Private Property Developers Research Articles

The state, property development and symbolic landscape in high‐rise Hong Kong

The symbolic landscape of high‐rise Hong Kong is examined through the development of four major buildings in order to assess real and symbolic relations between the state and private property developers in the production of the built environment. The theoretical perspective combines understanding of symbolic landscape as the production of geographically constituted social relations, especially in the evolution of Hong Kong producer services industries, with the concept of the ‘exhibitionary complex’, in which the state and élites deploy ‘object lessons in power’ to engender popular identification with state interests. By the 1990s local land development consortia increasingly capitalized high‐rise construction, and projects for harbourfront land reclamations enlarged in scale and scope. The International Finance Centre, Hong Kong's future tallest building, is designed to instantiate Hong Kong's place in the regional and international financial services industry, but had also challenged public acceptance. New landscape conservation legislation seeks to limit further harbour reclamation and protect viewscapes.

Contract Choice in Modern Agriculture: Cash Rent versus Cropshare

E CONOMISTS have expended enormous effort examining the rationale for various contractual arrangements in agriculture, particularly sharecropping. While economists have made considerable theoretical efforts to understand agricultural contracts, few empirical studies have been undertaken. The dearth of empirical analyses of agricultural contracts is particularly striking for modern Western agriculture.' This is an important omission, not only because the existing empirical work tends to focus on the question of efficiency, but also because the theoretical models tend to examine contracts that bear little resemblance to those found in the United States today.

The Transformation of Antebellum Patent Law

Inventors, purchasers of patent rights, and users of patented goods all have economic interests in framing and interpretation of patent law. These interests often conflict, for all participants in complex economic, legal, and political game of patent system seek to maximize return from their investment of creativity and capital. Winners and losers are determined by their changing economic and political power and by changing ideologies of technology and economic growth. The patent law we know today is result of endless squabbling and political compromises. In first half of 19th century, years when American patent system took form, these groups fought over wording of patent laws and way in which law should be interpreted. Changing beliefs about value of economic development and role of technology, private property, and corporations in economic development affected law. Changes in nature of law played a role, too, as did belief in efficacy of law as a solution to economic conflict. The outcome of battle of patent law was its transformation into a system that encouraged technological invention that could turn a profit and that increased usefulness and value of patents for American industry. George M. Armstrong has called this comrmodification of inventive ideas and suggests that it was part of rise of market culture that started in 17th century.' The 19th century was a time of legal dynamism. Congress, state legislatures, and courts were bold about using law to promote ends they thought worthwhile. Willard Hurst writes that the 19th century was prepared to treat law as an instrument to be used wherever it looked as if it would be useful. Where legal regulation or compulsion might promote greater release of individual or group

Economic Analysis, the Legal Framework and Land Tenure Systems

D ISCUSSIONS of the efficiency of various systems of land tenure are marred by all sorts of imprecision in analysis. Economists have developed a clear notion of economic efficiency but discussions of land tenure invariably bring in some sociological and wealth-distribution constraints when discussing the efficiency aspects of tenure systems. Social anthropologists and others stress that certain tenure systems are integral parts of social systems involving such things as insurance for old and young, with the implication that even though these tenure systems might not facilitate (pecuniary) wealthmaximization, yet the non-pecuniary wealth facilitated provides "enough" compensation in some general welfare sense. I shall discard such sociological arguments because I believe that there is no reason why the sociological benefits of particular tenure systems cannot be obtained by some alternative arrangement while creating a tenure system that is designed to facilitate wealth maximization and wealth increases.

Trade, Tree Cultivation, and the Development of Private Property in Land

IN GEORGE FOSTER'S A Primitive Mexican Economy (1942) there is a passage which concerns a trend toward the development of private property in land among a people, the Sierra Popoluca, who still do not recognize such ownership. The trend toward such a development is directly connected with the development of coffee plantations among the Popoluca. Coffee trees, like all other trees among the Popoluca, are privately owned. Foster tells us that comes from planting or inheriting, inheritance presumably being from someone who has himself planted. Until the development of coffee plantations, however, private ownership of trees was not leading to the development of private property in land. This was because other trees were never grown in concentrations of orchards or plantations. Ownership of the tree was recognized presumably because the individual who had planted it had a right to its fruits just as he had the right to the fruits of a harvest of maize or any other crop which he had planted, the only difference being that in the case of a tree there was not merely one harvest but a continuing series of harvests. But with the introduction of coffee cultivation a new situation began to develop. Foster (1942:82) describes it as follows:

Zoning—Its Progress and Application

The object of this paper is to show the engineer the scope and effect of this relatively new method of control of the development of private property. Zoning is really an important part of city planning. Just as city planning is not a single profession, neither is zoning, but rather the result, where best worked out, of the co-operative effort of a number of professions under wise leadership.