Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia: Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei beyond Developmental Urbanization 9789048553051
In parts of Asia, citizens are increasingly involved in shaping their neighbourhoods and cities, representing a signific
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Table of contents :
Table of Contents
List of Figures and Tables
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
1 Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia: An Introduction
2 Walking Tours and Community Heritage in Singapore. Civic Activism in the Making in Queenstown and Geylang
3 Resistance and Resilience . A Case Study of Rebuilding the Choi Yuen Village in Hong Kong
4 Urban Planning, Public Interest, and Spatial Justice . A Case Study of the Lo-Sheng Sanatorium Preservation Movement in Taipei
5 Placemaking as Social Learning . Taipei’s Open Green Programme as Pedagogical Civic Urbanism
6 Hong Kong’s Urban Renewal Fund . A Step towards Citizen-driven Placemaking?
7 Re-emerging Civic Urbanism . The Evolving State–Civil Society Relations in Community Building in Seoul
8 A Shifting Paradigm of Urban Regeneration in Seoul? A Case Study of Citizen Participation in Haebangchon Urban Regeneration Project
9 Building Communities through Neighbourhood-based Participatory Planning in Singapore
10 Beyond the Sunday Spectacle . Foreign Domestic Workers and Emergent Civic Urbanisms in Hong Kong
11 Holding Space, Making Place . Nurturing Emergent Solidarities within New Food Systems in Singapore
12 Conclusion: Civic Urbanisms and Urban Governance in Asia and Beyond
Index
Publications / Global Asia
Citation preview
Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia
Publications The International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) is a research and exchange platform based in Leiden, the Netherlands. Its objective is to encourage the interdisciplinary and comparative study of Asia and to promote (inter)national cooperation. IIAS focuses on the humanities and social sciences and on their interaction with other sciences. It stimulates scholarship on Asia and is instrumental in forging research networks among Asia Scholars. Its main research interests are reflected in the three book series published with Amsterdam University Press: Global Asia, Asian Heritages and Asian Cities. IIAS acts as an international mediator, bringing together various parties in Asia and other parts of the world. The Institute works as a clearinghouse of knowledge and information. This entails activities such as providing information services, the construction and support of international networks and cooperative projects, and the organization of seminars and conferences. In this way, IIAS functions as a window on Europe for non-European scholars and contributes to the cultural rapprochement between Europe and Asia. IIAS Publications Officer: Mary Lynn van Dijk
Asian Cities The Asian Cities Series explores urban cultures, societies and developments from the ancient to the contemporary city, from West Asia and the Near East to East Asia and the Pacifijic. The series focuses on three avenues of inquiry: evolving and competing ideas of the city across time and space; urban residents and their interactions in the production, shaping and contestation of the city; and urban challenges of the future as they relate to human well-being, the environment, heritage and public life. Series Editor Paul Rabé, Urban Knowledge Network Asia (UKNA) at International Institute for Asian Studies, the Netherlands Editorial Board Henco Bekkering, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands Charles Goldblum, University of Paris 8, France Xiaoxi Hui, Beijing University of Technology, China Stephen Lau, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Rita Padawangi, Singapore University of Social Sciences, Singapore R. Parthasarathy, Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Gujarat, India Neha Sami, Indian Institute of Human Settlements, Bangalore, India
Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei beyond Developmental Urbanization
Edited by Im Sik Cho, Blaž Križnik, Jeffrey Hou
Amsterdam University Press
Publications Asian Cities 17
Cover photograph: Jeffrey Hou Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 854 6 e-isbn 978 90 4855 305 1 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789463728546 nur 740 © The authors / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2022 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.
Table of Contents
Abbreviations
11
Acknowledgements
13
1 Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia: An Introduction
15
2 Walking Tours and Community Heritage in Singapore
41
3 Resistance and Resilience
71
4 Urban Planning, Public Interest, and Spatial Justice
95
Im Sik Cho, Blaž Križnik, Jeffrey Hou
Civic Activism in the Making in Queenstown and Geylang Shiau Ching Wong
A Case Study of Rebuilding the Choi Yuen Village in Hong Kong Mee Kam Ng
A Case Study of the Lo-Sheng Sanatorium Preservation Movement in Taipei Liang-Yi Yen
5 Placemaking as Social Learning
119
6 Hong Kong’s Urban Renewal Fund
143
7 Re-emerging Civic Urbanism
169
8 A Shifting Paradigm of Urban Regeneration in Seoul?
195
Taipei’s Open Green Programme as Pedagogical Civic Urbanism Jeffrey Hou
A Step towards Citizen-driven Placemaking? Melissa Cate Christ and Hendrik Tieben
The Evolving State–Civil Society Relations in Community Building in Seoul Blaž Križnik and Su Kim
A Case Study of Citizen Participation in Haebangchon Urban Regeneration Project Taehee Lee and Sukyoung Han
6
Table of Contents
9 Building Communitiesthrough Neighbourhood-based Participatory Planning in Singapore
221
10 Beyond the Sunday Spectacle
245
11 Holding Space, Making Place
267
12 Conclusion: Civic Urbanisms and Urban Governance in Asia and Beyond
295
Index
309
Jan H. M. Lim, Larry Yeung, and Pieter Van den Broeck
Foreign Domestic Workers and Emergent Civic Urbanisms in Hong Kong Cecilia L. Chu and Marta Catalán Eraso
Nurturing Emergent Solidarities within New Food Systems in Singapore Huiying Ng, Monika Rut, Vivian Lee, Marcus Koe, Chingwei Chen
Im Sik Cho, Blaž Križnik, Jeffrey Hou
List of Figures and Tables Figures Figure 1.1 Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei in comparison.16 Figure 2.1 Queenstown and Geylang neighbourhoods, Singapore.49 Figure 2.2 My Community’s My Alexandra Heritage Tour takes participants through multiple narrative themes curated by former residents, firefighters, and volunteer guides.53 Figure 2.3 Geylang Adventures’ founder and tour guide, Cai Yinzhou (second from the left), takes participants through the streets and back alleys of Geylang.58 Figure 3.1 The location of the original Choi Yuen Village and the new village site.73 Figure 3.2 Community resistance and resilience.75 Figure 3.3 Old Choi Yuen Village – ‘Defending Housing Rights’.81 Figure 3.4 New CYV – Fields next to Houses.86 Figure 3.5 New CYV – Gardens inside House Allotment.86
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Figure 4.1 The overlapping locations of the Lo-Sheng Sanatorium and the Taipei MRT depot.97 Figure 4.2 A typical dwelling unit in Lo-Sheng Sanatorium.105 Figure 4.3 Top: The remaining Lo-Sheng campus in January 2007; middle: the Lo-Sheng campus based on the 41.6% preservation proposal; bottom: the Lo-Sheng campus based on the 90% preservation proposal.110 Figure 4.4 The second overpass.111 Figure 4.5 The first petition march held by Lo-Sheng residents and Youth for Lo-Sheng in December 2004. Four main requests (as shown on the banner hanging on the gate) were made in the petition: (1) securing civil rights for Lo-Sheng residents against forced evictions; (2) respecting professional reviews for historic site designation; (3) preserving the sanatorium by integrating structures with the MRT; and (4) assembling a team for the project and pausing MRT construction.114 Figure 5.1 Locations of Open Green project sites in Taipei.121 Figure 5.2 Rain Harvesting Park: An early pilot project in collaborative place-making.128 Figure 5.3 The White Hut involves users and volunteers both locally and from afar.129 Figure 5.4 Lane 344 – A project that led to expanding collaboration in the neighbourhood.130 Figure 5.5 The original ParkUp site: from temporary open space to a design brand.132 Figure 6.1 Locations of Funding Scheme projects (2012-2015, 20152018, and after 2018) and the URA projects (gazetted before 2012, 2012-2015, and 2015-2019).152 Figure 6.2 The shopfront of the To Kwa Wan House of Stories, 2018.154 Figure 6.3 Workshop with community members, initiated by St. James Settlement (‘To Home’ House of Stories) coorganized with DOMAT at Hung Fook Street in To Kwa Wan, 2017.155 Figure 6.4 To Kwa Wan Community Dining Room studio space; Design workshops were held on the street in front of the studio.156 Figure 6.5 Co-design workshop at Magic Lanes with residents and students of CUHK and PolyU, 2018.158
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Table of Contents
Figure 7.1 Selected community movements and neighbourhoods in comparison.171 Figure 7.2 Anti-eviction and housing rights struggle in Haengdang-dong, 1994.178 Figure 7.3 Seongmisan Maeul Festival, 2007.180 Figure 7.4. Community workshop in Seowon Maeul, 2009.182 Figure 7.5 Samdeok Maeul RCSC annual meeting, 2018.184 Figure 8.1 Process of the URP.202 Figure 8.2 Distribution of buildings in Haebangchon (using registered building data until 2016).203 Figure 8.3 The appearance of buildings in Haebangchon in 2017.204 Figure 8.4 The overall governance structure initially designed by the SMG.205 Figure 8.5 The organization structure of Haebangchon Urban Regeneration Support Center (in March 2017).206 Figure 9.1 An overview of the four NRP projects and P!D’s involvement.230 Figure 9.2 Sites of the four NRP projects.229 Figure 9.3a A pop-up engagement activity and workshop with residents.232 Figure 9.3b A pop-up engagement activity and workshop with residents.232 Figure 9.4 Actor-institution dynamics in the four NRP projects.236 Figure 10.1 Beauty-styling classes offered by Mandiri Bank at Knoll Hill Pavilion, Victoria Park, 2020.253 Figure 10.2 Poster of one of Shandra’s events, 2019.256 Figure 10.3 A model wearing one of Malicsi’s upcycled fashion designs, Central, Hong Kong, 2018.259 Figure 10.4a (Left) Arie Sanjaya’s winning upcycled fashion design, 2019.262 Figure 10.4b (Right) ‘Daur Ulang’ upcycled fashion show in Victoria Park, organized by Shandra Love.262 Figure 11.1 Sites of Foodscape Collective, Habitat Collective, and Project Black Gold.270 Figure 11.2 Boon Lay Nature Garden, originally named the Biodiverse Edible Garden at Jurong Central Park.278 Figure 11.3 At work on the market garden.281 Figure 11.4 Making compost, Bukit Gombak, Singapore.283
