Creative industries, public engagement and urban redevelopment in Hong Kong: Cultural regeneration as another dose of isotopia?

JCIT-01521; No of Pages 9 Cities xxx (2015) xxx–xxx

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Creative industries, public engagement and urban redevelopment in Hong Kong: Cultural regeneration as another dose of isotopia?☆ Wing-Shing Tang Department of Geography, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 12 January 2015 Received in revised form 9 September 2015 Accepted 11 September 2015 Available online xxxx Keywords: Culture-led urban regeneration Utopia Spatial contradictions Hong Kong

a b s t r a c t Culture-led urban regeneration has been the buzzword of many cities around the world nowadays. There are two related ways to interrogate this problematic. First, it is about the extent to which it is a real urban future for cities. Second, it is about its applicability to cities other than those in the West. This article attempts to tackle these related queries by, first, invoking Lefebvre's concepts of utopia vs isotopia and, then, drawing on two cases of cultural regeneration in an industrial district and an old residential neigbourhood in Hong Kong. The conceptual discussion of utopia highlights the imperative of spatial contradictions as the prerequisite for the emergence of concrete utopia; otherwise, it only results in isotopia. As such, it is difficult for cultural regeneration to produce utopia. This, in turn, calls for greater attention to the historical–geographical processes that have produced the conditions for the concerned city. It is these processes that differentiate Hong Kong from many others in the West. The prevailing land (re)development regime has favoured some processes at the expense of others. The two empirical cases have confirmed that either spatial contradictions were not there, or if they ever emerged, they were time and space specific. These conditions rendered it difficult to nurture creativity and to really relegate the decision-making power to the people, thereby denying the possible applicability of the problematic of cultural regeneration to Hong Kong. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Culture-led urban regeneration has been the buzzword of many cities around the world nowadays (e.g., Evans, 2001). There is the claim that cultural/creative industry is the panacea for many urban economic and (less so) societal problems. Yet, this claim has increasingly been treated with scepticism. On the one hand, in his review of this cultural turn a decade ago, Miles (2005) queries the creativeness of creative industries and the extent to which these proclaimed successful practices can be transferred across cities—Barcelona's success, say, was spatio-temporally unique. A decade later, Vanolo (2013) reiterates that the concepts of creative class and of creative places are highly problematic as both have ignored their external conditions of existence. On the other, Shin and Stevens (2013) criticise these urban regeneration research and practices for having eschewed the political processes involved and, in turn, suggest improving over them by underscoring the collaborative relations amongst many agents, including, prominently, the grassroots. Due to the expansion of civil society, Douglass (2013) suggests that we should drop the concept of cultural economy, one of commodity consumption, and, instead, adopt that of creative communities, one of political mobilisation. Lefebvre (2009, p.193) would ☆ Thanks are due to the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (GRF250012) for their partial financial support of this research. E-mail address: [email protected].

have been very critical of Douglass' employment of the concept of ‘conviviality’ as it has confused the end with the means. The latter distinction may resemble the one between abstract utopia – desire – and concrete utopia – will to transform underlying social relations. In sum, people nowadays have more reservation than before about culture-led regeneration both from economic development and political mobilisation. That being said, the literature has basically glossed over one essential discussion: the applicability of the problematic of culture-led regeneration to the rest of the world, including East Asia. While Vanolo (2013, pp.1786–88) unveils that the West has, via all sorts of international organisations, been responsible for publicising the ‘normative’ approach to cultural economy to the rest of the world, his argument is still focused on the highly selected experience of Christiana in Denmark. Although Shin and Stevens (2013) have chosen South Korea as the case study, they have uncritically relied on the big assumption that collaborative planning can be applied there. Similar critique can be waged on Douglass (2013) given his reliance on the Western concept of civil society. In a recent critique of urban China research, Tang (2014a) has great reservation about the uncritical application of many Western concepts to China, including world/global city, governance, neoliberalism, entrepreneurialism, inter-city competitiveness, place making, and gentrification. Most of these concepts have been randomly indigenised and applied to the local context without paying attention to its underlying forces. (Some have also been randomly appropriated by the local

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Please cite this article as: Tang, W.-S., Creative industries, public engagement and urban redevelopment in Hong Kong: Cultural regeneration as another dose of isotopia? Cities (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2015.09.004

