was fully incorporated into people’s minds, hegemony was achieved.

This study has, nevertheless, enriched the application of the problematic of hegemony to Hong Kong. It illustrates the significance of elaborating the conditions of hegemony relationally. This account has at least two implications for research and for practice. First, there are recently many other urban development projects and public engagement exercises. Causal observation seems to suggest that the problematic of hegemony has the potential of shedding more light on these cases. It is, however, expected that due to different emerging contradictions as well as constitution in place of various modalities of power, the outcome of hegemonic construction may differ from the UDSNCH case. This has significant implication for practice. This case has argued that the colonial government has successfully smothered differences, but it does not mean that this will always be the case. The situation unfolded in the way it did because of the failure of the interstice to develop into a spatial contradiction, something contingent. This might be the converse if more genuine spaces of representation had been developed, in direct clash with the representations of space. If, as Lefebvre has suggested, everyone works hard to turn minimal into maximal differences, we might expect the development of counter-hegemony actions, upsetting the land (re)development regime and producing a socially more just society.

AcknowledgementsThe authors would like to thank the three referees for their critical comments on the earlier draft of this article. The errors in the present version are, however, our own. They are also grateful for the financial support of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council General Research Fund (HKU 7462/06J and HKBU 244808).

Notes1. The first three paragraphs in this section draw on Kipfer (2002, 2008).2. Source: SPH’s website: http://www.harbourprotection.org/html/all_page_c_eng.htm.3. Although HEC had played an important role in harbourfront planning, it has been ignored here due to the

limited scope of this article.

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4. The eight principles are ‘Preserving Victoria Harbour as a Natural, Public and Economic Asset’; ‘Victoria Harbour as Hong Kong’s Identity’; ‘A Vibrant Harbour’; ‘An Accessible Harbour’; ‘Maximizing the Harbour-front for Public Enjoyment’; ‘Integrated Planning for a World-class Harbour’; ‘Sustainable Development of the Harbour’; and ‘Early and Ongoing Stakeholder Engagement’. Source: http://www.devb.gov.hk/en/publications_and_press_releases/press/index_id_2343.html. Retrieved on 18 November 2010.

5. Source: Minutes of the Second Meeting of the TGUDS for the New Central Harbourfront, 31 January 2008.

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