Asian Urbanization

CONTENTS

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pp. ix-

PLATES

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pp. x-

TABLES

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pp. xi-

FIGURES

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pp. xii-xiii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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pp. xv-

The Editor gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Mr Jon Prescott of the Department of Extra-Mural Studies, University of Hong Kong, in acting as rapporteur for the discussions which followed several of the papers when they were originally delivered in seminars. He wishes to thank the Director of Public Works and the Commissioner for Resettlement, Hong Kong Government, for permitting the publication of papers by government servants, and Mr M. A. B. Stevenson and Mr E. A. Hacker of the Hong Kong Government Information Services Department for assistance with the photographs. ...

INTRODUCTION

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pp. 1-10

During the last twenty years, Hong Kong, in common with other parts of Asia and indeed the developing world generally, has faced massive problems arising from rapid rates of increase of the urban population (Dwyer, 1968). At the end of the Pacific War, the population stood at about 600,000. ...

ONE- HONG KONG: THE FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE OF A HIGH-DENSITY URBAN DEVELOPMENT

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pp. 11-19

Hong Kong is regarded by professional planners throughout the world with not a little astonishment. To most, the domestic densities to which we have built seem incredible, and to a few unforgivable. There is almost disbelief when general figures of 2,000 to 2,500 persons per acre are mentioned, and certainly specific net densities of 9,800 persons per acre are considered with slight bemusement.¹ ...

TWO - SOME LEGAL ASPECTS OF URBANIZATION IN HONG KONG

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pp. 20-32

This study is restricted in two ways. First, the problems of urban renewal are excluded because they involve matters of great legal complexity and extent. Urbanization is considered as a physical process of transforming a hitherto 'non-urban' area into an 'urban' area. It is not within the scope of this study, furthermore, to define urbanization more fully. ...

THREE - HOUSING PROVISION IN HONG KONG

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pp. 33-47

There are two remarkable features of urban Hong Kong which are closely interconnected, but only one of them is at all widely appreciated. On the one hand, the massive increase in the urban population over the last twenty years or so has been widely recognised (Vaughan and Dwyer, 1966). The population count conducted by the Air Raid Precautions Department in March 1941 indicated that the total population was 1.64 million and that of the urban population was 1.29 millions...

FOUR - THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW TOWNS

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pp. 48-69

In formulating proposals for the development of any city and its hinterland, the planners are faced with a dilemma. The agricultural, industrial and technological revolutions made the concentration of productive effort in cities possible. By bringing together labour, raw materials and markets, the metropolis came to act like a powerful magnet drawing to it increasing numbers of people and resources. ...

FIVE - THE DELINEATION OF BLIGHTED AREAS IN URBAN HONG KONG

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pp. 70-88

Hemdahl (1959, p. 52) thus succinctly summarizes a basic approach towards identifying first the general extent and relative intensity of urban blight on a metropolitan scale and secondly the specific problems that need to be tackled at the district level. The surveys he mentions are fundamental to the formulation of an effective programme of urban renewal. To derive a suitable methodology for application in Hong Kong consideration is given first to techniques that have been developed to a sophisticated degree in the United States. ...

SIX - THE APLICHAU SQUATTER AREA: A CASE STUDY

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pp. 89-110

Hong Kong, like other cities of the developing world, has in the last few decades experienced many urban problems arising from a very fast rate of population growth (see Dwyer, 1968). The inability of house construction to cope with the swollen urban population has resulted in large numbers of squatters among the population. The Hong Kong government has in the last fifteen year s launched a large scale resettlement programme for squatters. ...

SEVEN - SOME ASPECTS OF THE HONG KONG RESETTLEMENT PROGRAMME

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pp. 111-122

This study attempts to do two things; first to sketch in the squatter background to resettlement in Hong Kong and secondly to indicate some of the effects of resettlement, both on the community and on the squatter himself. Our knowledge of this subject is patchy: there are certain areas where information is at present sorely lacking and conclusions must be conjectural. The causes of squatting in Hong Kong are well-known. At the outbreak of the Japanese war the population, already very considerably swollen, was in the region of 1.6 million. ...

EIGHT - PROBLEMS OF THE SMALL INDUSTRIAL UNIT

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pp. 123-136

As most industrial growth is urban-centered, it is an important factor for examination in considering problems of physical planning in a rapidly urbanizing Third World. The changes currently involved in the urbanization of the Third World are such as to produce, in several important respects, near anarchy in cities. As yet, however, comparatively little is known about the character of entrepreneurial enterprise in individual towns and cities amid these changes...

NINE - THE GROWTH OF INTERNAL PUBLIC PASSENGER TRANSPORT

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pp. 137-154

Internal public passenger transport in Hong Kong involves movement by train, tram, cable car, bus, taxicab, public hire car, public light bus, ferry, junk and sampan. The movement of passengers by private car on vehicular ferries across the harbour should also be included. It is not possible to include all forms of public transport in a brief study such as this, since the level of operation of some of them is very low and data are lacking. ...

TEN - MASS TRANSPORT IN HONG KONG

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pp. 155-166

Public transport in Hong Kong is impaired by two main physical features: relief and configuration. Geographically, the Colony's total land area of 398 square miles is made up of a high proportion of precipitous mountains, marshlands and other undevelopable land. Only 18% of the land area has a relative relief of 164 feet (50 metres) and less, whereas nearly two thirds (63%) has a relative relief of 328 feet (100 metres) or more (Leung, 1968, pp. 14-20). ...

ELEVEN - THE HINTERLANDS OF TOWNS IN THE NEW TERRITORIES

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pp. 167-181

Most of the advanced work in central place theory has been undertaken in the European or North American context, from the early theories of Losch and Christaller to the complex mathematical models displayed in works by Berry (1967) and Haggett (1965). Yet, despite constant progress in the West, very little of this work has been applied to Asia, outside India, and until recently most of the work done was descriptive. ...

LIST OF DISCUSSANTS

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pp. 182-

APPENDIX REPORT OF THE DISCUSSIONS

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pp. 183-194

Some of the chapters in this volume were originally given at a series of seminars on problems of urbanization held in the Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong. The discussions following the papers were recorded and though some parts of them have not withstood the passage of time, in the sense that they have been overtaken by subsequent events, there remains, nevertheless, a substantial body of comment on Hong Kong issues which is pertinent not only locally but also in many of its details, as well as in the attitudes it reveals, to students of comparative urbanization. ...

INDEX

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pp. 195-201