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Tables Table 1.1. Population growth in Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei.21 Table 4.1. Examining different urban discourses using the principles of justice for planning.107 Table 4.2 Major events occurring during the Lo-Sheng Preservation Movement.112 Table 6.1 Structure of Urban Renewal Fund.151 Table 7.1. Comparison of community building in Seoul.185
Abbreviations AFCD AP AVA CACHe Caritas MCSK CCC CDA CDP CLC CMSC CPI CUHK CYV DevB DRTS DURF ERL FHK HDB HKCSS HKPSI HKSAR HKU IMWU IO JCP LCSD LDC LMPP MOLIT MP MRT MTR MTRC NGO
Agriculture, Fishery, and Conservation Department Authorized Person Agri-Food and Veterinary Association Conservancy Association Centre for Heritage Caritas Mok Cheung Sui Kun Community Centre Citizens’ Consultative Committee (Singapore) Community Culture Concern (Hong Kong) Comprehensive Development Areas Citizen-driven placemaking Centre for Liveable Cities COVID-19 Migrant Support Coalition Council for Project Implementation The Chinese University of Hong Kong Choi Yuen Village Development Bureau Department of Rapid Transit Systems District Urban Renewal Forum Express Rail Link Fixing Hong Kong Housing and Development Board The Hong Kong Council of Social Service Hong Kong Public Space Initiative Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China University of Hong Kong Indonesian Migrant Women Union Incorporated Owner Jurong Central Park Leisure and Culture Service Department Land Development Corporation Livable Maeul-making Pilot Project Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Member of Parliament Mass Rapid Transport Mass Transit Railway Mass Transit Railway Corporation Non-governmental organization
12 Abbreviations
NEA NHB NRP P!D PA PAP POPS POSPD RC REMP RCSC SDI SFA SI SIT SNCSP SMG SRI SSA TC TOKA UM UNESCO URA URF URHPDRFS URO URP URS URSR YGO
National Environment Agency National Heritage Board Neighbourhood Renewal Programme Participate in Design People’s Association People’s Action Party Privately owned public space Public Open Space in Private Developments Residents’ Committee Residential Environment Management Project Residents Community Steering Committee Seoul Development Institute Singapore Food Agency The Seoul Institute Singapore Improvement Trust Seoul Neighbourhood Community Support Project Seoul Metropolitan Government Strategic-relational institutionalist social service agencies Town Council To Kwa Wan House of Stories Umbrella Movement United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization Urban Redevelopment Authority (Singapore) Urban Renewal Authority (Hong Kong) Urban Renewal Fund Urban Renewal Heritage Preservation and District Revitalization Funding Scheme Urban Regeneration Office Urban Regeneration Project Urban Renewal Strategy Urban Renewal Strategy Review Yongsan-gu Office
Acknowledgements The book Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia was first discussed at the international workshop Cities after Development that took place in February 2018 in Stephen Riady Centre at the National University of Singapore. The workshop received support from the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (research grant NRF-2017S1A5A8021252). The Asia Research Institute (ARI) at the National University of Singapore and Seoul National University Asia Center (SNUAC) also supported the workshop. The editors wish to thank all workshop participants for sharing their ideas, and especially Mike Douglass for his time and invaluable suggestions for the book. Furthermore, the editors wish to thank Daniel Gan Rong Yao, Su Kim, and Han Bome Jun for their assistance with the workshop. The book further benefited from the presentations and discussions at the Emerging Civic Urbanisms: Designing for Social Impact international conference, which took place in December 2018 at the National University of Singapore and brought together academics, practitioners, and students from Great Asian Streets Symposium, Pacif ic Rim Community Design Network, Design Corps, and SEED Network. The editors are grateful to all the contributors to this volume. The project would not have been possible without their insights and generosity. Special thanks are extended to the two anonymous reviewers, Dr. Paul Rabé (Asian Cities Series Editor), Dr. Paul van der Velde (former Publications Officer), and Mary Lynn van Dijk (Publications Officer) at IIAS, as well as Dr. Irene van Rossum (Asian Studies Commissioning Editor), drs Jaap Wagenaar (former Production Editor), and Jasmijn Zondervan (Production Editor) at AUP. Graphic illustrations for this volume were made possible through the Johnston-Hastings Publication Endowment Award from the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington, Seattle.
1
Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia: An Introduction Im Sik Cho, Blaž Križnik, Jeffrey Hou
Abstract Citizens and communities are becoming increasingly involved in shaping neighbourhoods and cities in Asia. These emerging civic urbanisms are a result of an evolving relationship between the state and civil society. The chapter introduces Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei as cases to explore how the changing state–civil society relation affects citizen participation in shaping the living environment and gives rise to the recent surge of civic urbanisms. It provides an overview of historical state–civil society relations and their impact on developmental urbanization across the region. Civic urbanism as an explanatory framework is introduced and contextualized here with a brief overview of each city. Finally, the chapter identifies the major themes of civic urbanism and introduces case studies discussed in this volume. Keywords: Citizen participation, civic urbanisms, civil society, developmental urbanization, urban governance
Introduction A different urban paradigm is emerging in Asia. Citizens and communities are becoming increasingly involved in shaping neighbourhoods and cities, which seems to represent a significant departure from earlier state-led or market-driven urban development. These emerging civic urbanisms are largely a result of an evolving relationship between the state and civil society. In this volume, we take Hong Kong, Seoul in South Korea (hereafter Korea), Singapore, and Taipei in Taiwan as cases to explore the recent surge of civic urbanisms in the region (Figure 1.1). These four countries became known as
Cho, Im Sik, Blaž Križnik and Jeffrey Hou (eds), Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia. Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei beyond Developmental Urbanization. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463728546_ch01
16 Im Sik Cho, Bl až Križnik , Jeffrey Hou Figure 1.1 Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei in comparison
Source: Jeffrey Hou. Drawing by Hoilok Heather Lam
the ‘Four Asian Tigers’ for their successful economic development in the past (Castells, 1992: 34). Their success has resulted from rapid export-oriented industrialization during the 1960s and 1970s, which was steered by strong interventionist and authoritarian regimes. These regimes instrumentalized economic growth and rapid urbanization to break up (post-)colonial dependencies of once impoverished countries, improve national security, and strengthen their political legitimacy (Woo-Cumings, 1999; Beeson, 2004). Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei share a history of urbanization, which goes back to colonial times (Watson, 2011; Cho and Križnik, 2017). While decades of seemingly endless urban growth improved the quality of
Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia: An Introduction
17
life for the majority of populations, they have also caused environmental degradation and contributed to social and economic disparities. Furthermore, over the past decade, issues including economic uncertainties, negative demographic trends, and political tensions have raised questions about the long-term sustainability of state-led or market-driven urban development that once shaped these cities in the past. In many cases, this prompted the state to look for alternative urban policies, which could address the mounting urban challenges in a more sustainable and inclusive way, and reflect growing demands of civil society for environmental preservation, a better provision of social welfare, the restoration of communal life, and the expansion of local autonomy, along with a greater say in various areas of urban life (Cabannes, Douglass, and Padawangi, 2018). Yet, the new urban paradigm emerging in East Asia is not a result of state intervention or civic engagement alone. It emerges from an ever-changing amalgam of interrelationships between the state and a multiplicity of civil society actors (Castells, 2010; Carroll and Jarvis, 2017). The case studies presented in this volume aim to provide insights into how the changing relationship between the state and civil society affects citizen participation in shaping the living environments of Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei, and how these cities are moving beyond developmental urbanization of the past, despite the continuing dominance of the state and markets. Moreover, we aim to explore how emerging partnerships between the state and civil society in Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei contribute to building more resilient and participatory neighbourhoods and cities in Asia by addressing the following questions: – How do changing relations between the state and civil society affect civic urbanisms? – Who are the actors of civic urbanisms? – What forms do the emerging civic urbanisms take? – What are the different impacts and consequences of civic urbanism? – What is the importance of civic urbanism for the future of cities in Asia and beyond? The emergence and evolution of the developmental state along with its diverse social, economic, and political consequences has been widely discussed in the literature on East Asia (Woo-Cumings, 1999; Beeson, 2004; Castells, 2010), although the role of the developmental state in urban development has received comparatively less attention (Doucette and Park, 2019). The ongoing transformation of the developmental state under the neoliberal restructuring of state–market relations has also been discussed, including
18 Im Sik Cho, Bl až Križnik , Jeffrey Hou
the role of Asian cities on global markets (Park, Hill, and Saito, 2011; Roy and Ong, 2011; Watson, 2011). While these studies recognize the importance of the changing relationship between the state and markets, they pay less attention to the relationship between the state and civil society and its impact on urbanization in Asia. The role of citizens and civil society in shaping neighbourhoods and cities in Asia has been less explored (Douglass, Ho, and Ooi, 2008), although the number of studies has grown considerably (Carroll and Jarvis, 2017; Cho and Križnik, 2017; Bunnell and Goh, 2018; Cabannes, Douglass, and Padawangi, 2018; Ho, 2019). At the same time, a different body of literature has widely explored informal urbanisms and civic spaces in Asian cities (Daniere and Douglass, 2008; Perera and Tang, 2012; Chalana and Hou, 2016). This literature, however, does not situate urban informality within the changing state–civil society relations and urban governance in Asia. This volume aims to f ill the gap in the literature on cities in Asia by situating emerging civic urbanisms in Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei against the backdrop of the changing relationship between the state and civil society. Echoing Chen’s (2010: 254) calls for ‘Asian interreferencing’ we juxtapose different case studies of activism and resistance, collaboration and placemaking, neighbourhood community building, and self-organization and commoning to critically explore emerging civic urbanisms in Asia and beyond. The following sections explore the historical state–civil society relations in East Asia to better understand how they affected what we call developmental urbanization. Specifically, we focus on recent changes and shifts related to urban governance across the region that reflect the surge of civic urbanism in East Asia. A working def inition of civic urbanism is provided in the chapter, which we then contextualize with a brief overview of each city. Finally, we identify the major themes of civic urbanism, as evident across the cases presented in this volume.
State, Civil Society, and Urbanization in Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei The State and Civil Society Civil society is a broad and elusive concept. It refers to the organizational dimension of social life, based on shared values, norms, and social networks among voluntary social groups, associations, and organizations outside
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19
the realm and control of the state or markets. In the West, ‘civil society is almost invariably defined in terms of its relation to the state. Civil society is separate from and often in conflict with the state’ (Kim, 2011: 143). As such, it can provide the state and corporate power with checks and balances, which is essential to the functioning of democratic societies (Daniere and Douglass, 2008). The development of civil society in East Asia, however, differs from Western societies due to historical and cultural differences, as well as different modernization and democratization paths. East Asian societies were affected by Neo-Confucian ethics and cultural values, which emphasized collectivism and community welfare over the larger society. Moreover, Neo-Confucianism considered the community and the state as inseparable with the latter having jurisdiction over the former. The intermingling of the state with society and markets has been a ‘more or less enduring dominant cultural orientation’ in East Asia (Schwartz, 1996: 114). Conversely, individuals and communities were expected to follow the interests of the ‘paternalistic authorities’ (Broadbent, 2011: 19). Such are the historical barriers for societies in East Asia to acquire significant political autonomy in relation to the state. Modernization has radically transformed traditional social institutions and cultural orientations in East Asia and replaced them with colonial ones, which in the case of Hong Kong and Singapore served the interests of the British and in Korea and Taiwan the interests of Japanese colonial states. After liberation, the newly formed nation states in Korea and Singapore took over the modernization project to break away from (post)colonial dependence by advancing social and economic development, building new national identities, and strengthening national security in a highly volatile geopolitical situation. In Taiwan, the process took on an additional layer of complexity with the arrival of the authoritarian Chinese Nationalist regime following the end of World War II. With the partial exception of Hong Kong, rapid modernization of the Asian Tigers took place under an interventionist developmental state, which steered the economic and controlled social development of each country (Woo-Cumings, 1999). The relation with civil society became crucial for the developmental state to implement its nationalist agenda. In contrast to the West, where the state legitimacy supposedly comes from its democratic representation of the entire society, the authoritarian regimes in Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and partly in Hong Kong built their legitimacy on substituting themselves for society. In other words, the legitimacy of a developmental state depended on the ability of authoritarian regimes ‘to impose and internalise their logic on civil society’ (Castells, 1992: 64).
20 Im Sik Cho, Bl až Križnik , Jeffrey Hou
Authoritarian regimes had ‘to mobilize and to control their civic societies [so] that they could implement their developmental strategy’ (Castells, 2010: 293). On the one hand, popular support of the developmental state was based on the social and economic development which substantially improved living standards of the once impoverished populations. On the other hand, the authoritarian regimes kept a strong grip on civil society and suppressed civil rights and social movements that could challenge their authority. In Hong Kong, the economic prosperity of the city contributed to popular support for the colonial state in spite of its limited legitimacy. Although civil society achieved considerable freedoms in the 1970s, it was unable to bring about democratization in the city (Ma, 2007). In Korea, civil society has historically evolved by resisting the state, including anti-colonial struggles, social turmoil before and after the Korean War, or the democratization movement in the 1980s. Decades of confrontation with the state and hard-won democracy led to the formation of a pluralist and well-organized civil society (Kim, 2011). In Taiwan, the Chinese Nationalist regime ruled the country with ‘white terror’ and martial law. A long history of civil rights and pro-democracy struggles have led to the democratization of Taiwan and its vibrant civil society, particularly after the abolition of martial law (Hsiao, 1990; Hsiao and Kuan, 2016). Despite its persistent authoritarianism, the Singapore government used to enjoy wide popular support for the successful social and economic development of the country. The state–civil society relationship started to change after the 1990s, when the state recognized the need for a stronger civil society in the future, although it continues to restrict civil liberties in society (Chua, 2017). Developmental Urbanization The relation between the state and civil society has also affected urbanization in East Asia. In contrast to the West, where the civil society had a greater say in shaping neighbourhoods and cities over past decades, ‘urban changes in Asia have been blatantly dictated by the colonial and post-colonial regimes throughout the 16th until the mid-20th centuries, with little citizen input’ (Lam-Knott, Connolly, and Ho, 2019: 5). Developmental state instrumentalized regional and urban development to advance social and economic development, strengthen territorial integration, secure political legitimacy, and display its political power by constructing and expanding industrial complexes, infrastructure, and special economic zones (Shin, 2018; Doucette and Park, 2019). During the 1960s and 1970s, the rapid industrialization of Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, thus, transformed their national
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Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia: An Introduction
capitals not only into key manufacturing sites – substantially contributing to the industrial output of each country – and connecting nodes of increasingly export-oriented economies, but also into symbols of postcolonial modernity (Watson, 2011). At the same time, the rapid industrialization attracted thousands of poor migrants from the rural countryside to Seoul and Taipei, from mainland China to Hong Kong, and from neighbouring countries to Singapore (Speare, Jr., 1974; Cho and Križnik, 2017), which has led to their unprecedented urban growth. The population of Hong Kong increased by 90%, of Seoul by 295%, of Singapore by 66%, and of Taipei by 200% between 1960 and 1985 (Table 1.1). This population increase resulted in overcrowding, growth of informal settlements, rising social tensions, and an enormous housing demand, which has become one of the major areas of state intervention in the urban development of Hong Kong and Singapore. To the contrary, in Seoul and Taipei the state has largely relied on the speculative markets in addressing housing shortage. Table 1.1 Population growth in Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei1 1960
1965
1975
1985
1995
2005
2015
Hong Kong
2,611,539
3,015,435
3,799,487
4,959,721
6,140,101
6,827,761
7,245,701
7,547,652
Seoul
2,361,196
3,452,123
6,807,519
9,333,674
10,255,889
9,822,447
9,896,859
9,963,452
Singapore
1,633,086
1,877,808
2,259,748
2,705,535
3,478,779
4,491,042
5,535,262
5,935,053
Taipei
1,727,667
2,298,237
3,672,423
5,171,303
5,938,478
6,399,337
6,612,454
6,633,372
Source: The World Bank: World Development Indicators (databank.worldbank.org/); Ministry of Interior, Republic of China (Taiwan) (www.moi.gov.tw/).
In Hong Kong and Singapore, the state has owned and controlled most of the land, which has made control and management of urban development easier than in Seoul and Taipei. Building on the colonial legacy, the developmental state constructed large residential complexes and successfully provided public housing for a major part of the population (Castells, 2010; Yip, 2013). In contrast, Korea and Taiwan relied on the informal sector and speculative property markets in addressing the housing shortage. Market-driven construction of residential complexes in Seoul resulted in the demolition of traditional areas and shantytowns, and massive displacement of the residents which was significantly unfair for deprived social groups (Kim, 1 The population of Taipei includes the population of Taipei County, which became the New Taipei City in 2010. Taipei includes the population of 1966 instead of 1965.
2020
22 Im Sik Cho, Bl až Križnik , Jeffrey Hou
2010; Križnik, Cho, and Kim, 2019). The Taiwanese state also made limited efforts in providing public housing for the lower or middle class, from which the speculative property markets benefited instead. Similarly to Seoul, state intervention exacerbated rather than solved the housing crisis in Taipei (Chang and Yuan, 2013). In contrast to Hong Kong and Singapore, where the provision of public housing contributed to social integration, speculative urban development in Seoul and Taipei increased social tensions and gave rise to housing rights struggles and urban social movements (Huang, 2005; Shin, 2018). In spite of these differences, the urban development of Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei shared an important similarity. The developmental state instrumentalized urban development to strengthen its control over society (Castells, 2010). Consequently, citizens had a limited voice in shaping neighbourhoods and cities, while civil society was largely excluded from the planning and management of the living environment. We can consider limited citizen participation in urban development as one of the key characteristics of developmental urbanization in Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan (Huang, 2005; Daniere and Douglass, 2008; Cho and Križnik, 2017; Doucette and Park, 2019). Over the past two decades, however, the state–civil society relations have been considerably reshaped and citizen participation in the urban development of Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei has gradually increased, resulting in more inclusive urban governance in comparison to the exclusively state-led and marketdriven approaches of the past. Changing Urban Governance The developmental state began to meet formidable pressures for fundamental change in the late 1980s. The challenge to the strong developmental state also came from globalization in the form of intensifying intercity competition for investments and accompanying neoliberal policy regimes aimed at privatizing urban space and substantially reducing the role of the public sector in all aspects of society and economy. Throughout East Asia, however, ‘governments have continued to be actively engaged in new forms of city planning for global status even as their role shifted from the big push of development to facilitator of private sector initiatives’ (Douglass, 2009: 72). Confronted with the social, economic, and political challenges of the rising influence of market and globalization, Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei began to reposition themselves as competitive and aspiring global cities. Their competitiveness to attract direct foreign investments,
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jobs, international events, and tourists has contributed to the deregulation of urban planning, commodification, and privatization of urban space and services, which reflect the neoliberalization of urban development (Park, Hill, and Saito, 2011; Roy and Ong, 2011). Meanwhile, increasing environmental challenges along with the impetus of low growth started to pose challenges to the economic sustainability of East Asian cities. Prolonged low growth over the past decade impacted not only urban development but also the socio-economic life of cities, with effects such as social unrest, economic slowdown, surging unemployment, and negative demographic trends. In response, many national and local governments in East Asia have started to search for alternative urban policies that could contribute to the long-term resilience of neighbourhoods and cities and increase their capacity to address these challenges in a more comprehensive and sustainable way. Political reforms, along with the rise of civil society and social movements attributed to the transition of the political landscape at the end of the twentieth century towards a more decentralized governance, reshaping the relationship between the state and civil society in East Asia (Lam-Knott, Connolly, and Ho, 2019). Grassroots mobilization and civil society organizations began to influence urban development in ways to create new openings for a more participatory process of city-making, albeit with substantial limitations (Douglass, 2009). Citizens and civil society organizations became more vocal in expressing and struggling for their collective right to the city (Daniere and Douglass, 2008; Castells, 2010; Goh and Bunnell, 2013; Douglass, 2014), challenging established institutional frameworks, and demanding a greater say in shaping neighbourhoods and cities. As a result, new multifaceted forms of urban governance have emerged in cities across East Asia, which significantly depart from earlier state-led and market-driven approaches in terms of power devolution and decentralization of the state on the one hand, and strengthening of local autonomy on the other hand. This ongoing restructuring of the state–civil society relations affects the surge of civic urbanisms in East Asia. Emerging Civic Urbanisms The changing relations between the state and civil society in East Asia are well-acknowledged, although their impact on urbanization has been comparatively less explored (Douglass, Ho, and Ooi, 2008). Previous studies often lacked an explanatory framework that could effectively grasp the characteristics of citizen participation in shaping neighbourhoods and cities
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against the backdrop of changing state–civil society relations. Western theoretical and practical experiences, which were used as a reference, could not appropriately address the historical, sociopolitical, and cultural specificity of citizen participation in East Asia. Difficulties in capturing these specificities could eventually limit the potential of an explanatory framework ‘to produce locally tuned alternative strategies to build progressive and just cities’ (Shin, 2018: 356) for Western experiences cannot be easily transferred and applied to East Asian cities with a long history of top-down decision making and limited citizen participation. Douglass, Ho, and Ooi (2002) term ‘the various types of life spaces in which civil society finds room to create cultural practices in community lifeworlds’ as civic space, which refers to socially inclusive urban spaces where the state and markets are kept at arm’s length from dominating the production and reproduction of urban life. Moreover, civic space enables citizens of different origins and walks of life to co-mingle without overt control from the government, commercial or other private interests, or dominance by one group over another. Civic space, hence, can facilitate and sustain particular social relations that can contribute to the formation and utilization of social capital, as real-world venues for social encounters and associational life in cities (Daniere and Douglass, 2009). Civic space is where citizens become engaged in participatory urbanism. Lefebvre (2003: 151) once maintained that ‘urbanism, when examined closely, breaks into pieces’ suggesting that there are multiple urbanisms at work in cities. While Lefebvre’s critique focused on uncovering the urbanism of the state for being ideological and repressive, he also hinted at its transformative potential to empower citizens to reappropriate and reinvent the city. The transformative potential of what we call civic urbanism, however, ‘inevitably depends upon the exercise of collective power over the process of urbanization’ (Harvey, 2012: 4). Civic urbanism can be seen as the collective capacity of citizens and civil society to become engaged in the production of civic space to shape and reshape the living environment on their terms. Examples of civic urbanism in this volume include activism and resistance, collaboration and placemaking, neighbourhood community building, and self-organization and the commoning. Civic urbanism is often a result of autonomous collective action, though this does not preclude collaboration with the state, particularly not in East Asia where the state has historically shaped associational life in cities (Read and Pekkanen, 2009). In this sense, civic urbanism can have an important role not only in reshaping social relations in neighbourhoods and cities but also in building partnerships between the state and civil society. Although
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these partnerships can be the key to a more inclusive urban governance, they have to be approached critically as they are not void of power relations and can become instrumentalized to expand neoliberal governmentality rather than empower civil society (Somerville, 2016; Lam-Knott, Connolly, and Ho, 2019). The following section provides historical, socio-economic, urban, and institutional contexts of civic urbanisms in Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei to better understand the specificity of their emergence.
Civic Urbanisms in Context Hong Kong Even with the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the global financial crisis in 2008, the economic model in Hong Kong continued to rely mainly on the financial and property sector profits (Castells, 2010). The handover to China in 1997 and the dominance of Chinese influence both economically and politically have put Hong Kong on a path different from its counterparts in East Asia. Without the kind of major political reforms experienced elsewhere, coupled with the continued dominance of pro-development interest, communities played a very limited role in urban governance in Hong Kong (Ng, 2002, 2008). Instead, citizen movements have emerged through self-organized resistance against the demolition of historic landmarks and eviction of communities due to proposed redevelopment and infrastructure projects. The civic effort to protect historically significant landmarks coincided with a growing local cultural identity that emerged around the time of the handover. Specific cases included the effort to protect and restore the Blue House, a historic tenement building in Wan Chai which became a rare success story even as the rest of the district has become highly gentrified. The protest against the demolition of the Star Ferry terminal, followed by Occupy Queen’s Pier, also coincided with the growing local identity (Ip, 2010) and an attempt to reclaim public space (Chen and Szeto, 2017). Starting with the movement to preserve local history in the city centre, the movement spread to resistance against evictions of rural communities by proposed developments. Besides the protest movements, instances of community engagement also exist through the work of charity organizations, with support from planning and design professionals. The large-scale protest movements including the Umbrella Movement in 2014 and the 2019-2020 Protests represent another form of civic urbanism with the mass occupation of streets, plazas, shopping malls, and other forms of public and privately
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owned public spaces, and through acts of assisting protesters through donations of money, drinks, and food, and with others of engagement including the ubiquitous Lennon Walls that appeared in strategic locations throughout the city. Along with political activism, the presence of a large number of charity organizations, nonprofit organizations, social enterprises, and collective initiatives suggests that civil society is alive and well in Hong Kong. Following the Umbrella Movement in 2014, small social start-ups, in particular, represent a wave of experimentations in bottom-up, community organizing (Hou, 2017). During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, civil society groups and informal networks have played a critical role in assisting those in need and preventing community outbreaks through self-help and mutual aid efforts (Hou, 2020). The current political crackdown and growing intolerance toward political opposition, however, have profoundly eroded any remaining trust between civil society and the state. Seoul Seoul is the historical capital of Korea and one of the largest and densest metropolitan areas in the world. The city experienced rapid economic and urban growth under a strong grip of the authoritarian regime which instrumentalized urban development of the city to advance the national economy and secure its political legitimacy, leaving no room for civic urbanism in the past (Cho and Križnik, 2017). After the democratization of Korean society in the late 1980s, the relation between the state and civil society started to shift from conflictive towards being more inclusive. During the 1990s, the state institutionalized local autonomy in Korean cities, partly devolving power to local governments. This improved the collaboration between civil society and the state, which came to recognize citizens and civil society groups as partners in improving the living environment (Kim, 2017). In Seoul, however, the turning point in expanding citizen participation came in 2011, after a former human rights lawyer and civic activist was elected as Seoul mayor. Since 2012, the Seoul Metropolitan Government has institutionalized citizen participation in participatory budgeting, community development, urban regeneration, and local governance, among others. It established the Seoul Neighbourhood Community Support Center to provide support for grassroots initiatives that aim to strengthen social networks in neighbourhoods and the city (Ahn, Wi, and You, 2019). In the same year, the Sharing City Seoul initiative was announced to expand the sharing
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economy and provide support for various community enterprises (Fedorenko, 2017), while the introduction of urban regeneration programmes institutionalized citizen participation in the planning and management of deprived urban areas (Križnik, Cho, and Kim, 2019). Three cases of state-led urban regeneration are discussed in this volume. In spite of persisting institutional limitations, the local state has successfully enabled civil society to become actively engaged in shaping the living environment in Seoul (Cho, 2019). At the same time, Korean civil society has also changed over the past decades. In the 1990s, civil society groups became increasingly concerned with adverse consequences of rapid economic growth and urbanization on urban life. Concerns about growing urban poverty, restricted housing rights, the degradation of the living environment, the decline of communal life, the lack of public services or weak local autonomy, have substantially affected grassroots mobilization and urban social movements in Seoul ever since (Kim, 2017; Shin, 2018). Although many civil society groups struggled against the state in the past, they began to collaborate with public institutions in the 2000s. Rather than resisting the state, civil society became engaged with the state ‘to control, constrain, and influence the government by formulating, organizing, and representing various social interests’ (Kim, 2011: 154). In contrast to Hong Kong or Singapore, urban social movements significantly reshaped relations between the state and civil society in Seoul and paved the way for a recent surge of civic urbanism in the city. Singapore Being a city-state, Singapore is different from most other major cities in the world. Because the population is multiracial and multireligious, an important objective of nation-building when Singapore first attained its independence was to achieve social cohesion for people of different backgrounds to live together in harmony (CLC and HDB, 2013). Cultivating an ‘identity’ and a ‘sense of belonging’ has long been among the nation’s most important agendas (Noh and Tumin, 2008). State control of the housing market has provided important means through which overall land use has been influenced and the extensive presence of public housing estates throughout the nation has enabled members of Singapore’s diverse society to share common experiences and forge a common identity (CLC and HDB, 2013). Singapore has a single, centralized planning system that precludes any possible differences arising between central and local levels of
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government as is often the case with other cities set within larger nations like Korea or Taiwan. A comprehensive and integrated approach to land use and transport planning is facilitated by this single level of government, which assists with the policy coordination process. While the effort is diff icult with the highly centralized approach used in the planning process, the main challenge has been the neglect of public participation often regarded as crucial by many in the planning circles (Ooi, 2004). Singapore’s planning, until recently, has been largely a statecontrolled mechanism to realize strategic goals and has involved limited participation by the private sector (Hee and Ooi, 2003). Scholars have recognized its civil society remaining ‘severely circumscribed in its scope for activism, judging from the state’s control and management of the use of public spaces by civil society groups and actors’ with ‘strict limits on the use of public spaces as civic spaces as the state seeks to construct the boundaries and nature of the civil society sector’ (Douglass, Ho, and Ooi, 2008: 76). In recent years, however, there has been an increasing demand among citizens and civil society for greater democracy and citizen participation in policy planning to ensure inclusivity in the decision-making process. Although there exists a lack of room for active citizen participation, as the forms of civic engagement and participation have often been officially channelled and implemented through local grassroots organizations in a formal and largely institutionalized manner, Singapore’s recent move towards a more inclusive and participatory style of leadership has facilitated more awareness about the importance of citizen participation in the local context (CLC and SI, 2017; Križnik, Cho, and Kim, 2019). This shift from earlier state-led planning towards a more inclusive urban governance has also opened possibilities for the emergence of various civil society or intermediary organizations and new civic urbanism practices in Singapore, which will be presented in the following chapters in this volume. Taipei In Taiwan, the rise of civil society has paralleled the path to democracy and the liberalization of its political system starting in the late 1980s. Similar to Korea, organized protests against environmental pollution led the way in the 1980s in demanding government accountability. Hsiao (1988) recorded 108 anti-pollution protest campaigns between 1981 and 1988. The number rapidly increased after the lifting of the four-decade-long Martial
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Law in 1987. An average of one anti-pollution demonstration per day was recorded during 1987-1988 (Bello and Rosenfeld, 1992: 211; Cohen, 1989: 103). Between 1988 and 1991, Hsiao (1994) recorded 352 incidents of confrontation involving environmental issues. The emergence of an urban conservation movement led by civil society groups resulted in the introduction of laws to protect historic properties from unchecked urban development. There was also growing activism in almost all sectors of society, including the labour movement, farmers’ movement, indigenous land movement, housing movement, etc. Major political changes that took place in Taiwan during and after the 1990s provided an important context for the introduction of community empowerment that enabled communities to become engaged actors in state–civil society relationships. The emergence of the Community Empowerment Programme introduced by the Central Government’s Council for Cultural Affairs in the mid-1990s provided the impetus for the rapid expansion of community-based planning practices across the country (Hsia, 1999). Focusing on community building and local cultural and economic development, the policy was intended to transform ordinary people into actively engaged citizens and strengthen civil society in Taiwan (Chen, 2013). In Taipei, a government programme was introduced in 1996 that encouraged ordinary citizens, including those without professional training, to apply for grants to improve their neighbourhood environment (Huang, 2005). Since 1999, another programme has been developed to train and certify community planners to provide technical assistance in neighbourhood improvement (Lin, 2005). In Taipei, the difficulties of pursuing large-scale redevelopment coupled with relatively strong support for civic participation has led to several experiments in alternative approaches to urban regeneration. One such programme, the Open Green Programme, is examined in this volume. There are also active networks of citizen groups focusing on issues of children’s play environment, urban agriculture, social housing, wildlife conservation, and heritage protection. Other experiments have included participatory budgeting at the local level. Despite growing practices of participation and active engagement of civil society groups, however, large-scale development and redevelopment projects are still being pursued by the state, including local governments, often over the objections of civil society groups. They include developments of underdeveloped land for urbanization and largescale infrastructure projects through the expropriation of lands. These projects continue to be sources of contention between the state and civil society groups.
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Themes and Cases Activism and Resistance Grassroots actions represent one of the key features and pathways of civic urbanism in East Asia. Specifically, they perform as forms of resistance by the civil society groups against the state and corporate interests which remain persistently strong in the region (Broadbent, 2011). Under specific political and economic conditions, instances of resistance have intensified in recent years, as exemplified by the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan, repeated protest movements in Hong Kong, the Candlelight Revolution in Korea, and the 2020 Thai protests. There were other movements of resistance on issues of environmental protection, urban redevelopment, displacement, etc. These movements and protests provided critical opportunities for civil society groups to engage in organizing, networking, and building and sharing of knowledge that together form a greater level of capacity critical to the emergence of civic urbanisms. Activism is the central focus of several chapters in this volume. In the case of the Choi Yuen Village struggle in Hong Kong, Mee Kam Ng examines how the protest movement against the relocation of the village, due to the building of a high-speed rail line linking Hong Kong and mainland China, was transformed into a collective effort to rebuild the village at a new site. She argues that the case of Choi Yuen Village represents a rare case of socio-spatial justice in Hong Kong with the involvement of actors on opposite sides of the controversy. In the Taipei Metro area, Liang-Yi Yen examines the case of Lo-Sheng Sanatorium and the decade-long and still-ongoing struggle to protect the historical site and the community from displacement. He argues that the Lo-Sheng preservation movement vividly demonstrates how heritage activism can reshape public interest and change the relationship between the state and civil society. After decades of relentless urban development, interest is growing in protecting historical, cultural, and built heritage in Asia, as evident in the emergence of parallel conservation movements across the region. In addition to the Lo-Sheng Sanatorium, heritage conservation as a form of civic urbanism is discussed in the case of My Community and Geylang Adventures in Singapore. Shiau Ching Wong focuses on civic activism and the roles of different local actors in promoting place-based community heritage neglected by the state’s developmental agenda. Through the work of the volunteer groups My Community and Geylang Adventures, the chapter offers contrasting yet complementary accounts on how the residents and the
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broader public can be engaged in heritage conservation and local-migrant worker integration. Their activism contributes to an alternative way of understanding the evolving state–civil society relations in Singapore. Collaboration and Placemaking Driven in part by citizen demand, changes in professional discourse and openings in the institutional planning process, collaboration, and placemaking represent an important shift in the way planning and design projects are initiated and implemented in several East Asian cities. A wide variety of project types and cases now exist in Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei, ranging from community gardens to the activation of residual urban spaces, involving also a wide variety of stakeholders, including residents, users, professionals, city staff, and decision-makers. Compared with topdown projects in the past (and the present still), these projects provide opportunities for experimentation, experiencing, and learning among the different stakeholders. Together, they contribute to a greater level of civic capacity and shift the dynamic of confrontation and resistance to that of a more open negotiation and collaboration. The recent emergence of movements emphasizing collaboration and placemaking approaches in these cities can be understood as a type of civic urbanism, where citizens are actively engaged in shaping their urban environments and the future of their city. Citizen-driven placemaking distinguishes itself from government-led ‘citizen inclusive’ public spaces, as its goals are ‘identified by citizens’ action to develop, redefine, transform and/or rebuild their environment to create a stronger sense of place’ (Normoyle and Cotter, 2016: 41). Three novel cases of civic urbanism in the region are examined, namely the Open Green Programme in Taipei, the Magic Carpet in Hong Kong, and Foodscape Collective, a community food initiative in Singapore, by looking at specific policy and project contexts, actors, and processes, as well as the outcomes and implications. These cases exemplify the importance of building a capacity for civic engagement and collaboration, the challenges of overcoming persistent institutional and cultural barriers to engage the citizens, and viewing placemaking as a process of civic sense-making and identity-formation. All three chapters are based on first-hand observations by those who served as advisor to the programme, as a co-initiator or advisory board members of the project, or as practitioners whose work relates directly to the collective’s goals and activities. Collectively the cases raise critical questions about civic urbanism in Asia; how do different actors and stakeholders, including the state and civil society, learn to engage
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in a participatory planning process? How does such learning lead to an enhanced capacity for civic engagement in urban governance, distinct from the conventional, state-driven approach that characterizes the planning practice under the developmental state? Can government programmes support civic urbanism in the face of the continuing land redevelopment regime, or do they result in co-opted community development instead? How can people’s relational and place-based engagements with food open up experiences of multiplicity and entanglement, from a more improvisational culture towards a bigger imaginary vision? Jeffrey Hou examines the Open Green programme in Taipei that supports funding support for community placemaking as an alternative to large-scale redevelopment. With multiple stakeholders involved, the case offers an opportunity to examine specific processes and mechanisms that facilitate social learning in community-based planning and placemaking. The author further examines its challenges and reflects on the implications for the ongoing development of civic urbanism and urban governance in East Asia. Melissa Cate Christ and Hendrik Tieben investigate the relationship between Hong Kong’s Urban Renewal Fund and citizen-driven placemaking and present three funded projects that utilize citizen-driven placemaking approaches. By examining the institutional frameworks and actors, and the achievements and limitations of citizen-driven placemaking in the context of this state-sponsored programme, the authors address prevailing contradictions between the small-scale, citizen-driven projects supported by the Urban Renewal Fund, and the large-scale redevelopment projects undertaken by the government, as well as their implications for future civic urbanism in Hong Kong. Huiying Ng, Monika Rut, Vivian Lee, Marcus Koe, and Chingwei Chen present a collaboratively written set of perspectives based on their varied experiences with a community food initiative in Singapore – Foodscape Collective – and suggest how civic urbanism renews our relationships with food and agriculture through dialogical placemaking, by weaving together imaginaries of a more inclusive and circular food system. Neighbourhood Community Building Neighbourhood community building aims to improve individual and shared resources, expand social networks among citizens, and build their organizational capacity to shape the living environment on their terms. It aims to empower citizens to address problems in their neighbourhoods and beyond, identified and agreed by the community. Although it often takes
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place outside political institutions or in opposition to them, collaboration with the state has become increasingly important for communities to pursue their interests and sustain community building in neighbourhoods (Ho, 2019). At the same time, the state has recognized community building as an important instrument to deliver public services, plan and manage neighbourhoods, and expand governance in cities (Manzi, Lucas, Jones, and Allen, 2010). Although state involvement in community building can empower citizens, it can also turn communities into ‘collectively governable subjects’ as a part of the ongoing neoliberal rescaling of the state (Somerville, 2016: 92). The outcomes largely depend on the changing relationship between the state and civil society. The relation between the state and civil society in Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan used to evolve differently from the West (Broadbent, 2011). The authoritarian regimes oppressed civil society and kept it under strong control, which affected community building in the past. In Hong Kong, the colonial state established kaifong neighbourhood associations to promote community building among the growing urban population (Ma, 2007). With similar goals, the state introduced monthly bansanghoe neighbourhood meetings in Korea, linzhang neighbourhood managers’ network in Taiwan, and Residents’ Committees (RCs) in public housing estates in Singapore (Read and Pekkanen, 2009; Seo and Kim, 2015). These neighbourhood organizations can be seen as instruments to extend state control over society, but also as attempts to engage residents in shaping their living environment. Along with the state-enabled neighbourhood organizations, autonomous community movements started to develop across East Asia in the 1970s. In Japan, machizukuri community movements emerged in the late 1960s, which inspired similar movements in Korea and Taiwan, known as maeulmandeulgi and shequ yingzao (Huang, 2005; Sorensen, Koizumi, and Miyamoto, 2009; Kim, 2017). In the 1990s, the state began to collaborate with and integrate these community movements in urban governance, which contributed to the recent surge of civic urbanism in East Asia. This volume introduces several cases of community building, to explore how citizens, civic groups and civil society organizations shape and reshape their neighbourhoods and what role the state plays in enabling, expanding, and sustaining community building. Most cases aim to establish a partnership between residents and public institutions to improve the living environment in neighbourhoods through community building. Blaž Križnik and Su Kim compare four community movements in Seoul and their differing relations with the state. Community building in Songhak Maeul, Seongmisan
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Maeul, Seowon Maeul, and Samdeok Maeul shows that civic urbanism, while marginalized in the past, has re-emerged as an integral part of urban governance in the city. At the same time, the authors argue that the ongoing institutionalization of community building can weaken its transformative potential to build more resilient neighbourhoods and cities. Taehee Lee and Sukyoung Han focus on citizen participation in urban regeneration of Haebangchon, a traditional neighbourhood in central Seoul. They recognize participatory urban regeneration as a departure from the state-led and market-driven urban development in the past. Despite that, the authors conclude that the state continues to play a dominant role in decision-making, which significantly constrains community building. Jan Hui Min Lim, Larry Yeung, and Pieter Van den Broeck present a similar though more optimistic account of the community building’s potential in participatory planning in Singapore. The authors’ first-hand experience with the Neighbourhood Renewal Programme reveals that while the state prioritizes the observance of rules and procedures, and fosters social cohesion over the empowerment of citizens, participatory planning also opens up new possibilities for alternative visions of the city. Moreover, other chapters in this volume show that neighbourhood community building has also become an important aim of civic urbanisms in Hong Kong and Taipei. Self-organization and Commoning Self-organized actions are well represented in this volume as a form of civic urbanism. They build on acts of reciprocity between individuals with shared values and interests, especially when institutional support is unavailable or hard to come by. Focusing on foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong, Cecilia Chu and Marta Catalán Eraso delve into a distinct context of commoning and collective identity-building. By examining the self-organized collective activities of foreign domestic workers, particularly the ‘beauty-styling’ events on Sundays and public holidays that enlist the participation of a large number of workers, they uncover what they consider as evidence of ‘urban commoning’ and ‘bottom-up urbanism’, as well as the shaping of individual and collective aspirations of a marginalized social group. While not directly related to the discussion of cultural heritage, the case illustrates commoning as self-organized activities that enable the building of collective identities and consciousness and represent the emergence of civic urbanism. In the case of the Foodscape Collective in Singapore, the community food initiative provides a vehicle for civic sense-making and identity-formation among those who are involved in the project. Through food production
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and placemaking, the collective serves to renew a collective connection to farming, agriculture, and the circular food system. Finally, efforts to protect the heritage sites as places of collective memories also suggest the emergence of the commons that operate outside the immediate interest of the state and the market. In Singapore, through the cases of My Community and Geylang Adventures, Shiau Ching Wong focuses on how the residents and the broader public can be engaged in heritage preservation and local-migrant worker integration, contributing to a distinct form of bottom-up nation-building. In the case of Lo-Sheng Sanatorium in Taipei, Liang-Yi Yen asked if the interest and the significance of the historic sanatorium must be sacrificed for the expansion of the Metro systems in the city. He calls for a re-examination of the notion of public interest in urban governance in Taiwan and to reconsider the sanatorium as a site of shared heritage.
Acknowledgements This chapter draws from research that was in part supported by the Research Grants for Asian Studies funded by Seoul National University Asia Center (SNUAC).
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CLC (Centre for Liveable Cities) and SI (Seoul Institute). 2017. Planning for Communities, Lessons from Seoul and Singapore. Singapore: Centre for Liveable Cities. Cohen, Marc. 1989. Taiwan at the Crossroads. Washington, D.C.: Asia Resource Center. Daniere, Amrita and Mike Douglass (Eds.). 2008. The Politics of Civic Space in Asia: Building Urban Communities. Oxon: Routledge. Doucette, Jamie and Bae-Gyoon Park (Eds.). 2019. Developmentalist Cities? Interrogating Urban Developmentalism in East Asia. Leiden: Brill. doi: 10.1163/9789004383609. Douglass, Mike. 2009. ‘Globopolis or Cosmopolis? Alternative Futures of City Life in East Asia’. Studies in Urban Humanities, 1(2): 67–115. Douglass, Mike, Kong Chong Ho, and Giok Ling Ooi (Eds.). 2008. Globalization, the City and Civil Society in Pacific Asia: The Social Production of Civic Spaces. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Douglass, Mike. 2014. ‘After the Revolution: From Insurgencies to Social Projects to Recover the Public City in East and Southeast Asia’. International Development Planning Review, 36(1): 15–23. doi: 10.3828/idpr.2014.2. Fedorenko, Olga. 2017. ‘The Sharing City Seoul: Global Imaginaries of the Sharing Economy and its Local Realities’. Journal of Asian Sociology, 46(2): 373–397. doi: 10.21588/dns.2017.46.2.008. Goh, Daniel P.S. and Tim Bunnell. 2013. ‘Recentering Southeast Asian Cities’. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37(3): 825–833. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2427.2013.01208.x. Harvey, David. 2012. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. London: Verso. Hee, Limin and Giok Ling Ooi. 2003. ‘The Politics of Public Space Planning in Singapore’. Planning Perspectives, 18(1): 79–103. doi: 10.1080/0266543032000047413. Ho, Kong Chong. 2019. Neighbourhoods for the City in Pacific Asia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. doi: 10.5117/9789462983885. Hou, Jeffrey. 2017. Urban Commoning, Against City Divided: Field Notes from Taipei and Hong Kong. Perspecta, 50: Urban Divides, 292–301. Yale University School of Architecture. Hou, Jeffrey. 2020. Civic Resilience and the COVID-19 Crisis (Part 1). Medium. Online: https://medium.com/@houjeff/civic-resilience-and-the-covid-19-crisispart-1-of-2-b9b3add58b3f [accessed 10 November, 2020] Hsia, Chu-Joe. 1999. ‘Theorizing Community Participatory Design in a Developing Country: The Historical Meaning of Democratic Design in Taiwan’. In Democratic Design in the Pacific Rim: Japan, Taiwan, and the United States, edited by Randolph T. Hester and Corrina Kweskin, 14–21. Mendocino, CA: Ridge Times Press.
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Hsiao, Hsin-Huang Michael (蕭新煌). 1988. The Structural and Process Analysis of the Anti-pollution Protests in Taiwan in the 1980s (七○年代反污染自力救濟 的結構與過程分析). Taipei (台北): Environmental Protection Administration (環保署). [In Chinese] Hsiao, Hsin-Huang Michael. 1990. “Emerging Social Movements and the Rise of a Demanding Civil Society in Taiwan’. Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, July(24): 163–180. doi: 10.2307/2158893. Hsiao, Hsin-Huang Michael. 1994. The Characteristics and Change in Taiwan’s Local Environmental Protest Movement (台灣地方環境抗爭運動的性格與改 變：1980-1991). Taipei: Environmental Protection Administration (行政院環 保署專案計畫). [In Chinese] Hsiao, Hsin-Huang Michael and Yu-Yuan Kuan. 2016. ‘The Development of Civil Society Organizations in the Post-authoritarian Taiwan (1988-2014)’. In The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Taiwan, edited by Gunter Schubert, 253–267. Oxon: Routledge. Huang, Li-Ling. 2005. ‘Urban Politics and Spatial Development: The Emergence of Participatory Planning’. In Globalizing Taipei: The Political Economy of Spatial Development, edited by Reginald Y.W. Kwok, 78–98. Oxon: Routledge. Ip, Iam-Chong (葉蔭聰). 2010. Nostalgia for the Present: The Past and Present State of Cultural Conservation (為當下懷舊：文化保育的前世今生). Hong Kong: Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong. [In Chinese] Kim, Sunhyuk. 2011. ‘Democratization and Social Movements in South Korea: A Civil Society Perspective’. In East Asian Social Movements, Power, Protest, and Change in a Dynamic Region, edited by Jeffrey Broadbent and Vicky Brockman, 141–156. New York, NY: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-0-387-09626-1. Kim, Sangmin. 2017. ‘From Protest to Collaboration: The Evolution of the Community Movements Amid Sociopolitical Transformation in South Korea’. Urban Studies, 54(16): 3806–3825. doi: 10.1177/0042098016681705. Kim, Soo-Hyun. 2010. ‘Issues of Squatters and Eviction in Seoul: From the Perspectives of the Dual Roles of the State’. City, Culture and Society, 1(3): 135–143. doi:10.1016/j.ccs.2010.10.002. Križnik, Blaž, Im Sik Cho, and Su Kim. 2019. ‘Deciding Together: Citizen Participation in Planning the Neighbourhood Improvement in Seoul and Singapore’. Asia Review, 8(2): 65–102. doi: 10.24987/SNUACAR.2019.02.8.2.65. Lam-Knott, Sonia, Creighton Connolly, and Kong Chong Ho (Eds.). 2019. Post-Politics and Civil Society in Asian Cities: Spaces of Depoliticisation. Oxon: Routledge. Law, Kam-Yee. 2012. ‘Asian Little Dragons: In the “Midlife Crisis”? Challenges to Societal Policies after the Neoliberal “miracle”’. Journal of Asian Public Policy, 5(1): 48–50. doi: 10.1080/17516234.2012.663876.
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Lefebvre, Henri. 2003. The Urban Revolution. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Lin, Chong-Jie (林崇傑). 2005. ‘Developmental Context and Future Vision of Community Planning in Taipei’ (台北市社區規劃的發展背景與未來願景), Proceedings of the International Community Planning Forum, Taipei (台北國 際社區規劃論壇論文集) Taipei (台北): Taipei Bureau of Urban Development (台北市都發局). [In Chinese] Ma, Ngok. 2007. Political Development in Hong Kong: State, Political Society, and Civil Society. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. doi: 10.5790/ hongkong/9789622098107.001.0001. Manzi, Tony, Karen Lucas, Tony Loyd Jones, and Judith Allen. 2010. Social Sustainability in Urban Areas: Communities, Connectivity, and the Urban Fabric. London: Earthscan. Ng, Mee Kam. 2002. ‘Property-led urban renewal in Hong Kong: Any place for the community?’ Sustainable Development, 10: 140–146. doi: 10.1002/sd.189. Ng, Mee Kam. 2008. ‘From Government to Governance? Politics of Planning in the First Decade of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’. Planning Theory & Practice, 9(2): 165–185. doi: 10.1080/14649350802041480. Noh, Abdillah and Makmor Tumin. 2008. ‘Remaking Public Participation: The Case of Singapore’. Asian Social Science, 4(7): 19–32. Normoyle, Catherine and Christian Cotter. 2016. ‘A Catalyst for Change: Understanding Characteristics of Citizen-driven Placemaking Endeavors Across Diverse Communities’. Design Principles and Practices, 10(1): 41–58. Ooi, Giok Ling. 2004. Future of Space: Planning, Space and the City. Singapore: Eastern University Press. Park, Bae-Gyoon, Richard Child Hill, and Asato Saito (Eds.). 2011. Locating Neoliberalism in East Asia: Neoliberalizing Spaces in Developmental States. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. doi: 10.1002/9781444346657. Perera, Nihal and Wing-Shing Tang. 2012. Transforming Asian Cities: Intellectual Impasse, Asianizing Space, and Emerging Translocalities. Oxon: Routledge. Read, Benjamin L. and Robert Pekkanen (Eds.). 2009. Local Organizations and Urban Governance in East and Southeast Asia: Straddling State and Society. Oxon: Routledge. Roy, Ananya and Aihwa Ong (Eds.). 2011. Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Schwartz, Benjamin I. 1996. China and Other Matters. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Seo, Jungmin and Sungmoon Kim. 2015. ‘Civil Society under Authoritarian Rule: Bansanghoe and Extraordinary Everyday-ness in Korean Neighborhoods’. Korea Journal, 55(1): 59–85. doi: 10.25024/kj.2015.55.1.59.
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Shin, Hyun Bang. 2018. ‘Urban Movements and the Genealogy of Urban Rights Discourses: The Case of Urban Protesters against Redevelopment and Displacement in Seoul, South Korea’. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 108(2): 356–369. doi: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1392844. Somerville, Peter. 2016. Understanding Community: Politics, Policy and Practice, Second edition. Bristol: Policy Press. Sorensen, André, Hideki Koizumi, and Ai Miyamoto. 2009. ‘Machizukuri, Civil Society, and Community Space in Japan’. In The Politics of Civic Space in Asia: Building Urban Communities, edited by Amrita Daniere and Mike Douglass, 33–50. Oxon: Routledge. Speare, Jr., Alden. 1974. ‘Urbanization and Migration in Taiwan’. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 22(2): 302–319. Watson, Jini Kim, 2011. The New Asian City. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University Press. Woo-Cumings, Meredith (Ed.). 1999. The Developmental State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Yip, Ngai Ming. 2013. ‘Challenges to Public Housing in Post-colonial Hong Kong’. In The Future of Public Housing in the East and the West, edited by Jie Chen, Mark Stephens, and Yanyun Man, 65–83. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer.
About the Authors Im Sik Cho is Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at the National University of Singapore. Her research addresses the challenges and opportunities that Asian cities face, focusing on the social dimension of sustainable development. Her publications include Community-Based Urban Development: Evolving Urban Paradigms in Singapore and Seoul (2017). Blaž Križnik is Associate Professor of urban sociology at the Graduate School of Urban Studies, Hanyang University in Seoul. He is the co-founder and researcher at the Institute for Spatial Policies in Ljubljana. His research is focused on comparative urban studies, urban social movements, and Korean studies. Jeffrey Hou is Professor of Landscape Architecture and director of the Urban Commons Lab at the University of Washington, Seattle. His work focuses on public space, democracy, community design, and civic engagement with publications including City Unsilenced: Urban Resistance and Public Space in the Age of Shrinking Democracy (2017).
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Walking Tours and Community Heritage in Singapore Civic Activism in the Making in Queenstown and Geylang Shiau Ching Wong
Abstract Within a traditionally subdued civil society, more citizens have stepped forward to address concerns about the impact of neoliberal development policies on Singapore’s heritage and communities. Queenstown is Singapore’s first satellite town with residential housing and amenities, while Geylang is known for its red-light district, illicit activities, and low-cost housing for migrant workers. Using walking tours to promote place-based community heritage in Queenstown and Geylang respectively, volunteer groups My Community and Geylang Adventures offer contrasting yet complementary accounts on how the residents and the broader public can be activated to participate in heritage preservation and local–migrant worker integration. Their civic activism contributes towards a distinct form of bottom-up nation-building and an alternative framework in understanding evolving state–society relations in Singapore. Keywords: Civic activism, community heritage, walking tours
Introduction The Singapore Story has been synonymous with a strong state dominating economic development and social engineering, while suppressing nongovernment forms of collective organizing and protests (Ooi, 2009; Tan, 2016). Public recognition of the ruling People’s Action Party’s (PAP) ability to make Singapore into a developed country through a ‘pragmatic mode’ of governance has not only legitimized its political dominance, but also
Cho, Im Sik, Blaž Križnik and Jeffrey Hou (eds), Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia. Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei beyond Developmental Urbanization. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463728546_ch02
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nurtured an uncritical citizenry mindful of the consequences of being marked as political dissidents (Tan, 2007: 3). Relatedly, Singaporeans are cognizant of compromising their personal freedoms in exchange for the state to drive economic growth and social stability (Liow, 2011). With this ethos of pragmatism justifying the ‘demolish-and-build’ mode of urban renewal, society hardly questioned the destruction of culturally significant landscapes and buildings, nor the estrangement between the locals and migrant worker community whose contribution to Singapore’s progress has gone relatively unrecognised. In recent years, among sociocultural transformations similar to those experienced in other developed societies, a more active civil society has emerged with citizens aspiring for greater agency over their sociocultural and political environment. During the general elections in 2011, the legitimacy of the PAP government was checked when it had a dip of 10% with its worst performance record of 60.1% of the votes (Bayan, 2011). There had been an increased visibility of citizen-initiated protests, occurring both online and offline, which reflected the public’s desire for more participation in different sociocultural and political issues. The campaigns to save Bukit Brown Cemetery (‘Bukit Brown’) and the Keretapi Tanah Melayu Rail Corridor (also known as ‘Green Corridor’) from state development in the early 2010s reflected this emerging wave of civic politics by a decentralised network of individuals, informal groups, and non-profit societies. Instead of using confrontational tactics to gain public and media visibilities, for example, by staging protests or occupying symbolic spaces, the activists channelled their contention by organizing walking tours to generate public awareness and interest in preserving these places, and at the same time seeking opportunities to engage the authorities in dialogue and collaboration. In Singapore, social movements often are not ‘easily demarcated or identifiable as they are sometimes represented’ such that ‘“(s)tate” and “society”, and “activist” and “non-activist” overlap and interact in complex ways’ (Luger, 2016: 186; also see Singam and Thomas, 2017). This chapter extends the understanding of such ‘ambivalent and ambiguous’ activism (Luger, 2016: 186) by situating the heritage preservation movement within Singapore’s unique ‘illiberal pragmatic’ political climate (Yue, 2007). It examines My Community and Geylang Adventures – civic groups which are involved in the promotion of place and community heritage – and highlights the significance of their activism as they adapt to and appropriate the limited opportunities for collective action. The walking tours are first examined as sources of knowledge production and civic engagement, as they allow ordinary citizens to understand and participate in the different facets of
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community heritage. This way they improve the public’s recognition for these neglected social experiences and communities. Secondly, the groups’ long-term commitment to the communities has established their status as local stakeholders, as they become the intermediaries between the public and state agencies for bottom-up participation in urban development and social policies.
Walking Tours and Community Heritage Civic Activism, Engagement, and Heritage Walks Singapore’s success story from a third world to a developed country is often attributed to the state’s strong ability to attract foreign investment with effective economic and industrialization strategies, complemented by the use of ‘draconian laws to keep labour servile and politically inactive’ (Liow, 2011: 243). Constant urbanization – based on demolition and construction – represents the means for land-scarce Singapore to chart its progress and the ‘pragmatic ideology of economic value’ ruled out heritage conservation efforts in the early decades of Singapore’s development (Tan, 2012: 81). Scholars argue that pragmatism has legitimized a form of ‘neoliberal globalisation’ in which economic growth is rapidly achieved with ‘exploitative goals of global capitalism’ – the heavy reliance on migrant labour whose economic costs are kept low with policies that suppress the workers’ social and employment rights and segregate these transient workers from integration with mainstream Singapore society (Liow, 2011; Tan, 2012). At the same time, strict laws prohibiting public demonstrations and protests and regulating the formation of societies, checked the ability of civil society to play a proactive role in challenging the state on its development policies. Measured steps were made from the 1990s onwards, to let civil society enjoy a more liberalized environment, but under implicit conditions that they would not threaten the PAP’s political legitimacy (Tan, 2016). The more relaxed political climate saw the rise of many groups advocating for gender equality, animal welfare, heritage preservation and the arts, and social justice for migrant workers (Soon and Koh, 2017: xxviii). Adapting to the limited operating space, activists have formed coalitions to consolidate their resources and have chosen an apolitical approach to engage the state (Koh and Soon, 2016; Ortmann, 2015). The strategic use of a non-confrontational approach by Singapore’s civil society generally could be explained by groups playing the role of ‘civic
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society’, rather than a ‘civil society’ in which assertions of independence and challenges to the state’s viewpoints could put them in constant conflict with the authorities and with one another. Positioning itself as working with the state to meet its aims and objectives (Chong, 2005), civic society prioritizes ‘communitarianism’ which puts the society and its interests above the individual’s (Kwok, 2017). To achieve this common good, the building of social capital is important for cultivating ