Kowloon Walled City Research Articles

Kowloon Walled City Revisited: Photography and Postcoloniality in the City of Darkness

Kowloon Walled City Revisited: Photography and Postcoloniality in the City of Darkness

Informal land registration under unclear property rights: witnessing contracts, redevelopment, and conferring property rights

The significance of informal land registration in property transactions and development has been discussed at length, but there are few examples of in-depth case studies of how this information accessing and collection institution relates to them and how it may create property rights. This paper examines the nature and operation of non-governmental and voluntary land transaction registration practices in Kowloon Walled City, an ideal example of a privately-planned and developed habitat under unclear property rights due to jurisdictional disputes between China and Britain and no state protection of property rights or intervention in building control existed. Based on documentary evidence interpreted from a Coasian and Hayekian stance, it advances the proposition that the contracts the Kowloon Walled City Kaifong Welfare Promotion Association (hereafter the Kaifong Association) sought to represent as a witness built up its political credibility as a representative body. Such a role not only reduced transaction costs of contract enforcement and, hence, facilitated redevelopment, but also became that of a quasi-government land registrar due to the popularity of its witnessing service, which, under specific circumstances, served as the basis for the assignment of de jure private property rights by the state.

“Where to draw the line?” That is a land use planning question for the land surveyor and the town planner

Inspired by the pioneering work of Bleakley and Ferrie (2014) informed by Libecap and Lueck (2011), this paper develops the thesis of Lai (1996, 1997) that spatial partition of land is a basic land use planning activity, whether by governments or private bodies, which involve decisions on boundary delineation. The primaeval foundation of this activity is laying out private property boundaries, which is a metonymic land unitisation exercise that defines “clearly defined property rights” in the Coase Theorem and has often been forgotten as a bona fide planning one. All major constitutional changes in nations commence with such a layout exercise, in which the land surveyor plays a principal role; and all land use planning innovations build upon and property development are constrained by this primaeval foundation, which has huge transaction cost implications. A Colonial Hong Kong example, the Kowloon Walled City, is used to demonstrate the importance of the proper state ordering of property boundaries. The actual postwar-boundary of this City has hitherto been ignored by all commentators. The emergence of modern “cross-boundary” issues resulting formally from overlapping formal land boundaries and created by industrialisation and information technology does not alter this characteristic of planning generically as drawing and redrawing of boundary lines. Some land use policy issues related to cross-boundary environmental problems and land registration are discussed.

Designing an identity: The synthesis of a post-traditional landscape vocabulary in Hong Kong

Hong Kong portrays itself as a post-traditional city through its designed landscapes. Its contemporary plazas and parks involve design references drawn from sources in Europe and China. The result is uniquely contemporary and self-referential, with no tradition apart from an evolving local post-traditional landscape aesthetic. Two cases are examined, Millennium Plaza, a western-influenced urban plaza, and Kowloon Walled City Park, based on the Jiangnan Chinese garden style. The analysis indicates how the use of Chinese and European design elements has become a means of reinforcing a post-traditional, synthesized identity for Hong Kong.

Spatial Structure of the Kowloon Walled City Slum, Hong Kong

Spatial Structure of the Kowloon Walled City Slum, Hong Kong