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authority for governing purposes.) Using Hong Kong urbanisation as a case study, Tang (2014b) has further warned us not to take for granted the urban and the rural and the relations between the two from the Western historical experience. Will it also be true to culture-led urban regeneration? It is the objective of this paper to take up this issue by drawing on the experience of Hong Kong. Like other cities, Hong Kong in the early 2000s had designated creative industries as one of her prioritised economic growth sectors. Since then, there have been many proclaimed attempts to promote cultural and creative industries (Lai and Leung, 2014). Urban renewal was somehow praised as an avenue to foster these industries in the 2005 Policy Address of the first Chief Executive (Tung, 2005: 34–5), and the West Kowloon Cultural District and these industries were considered as two pillars by his successor. Besides, after being criticised for adopting the bulldozer approach of redevelopment and for implementing the ineffective colonial practice of setting up independent committees for soliciting opinions, the Hong Kong Government has turned to public engagement for rescue. For this purpose, it has set up a pilot district urban renewal forum in Kowloon City District Council. These can be deemed as the attempts to achieve some form of urban utopia in the city. This paper has a different take of these developments. It attempts to illustrate that these are but isotopia, formulated by the Hong Kong Government, to facilitate the integration of Hong Kong with the Chinese mainland. This is to be achieved by, first, elaborating the more critical concepts formulated by Lefebvre including utopia. It underscores the imperative of unravelling spatial contradictions in absolute, relative, and relational spaces. This conceptual discussion is instrumental in identifying the underlying conditions for the production of utopia and, its negation, isotopia in Hong Kong. As the hegemony of the land (re)development regime (Tang, 2008) – property development as the key for the achievement of the norm of prosperity – prevails in the city, where politics and the rationale of governing are different from the West, there are constraints to nurture creativity, on the one hand, and, on the other, disincentives to relegate the decision-making power to the people. Against this conceptual backdrop, the paper proceeds to investigate two cultural regeneration cases. The first involves artists setting up an art community in vacant flatted factory buildings in Fo Tan district, the Shatin new town. In comparison, the second focuses on regeneration in an inner-city residential district—the widely acclaimed Blue House project in the related Wedding Cards Street Redevelopment Project (H15), the Wanchai district. The choice of these two cases is meant to furnish a short essay like this with the minimal variety of evidence for the issue in hand. The overall methodology to elaborate these two cases is apparently dictated by the conceptual frame of the paper. Unlike a pure empiricist piece, in which there is a disparate division between theory and empiric, the role of case study is to assemble yet another piece of evidence to prove the already established theory. The discussion in one of the earlier paragraphs has queried this position, intending to articulate evidences for the construction of a new understanding. Since the historical–geographical processes or mechanisms involved are more perceptive for this purpose, the case studies will take the form of intensive research rather than an extensive one (e.g., Sayer, 1992, pp.241–51). Accordingly, there is not so much quantitative generalisation of patterns as qualitative documentary search, interviews, analysis, and in-depth story-writing of processes. Given their different natures, however, the two cases vary in fine detail within this overall methodology. The Fo Tan case, the dynamics of which are simpler, pinpoints more precisely spatial contradictions between the artist community and other users both within the industrial district and without other districts in the vicinity. Amongst others, the relevant technique is bound to be interviews with the agents concerned. Whereas in the Blue House case, which cannot be isolated from many intertwining developments over time and across space in the city, the technique of story-writing supplemented with some interviews tend to be more productive in unveiling the processes. In comparison, the

complexity also makes the latter case thicker and longer in elaboration than the former. Based on the above conceptual and case analyses, the final section will explore the possibility of cultural regeneration in Hong Kong. 2. Conceptual discussion: From utopia, cultural revolution, and spatial contradictions, to the Hong Kong socio-historical specificity Lefebvre's theories, including the production of space, urban revolution, and state theory, all point to a nuanced way of understanding utopia (Lefebvre, 2003). The urban intellectuals help shape the formation of abstract space, which, once materialised by state planning and administration, becomes a repressive space. Abstract space is the product of what is conceived, or the representation of space. It is abstract 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 for qualitative difference. In contrast, people live their life through spatial practices, possibly constructing their spaces of representation. The latter may stand at odds with their counterpart, representations of space. Contradictions of capitalism, then, manifest themselves as contradictions of space. It is out of these interstices that differential space start to emerge. Once the space is changed, so will be life. This is Lefebvre's concrete utopia. In contrast, state planning and administration tries hard to perpetuate the hegemony of the abstract space. This happens when the abstract space envelops and incorporates the daily dreams and aspirations of the underprivileged population as well as when it has become part and parcel of their everyday life. Accordingly, the abstract space is an isotopia. The latter refers to the same place – neighbourhood and immediate its environs – and is defined at each level—political, commercial, and religious, etc. (Elden, 2004, pp.146–47). Relevant to our discussion here is Lefebvre's call for a permanent cultural revolution. It has no parallel to the concept of cultural in cultural regeneration. Unlike the latter, it is not an isolated aspect, separated from the holistic concern. For Lefebvre, it is not an aesthetic revolution, not a revolution based on culture; neither its aim nor motive is culture. Rather, it is a revolution in culture to create a style of life (Elden, 2004, p.118) and a differential space, effecting more lasting transformative changes, or produced differences. Many have criticised Lefebvre for being vague on details of his theorisation. Central to Lefebvre's argument is the concept of spatial contradictions. Nevertheless, he is less specific on elaborating their sources and the tactics available. Allen (2003, p.171), for example, highlights the significance of place constitution—the spatial relational ties. One may interpret Harvey's (2006, especially pp.133–48) spatial matrix, which combines Lefebvre's conceptual triad with three concepts of space (absolute, relative, and relational), as a similar attempt to enrich Lefebvre's under-theorisation. (Absolute space refers to a conception of space as a container, within which material objects and events can be located with precision. Relative space means that space is filled with objects and relations, and therefore space is relative to other things and time. Relational space denotes that space is embedded in or internal to process, something always in the process of making.) In a similar vein, Vanolo (2013, pp.1787–1788) has criticised the problematic of cultural creativity for adopting the container conception of space. The ways social practices are played out in space have been belittled. Besides, one should not restrict the discussion of relational processes to that of the market economy. Finally, whether the urban quarter is creative depends on the relative recognition by external actors. In other words, one may improve the understanding of cultural creativity by deciphering the interaction of spatial processes across scales and within scales. I would argue that these are only technical fixes to the problem, as these improvements have seldom touched on the crux of the matter. Whether any spatial processes at various scales and within scales

Please cite this article as: Tang, W.-S., Creative industries, public engagement and urban redevelopment in Hong Kong: Cultural regeneration as another dose of isotopia? Cities (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2015.09.004

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are in the first place significant in nurturing the dreaming of urban utopia, then in formulating more concrete policies or strategies like cultural regeneration, and, finally, in effecting changes depends on the urban context concerned. Even in his more critical reading of the co-existence of universality and particularity, Harvey (e.g., 2000, pp.73–94) argues that while there are universal capitalist processes across the globe, there are uneven geographical developments due to particular historical–geographical conditions. Deep in his mind is still the universality in the recent past – globalisation in particular – whereas the particular historical–geographical conditions merely serve the function of elaborating the contradictions between particularity and universality. The ways in which these historical–geographical conditions themselves have been produced over time and across space are usually glossed over in the discussion. But these details are, in fact, of paramount importance. In producing the urban context concerned, they simultaneously configure some spatial processes at the expense of others and render some scales relevant but not others. Belittling the historical–geographical processes that have produced the historical– geographical conditions of the urban context is a serious mistake that we must correct. In other words, the technical fixes to the Lefebvrean urban utopia must be improved by a deeper understanding of the historical–geographical processes underlying the urban context concerned. It is not surprising to find that this mistake is especially pronounced in the aforementioned attempts to randomly indigenised and randomly appropriated Western concepts to the East Asian context (see also Tang and Mizuoka, 2010). Insofar as these attempts have no interest in the critical socio-historical interrogation of the Western concepts, whatever technical fixes proposed to improve the latter would be equally accepted for granted. It is thus even more imperative in this conceptual discussion to problematise the historical– geographical processes in the Hong Kong context that allow us to interpret as well as evaluate activities related to cultural regeneration in due course. In his challenge of Lefebvre's complete urbanisation thesis, Tang (2014b) alerts us to the continuity of town–country contradictions in Hong Kong, which is attributable to its distinguishable path of urbanisation. The intertwining of Hong Kong colonialism with modernity, nationalism, and other colonisations, and the Chinese urban and land questions is found responsible for the emergence of the land (re)development regime since the late 1960s. The colonial nature has ensured that government intervention is the predominant arbitrator of development. Its task is to ensure socio-political stability with economy without the necessity of encountering the tension between order and liberty—the inalienable individual rights of Hongkongers. The imposition of the requirement of financial independence on the colonial government by London at the embryonic stage of colonialism has rendered land-related revenues the prime concern of the city. Given that Hong Kong was colonised in stages, under three treaties, since a large proportion of the land area was leased, not ceded, to the British for 99 years from 1898 onwards, and due to the prevalence of the Chinese customary land ownership and occupancy practices, development has been restricted to the strip of land on the two sides of the harbour and selected new towns, or so-called the ‘urban areas.’ In totality, the government, as the biggest single landlord, has administered the production of space in earnest, including formulating knowledge and invoking modalities of power to perpetuate its hegemony. Two related characteristics of this regime are worth highlighting (see also Tang, 2008). Given its ability to own and regulate land, the most precious resource, the government plays a predominant role in the production of space. It is the logic of the government, not capital per se, that counts. The concern for the effectivity of the network of government, including the appropriate mixture of modalities of power, is a priority over the logic of capital accumulation. There are undoubtedly occasions in which the government cannot ignore the circulation of capital, but the government is always the centre of the

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hegemony. This was the case 160 years ago, so is nowadays. The proclaimed predominance of the secondary circuit of capital as the centre, as advocated by scholars like Harvey and Lefebvre, has not changed this nature. Having monopolised land, the government can regulate the fictitious capital from monetary capital, productive capital, to commodity capital. Yet the government always fine-tones its practices as new situations unfold themselves, needless to say that unless its hegemony is challenged, its prevailing practices will not be modified. Given the dominance of space in the colony, spatial contradictions play an imperative role in challenging the hegemony and, concomitantly, modifying governmental practices. This prompts us to elaborate the other characteristic: property development has dominated the society since early colonialism. Its prominence can never be considered secondary to industrial capital accumulation, as a result of the switching of capital from the latter. Besides profitability in industrial production, there are many other somewhat discrete socio-economic forces affecting property development, amongst which is one must underscore, the intricate land ownership system inherited from the Chinese during several stages of colonisation. The resultant high-density development, characterised by the intertwining property ownership and occupancy, has too complicated the redevelopment process. Recently, property development is even proclaimed explicitly as the norm of the society for, amongst others, socio-political stability. Accordingly, the higher the intensity of property development is, the further the society will progress. Other economic and social activities, including art and culture, are discouraged, not the least due to the crude reality of exorbitant, unaffordable rental costs of accommodation or, conversely, of higher return from redeveloping their premises into lavish real estate properties (Kong, 2012, p.192) (as seen from the introduction of the revitalisation policy on industrial buildings 2010, RTHK, 2011). Little government intervention into the socio-economic structure by introducing economic incentives (on education, see Lai, 2007; Wong, 2015) and the production of space by modifying planning dreams, building regulations and zoning schemes is expected (Chan, 2012: p.74 and 76). But, dialectically, as soon as the negative effects of property development are increasingly unveiled and widely publicised, people start to unsettle this norm. Alternative desires as well as practices may emerge (see the Blue House case below). As is always the case, however, this kind of societal cracking may develop faster in some areas than others, partly due to the magnitude of property development and partly due to the ability to articulate challenging positions. In sum, some forms of utopian thinking and practices in Hong Kong must be conceived within the context of relational processes such as the land (re)development regime. The government is the arbitrator of the latter, while property development is its object of arbitration. Isotopia is then the representation of space with the political rationality of perpetuating the regime, while utopia intends to do the opposite. Any spatial practices deviating from this regime will be received with reservation, as they are blocked by prevailing laws and regulations. Nevertheless, spatial contradictions may be formed once people start to change their mentality towards property development. Formulation of such alternative representations in everyday practice may draw on similar experiences at various spatial scales. As such, they involve meticulous elaboration at relational, relative, and absolute spaces. Having clarified the Hong Kong context, we are equipped to examine the two cases of possible urban regeneration. 3. Development of the Fontanian art community 3.1. The art community still in making There were a few artists renting vacated flats in the industrial buildings in Fo Tan, Shatin new town, in the New Territories, to set up their studios in the 1990s. But it was not until around the year 2000 that a few students from the Department of Fine Arts, The Chinese

Please cite this article as: Tang, W.-S., Creative industries, public engagement and urban redevelopment in Hong Kong: Cultural regeneration as another dose of isotopia? Cities (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2015.09.004

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University of Hong Kong, relocated themselves to the district and rendered it more noticeable within the local art community. Having set up studios there, artists began organising annual open-day since 2001. The name Fotanian, which represents the art community in Fo Tan, first appeared in the 2003 annual open studio. In 2011, there were 260 artists and 70 studios participating in the open studio programme, and over 10,000 persons attended the activity (Leung, 2011). Two years later, there were workshops, seminars, movie shows, etc. organised by 88 studios and 250 artists (http://www.fotanian.org/ open-studios-2013/, accessed on 10th September, 2013). It is difficult not to admit that Fotanian is a big success, needless to say that it has made a modest contribution to the art community in Hong Kong since 2001 (Kong, 2012).1 Nevertheless, it has only managed to attract the society's limelight during those few days of open studio. Once the function for each year was completed, both the art community in Fo Tan and the Hong Kong society at large have returned to ‘normal’—everything remains quiet and tranquil after the ‘hiccup.’ This achievement tremendously falls short of the blueprints drawn up by the aforementioned Policy Addresses.

3.2. The absence of spatial contradictions This is understandable as the spatial practices of artists and of ordinary residents are miles apart. It is a truism that the former generally prefer an absolute space that allows them with the maximum freedom to focus on nothing but their artistic creation (RTHK, 2011). Artists in Hong Kong, in particular, do not believe in any help forthcoming from the Hong Kong Government (Leung, 2011). Given the high rental costs, vacated flats in industrial buildings are bound to be one of the ideal places for them (Kong, 2012, p.186). Industrial premises, with the advantages of being more spacious and having high floor ceiling, are usually charged at a lower rent, though. For those artists who can afford a higher rent, they usually take up one whole unit or, even, joint units, whereas for those who are less lucky, they would subdivide one flat and share with each other. This is exactly the situation of the Fotanians. In 2013, there were 91 studios and 141 galleries scattering on various floors inside a number of industrial buildings within Fo Tan industrial district (http://www.fotanian.org/studios/, accessed on 8th September, 2013). This number, though large from the perspective of art, is still relatively small in comparison with other activities and their space of occupancy. As all art studios and galleries are located on various floors inside industrial buildings, there is no visible artwork or art activity on the street. There are no signs, billboards, or banners on the street indicating the presence of art activities down the road or around the corner. Unless visitors are informed of the exact location of each studio or they have already acquainted themselves with Fotanian, it is hardly noticeable that art activities exist in the district. Instead, in front of a casual visitor are on the street shops selling hardwares or ironwares for manufacturing production, car repairing workshops, real estate agents and restaurants, all catering or relating to industrial activities. This confirms the fact that due to lower ability to pay in comparison with flat owners, the art community has failed to make its imprints on the physical community beyond the artists' individual, private spaces. Because of these spatial practices, the artists' perception of Fo Tan is very restricted. According to the two artists interviewed on 13th, 15th and 24th January 2011,2 their perceived space of Fo Tan was nothing but a place to work. When they arrived at Fo Tan, they usually went 1 She presents one of the most substantive analyses of the arts cluster in Fo Tan on the issues of cultural, social and economic sustainability. Nevertheless, having mainly focused on the absolute space – the cluster – she paid meagre attention to the relational and relative spaces. The presence or absence of spatial contradiction, the central theme of this paper, is also never investigated. 2 The unstructured interviews for the Fo Tan case were reported in Ma (2011).

straight to their studios bypassing everything else; it was the same when they left their studios (Artist 1: ‘Once alighted the bus, I dashed to the studio.’). It is unfair to say that they did not interact with people. They did, but they were usually restricted to neighbouring tenants, who often provided them with raw materials for their art production, and the security guards of the industrial buildings where their studios are located (Kong, 2012, pp.188–89). In other words, their relative space was confined mainly within the industrial buildings, with a few exception of routine interaction with the audience as well as the residents in the vicinity. The spatial practices of the residents are as ‘parochial’ as those of artists. Fo Tan industrial district is part of the Shatin new town. According to the 2011 Census, there were 630,273 persons living in the Shatin District Council District (http://www.census2011.gov.hk/en/districtprofiles/sha-tin.html, accessed 8th September, 2013). For the population, the perceived distance between the residential community and the industrial part is greater than the physical distance. According to the two residents (interviewed on 16th and 19th February 2011), who lived next to Fo Tan, they perceived their community purely as a place for living and Fo Tan as an area for industrial activities, not for cultural/artist usage. Although they lived next to Fo Tan, they seldom went there. As a result, they knew little about the situation there, and there was no incentive for them to acquire knowledge about their neighbouring community and interact with whoever worked there. While one resident had visited Fotanian once and another showed interests towards culture/art but had never visited it before, both indicated that if they were interested in attending these activities, they would have visited places purposely designed such as museums or galleries but not Fotanian (Resident 1: ‘[I would go to] Hong Kong Museum of Art… Hong Kong Heritage Museum, and Hong Kong Arts Centre.’). More importantly, they saw the difference between Western high culture and ‘the lower class of public housing estate residents’ (Resident 1) and that ‘since industrial and residential districts are two different things, an ordinary resident like us cannot do anything if no one is going to break the barrier between the two’ (Resident 2). Proximity is apparently not conducive to increasing interaction between artists and residents within the district. This perceived gap was created, and in turn reinforced, by the representation of space of Shatin new town. Tang et al. (2007) have elaborated the political rationality behind the construction of new towns in Hong Kong. New towns were the technology of the government to nurture civic pride so desperately needed to resolve the sociospatial contradictions at the end of the 1960s. They were the laboratories to produce the population with the appropriate social mix and with the concerted exposure by living the designated, routinised activities. Accordingly, like other new towns at its time, Shatin was physically designed in a functional manner. It was divided into a number of zones: residential, industrial, commercial, government/institution/community (G/IC), etc. (see Fig. 1). Thus there are light industrial zones to provide job opportunities for the residents. In these zones, the road and pathways were built wider to accommodate the traffic. There were open space and parks between buildings, and community facilities like cooked-food stalls for the workers. To ensure a better living environment for the residents, the planners had separated Fo Tan from the residential areas. Finally, the new town has been designed in such a way that the town centre accommodates the major cultural, social, and recreational facilities. There, there were a museum, library, art gallery, town hall, and exhibition hall. They were made available by the requirement of population threshold for the district. The effects of these functional zonings on the daily routines of the residents are two-fold. First, they have encouraged users in each zone to concentrate on the activities that they are designated to do. Manufacturing production or related activities are concentrated in the industrial zone, while other leisure or cultural activities are held in the G/IC zone. Similarly, residential activities are found in the residential

Please cite this article as: Tang, W.-S., Creative industries, public engagement and urban redevelopment in Hong Kong: Cultural regeneration as another dose of isotopia? Cities (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2015.09.004

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zone. Although residents in Shatin may work in Fo Tan, they are physically separated from it, and this separation is even more serious for those who worked outside the new town. Second, people are expected to perform each activity in its respective zone. This is supported by the provision of communication networks. Guided by the well-organised transport and pedestrian networks in the new town, residents would know where to go to fulfill their tasks. The residents gradually built up their perceived space in the new town and live their everyday life accordingly. As a consequence, residents would go to the city, but not Fo Tan, for artist activities (as Resident 2 remarked that ‘to go there would take roughly the same time as to Hong Kong Arts Centre’). In summary, there was neither a clash in the spatial practices between the artists and the residents. Each group is ‘happy’ to live one's everyday life in one's designated zone. Nor was there a clash between the spatial practices of the artists and the representation of space. The artists were silent on the latter, as long as they can continue working in their studios within the industrial building inside the industrial zone. In the absence of possible spatial contradictions, business is carried out as usual, and the hegemony of the land (re)development regime is perpetuated. With the continuous meagre attention devoted to art and culture, the Policy Addresses on the creative industry must be deemed not so much as concrete utopia, but as another isotopia (of integrating with mainland China while promoting economic growth, as argued persuasively by Lai and Leung (2014)) to persuade the public that the government has closely followed the trend and development of the world, that is. 4. Blue House: Cultural regeneration by public engagement 4.1. The Blue House project It is a 32-room tenement building in Wanchai district, which was constructed between 1920s and 1950s. It had been used for various purposes including temple, wine shop, college, the Chamber of Commerce for Fishmongers, martial arts school, osteopathy clinic, and most importantly, working class residences. Part of the building was surrendered to the government in 1978. In 1997, the government painted the exterior wall of the building with blue colour paint – thereafter ‘Blue House’ – and 2 years later its Antiquities and Monuments Office proclaimed it as a Grade 1 historic building (buildings worthy preserving).3 In March, 2006, the Hong Kong Housing Society (HKHS) in collaboration with the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) announced the plan of redeveloping a total of 9 buildings, including Blue House. In the name of ‘community revitalisation and heritage preservation,’ the redevelopment project intends to develop the area along the theme of tea and medicine in line with its historical background of tea trade and medical services. The crux was that tenants would be relocated to public housing elsewhere. Totally shocked and annoyed, residents in the community, aided by a subcommittee of the Wanchai District Board and co-operated with the St. James' Settlement, a local community organisation, commenced the Blue House Preservation Movement. Having carried out focus group meetings, community art shows, forums, and workshops and set up ‘Wanchai Folk Life Museum’ on the ground floor of Blue House, the movements had managed to initiate discussion and encourage engagement amongst various ‘stakeholders’ – Blue House tenants, shop owners in the vicinity, architects, urban planners, culturalists, government departments, artists and performers, academics, and social service sectors – and finally formed the Blue House Preservation Group. The latter has participated in the Revitalising Historic Buildings Through Partnership Scheme (the Revitalisation Scheme) initiated by the government. The Secretary for Development suddenly included 3

The Antiquities Advisory Board of Hong Kong announced in March 2009 that there were a total of 1444 historic buildings in Hong Kong that were worthwhile preserving.

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the Blue House Cluster in the second batch of such schemes in August, 2008. Two years later, the project titled ‘Viva Blue House,’ jointly proposed by St. James' Settlement, Community Cultural Concern, and Hong Kong Heritage Conservation Foundation Limited, was selected by the government as the project for the Blue House Cluster. The project has a few objectives, including the input of original tenants by implementing the principle of ‘retaining the building as well as the tenants’ in actual redevelopment and establishing social enterprises including shops selling desserts and vegetarian food, and mutual, social economy (Sezto, 2012). In short, the Blue House experiment can be considered as one of the cultural regeneration cases at the grassroots level. After a decade of strenuous efforts, local residents have succeeded in proposing a redevelopment scheme. Informed by the post-colonialist position, residents have been guided by a cultural approach that underscores the cultural practices of the subalterns.4 The latter are unveiled by writing their ‘small’ stories, including small-scale production of small workshops, martial arts school, osteopathy clinic, wine and spirit brewery, carrepair body shops, by the methodology of oral history. Their stories are employed to nurture the community spirits, which are essential for the sustainable development of the community concerned. 4.2. The possible emergence of spatial contradictions The government accepted Viva Blue House due to the embryonic development of quasi spaces of representation, the formulation of which has its socio-historical conditions. In the middle of the 2000s, there were favourable conditions that combined relational, relative, and absolute forces across various scales to nurture such a formulation. There was, as a background, the representation of space as implicated in the ‘urban utopia’ proposed by the first Chief Executive after the city returned to China in 1997. On the one hand, it was in fact a continuation of the land (re)development regime already in place since the 1980s (Tang, 2008); as such, it is an isotopia more than a utopia. On the other, it has included in it a new twist to promote the integration of Hong Kong into the mainland Chinese regime. Amongst others, the ‘utopia’ branded the city as Asia's world city. At the centre of this world city, there was the central business district consisting of iconic architectures. To accommodate this growth, it must be expanded by reclaiming the harbour. The existing waterfront must be restructured to create a worldclass waterfront district with unique development opportunities. This also involved a lot of redevelopment activities in the inner city, which were expedited by the announcement of the Urban Renewal Strategy. The Planning Department depicted the old districts in the city as ‘pockets of poverty,’ urging massive redevelopment of buildings aged over 50 years. In reality, there were in the city the bursting of the property market in parallel with the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997, the heavy blow to the economy and society with the outburst of the SARS epidemic in the Spring of 2003, and the outrage caused by the proposal of enacting Article 23 of the Hong Kong Basic Law, to be aligned with the State Security Law in China, in July of the same year. As a result, economic growth was sluggish, many companies went bankrupt, many homeowners were in negative equity, many workers were unemployed, and many tenants still would not find an affordable place to live. In other words, people lived their daily life different from the representation of space. What made this situation different from its previous counterpart was that the discontent was now widespread—not only restricted to the elites but also spread to the whole society. This discontent was partly fuelled by the increasing amount of redevelopment activities, as epitomised by the anti Wedding Card Street 4 In an interview with a local activist (14 July, 2014), this approach was criticised for having ignored the local interest of the community, as more non-local interests have increasingly been introduced into the project.

Please cite this article as: Tang, W.-S., Creative industries, public engagement and urban redevelopment in Hong Kong: Cultural regeneration as another dose of isotopia? Cities (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2015.09.004

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redevelopment project and the anti Star Ferry Clock Tower movement. The former refers to the H15 project in Lee Tung Street, Wanchai. Immediately after the announcement of redevelopment by the URA in late 2003, some residents, with the help of advocate social workers, started to organise themselves as the H15 Concern Group. Their objective was to fight for substantive alternatives other than monetary compensation and outright eviction, including on-site exchange of a newly erected flat or shop for an old one (or ‘flat-for-flat’ and ‘shop-for-shop,’ respectively). H15 conducted studies to make sense of the redevelopment; wrote, with the support of many literal critics, commentaries in newspapers, held exhibitions, road shows, workshops, and forums to enlist supporters, both within and without the district, and engage them; staged demonstrations to the URA to initiate fair dialogue; solicited support from the Wanchai District Council; and petitioned the Legislative Council and, finally, the Chief Executive to intervene into the project. In the course of negotiation, H15, with the aid of advocate planners, even formulated their own plural plan (‘people's planning’), ‘Sustainable Regeneration: Lee Tung Street.’ Nevertheless, all residents and shops were finally evicted with the invocation of the Lands Resumption Ordinance. What is interesting from our perspective is that H15 demanded that there could be plural plans other than the unitary plan of the authority and that there could be ‘flat-for-flat’ and ‘shop-for-shop’ options other than cash compensation. These experiences have contributed to the making of other social movements like the campaigns to protect the Star Ferry Clock Tower and Queen's Pier. It was unveiled in summer 2006 that these two piers were to be demolished in the imminent wave of reclamation (Tang et al., 2012). People started to mourn for them by recollecting their history and petitioned the government not to demolish them. On 12th December, 20 young activists, informed by the Korean farmer–protestors during the WTO in Hong Kong 1 year earlier (Ip, 2010, pp.39–40), intruded into the building sites, stopping the demolition activities of the Clock Tower for a day. This activity caught the limelight of the

media, coined ‘collective memory,’ attracting various sources and forming an alliance called Local Actions. The latter tried to protect Queen's Pier by reclaiming it back to the people as an open space. Finally, the pier was demolished on 1st August, 2007. Although this sad outcome repeated itself over history, from Wedding Card Street to Queen's Pier, the general mentality of the society had shifted to favour historical preservation of valuable buildings (Ip, 2010, pp.27–52). It was exactly at this moment, around the end of 2006, that people in Hong Kong started to develop some kind of representation, usually labelled as cultural heritage, which differed from that of the authority. I consider this moment indicative of the formative development of spatial contradictions. In addition to these relational forces, residents in Wanchai had a more concrete perception of what was happening. Being an old residential district encroached by the extension of the CBD from the Central, Wanchai had within its absolute space many more projects of redevelopment around that time. Residents always found one in their vicinity, including the Wedding Card Street redevelopment project and the Wanchai Market (with a Bauhaus architecture). This kind of redevelopment anxiety had prompted residents conscientious of redevelopment and its possible effects on their community (Degen, 2010). Besides, Wanchai was, in relative space, the site where many resistance movements were held. Those that were held within Wanchai included, for example, the WTO demonstrations and the H15 activities. Others that were held elsewhere, but either in proximity or related to Wanchai one way or other, included many rallies starting at Victoria Park (locating at the eastern end of Wanchai district) that must pass by Wanchai on the way to the Headquarters of the Government Offices at the Central, and the Star Ferry and Queen's Pier resistance movements. The fact that these social movements took place in Wanchai itself or its vicinity had opened the eyes of the residents, boosting their morale and nurturing the formulation of some kind of spatial imagination that resembled the preliminary form of space of representation (Wong, 2011; Xiang and Chan, 2014) (Fig. 2).

Fig. 1. Outline zoning plan (partial) for Shatin new town. Source: Adapted from Statutory Planning Portal, Town Planning Board, Hong Kong Government (accessed 14th July, 2014)

Please cite this article as: Tang, W.-S., Creative industries, public engagement and urban redevelopment in Hong Kong: Cultural regeneration as another dose of isotopia? Cities (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2015.09.004

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To counteract the development of a spatial contradiction, the government came up with a new isotopia, which consists of, amongst others, a policy of heritage preservation. First, in reaction to the social movements accrued from Queen's Pier, the then Chief Executive rushed to resort to the value of collective memory. Accordingly, the government's organisational structure was revamped to respond to the need of heritage preservation. In urban renewal, in particular, it was emphasised that bulldozer-type redevelopment was not the only means, but there are others, including preservation, rehabitation, and revitalisation, so the renowned slogan of URA: 4Rs strategy. By introducing the four approaches, the government tried to calm down criticism and, then, dilute resistance. As the resistance movements at Queen's Pier had just been subsided, and when the URA had almost completed the resumption for the Wedding Card Street redevelopment project and residents there had started relocating to elsewhere, the government perceived that it was ripe to send out the signal that it really practised revitalisation. The place where it was most appropriate to give out the carrots would be the Blue House scheme. That explains why the Secretary for Development dramatically visited the Wanchai Folk Life Museum (Wong, 2011: 80) and included the Blue House project into the second batch of the new Revitalisation Scheme. In summary, the new istopia of historical preservation must be considered the effective repertoire necessary for the continuation of the land (re)development regime. This is so because there have not been any substantive changes to the regime even until now; preservation, revitalisation, or any of these new tactics are nothing but to dilute resistance only. I strongly remark that all these new attempts introduced by the government were isotopia, not utopia. Concomitantly, given the specific socio-historical conditions underlying its development, the ‘success’ of the Blue House scheme cannot be replicated over time and across space. As the government is not really interested in cultural regeneration, and not allowing the grassroots to play a significant role in it, it is a mirage to expect urban regeneration by cultural strategies from the grassroots. 5. Discussion

Fig. 1 (continued).

In other words, it was in Wanchai, where relational, relative, and absolute spaces intermingled, that the inclination to resist against the representation of space of the government was most conspicuous and emphatically found. It is, however, equally not surprising to expect that if the government was to counteract possible social movements, Wanchai would be the appropriate place to implement countermeasure with the most possible, productive outcome.

The Hong Kong cases prompt us to receive the concept of cultural regeneration by the grassroots with reservation. For the Fotanian case, since the prevailing functional zonings in the new town do not induce interactions between residents and artists, it is difficult to expect a more mature art community and, then, a more prominent role for the Fotanian on community development. Insofar as the spatial practices had not progressed to formulate spaces of representation, by the artists themselves, the residents or some kinds of collaboration between them, no spatial contradictions emerged. Accordingly, the recent government proposal of promoting creative industry must then be interpreted as rhetoric. It is a cosmetic measure to quiet any possible challenge to the regime and its representations of space. For the Blue House case, the government accepted the residents' proposal of redevelopment. It is apparent that without the paralleled developments in the city in general, and the Wanchai district in particular, a space of representation, though quasi in nature and substance it may be, would not have developed. Concomitantly, contradictions would not have started to emerge, urging the government to propose the revitalisation of the Blue House scheme as a counter-measure. Insofar as the Blue House case is so socio-historically specific, it is difficult to expect a territory-wide promotion of genuine grassroots in urban regeneration. These two cases must be situated within the distinguishable historical–geographical processes in Hong Kong. The land (re)development regime developed under colonialism dictates the formulation of the functional zonings in Shatin new town, restricting people and their activities to their respective discrete spaces. It favours high-density property development by the bulldozer model of redevelopment, at

Please cite this article as: Tang, W.-S., Creative industries, public engagement and urban redevelopment in Hong Kong: Cultural regeneration as another dose of isotopia? Cities (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2015.09.004

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Fig. 2. Wanchai as the sources of spatial contradiction.

the expense of other economic and social activities, including art and culture. Nevertheless, it produces possible spatial contradictions, which must be tackled by the government. It is within this understanding that various relative and absolute forces have produced apparently diverse outcomes in Fo Tan and Wanchai. It is equally within this understanding that various forms of cultural regeneration in Hong Kong must be interpreted as cosmetic measures, or isotopias, to perpetuate the hegemony of the regime. On the more positive side, though, more recently, especially after the Occupy Movements in 2014, minor developments have started to crack the land (re)development regime. Although it had not started drawing up a new social contract, which in turn could be articulated into a concrete utopia, there are more queries on the current production of urban space. Genuine regeneration by the grassroots may come by one day in the future. The findings of the Hong Kong study imply that the socio-spatial context is imperative for any evaluation of the concept of cultural regeneration. Obviously, the concept has its socio-historical root in the West. Cultural regeneration is considered a means to resolve the then prevailing spatial contradictions, more specifically to ensure economic prosperity and attenuate massive unemployment after de-industrialisation in many cities since the late-1970s. As such, other parts of the world, given their different development paths and trajectories, may need to ponder the employment of the concept with due consideration. If this message is well received, this short essay would have achieved its humble objective.

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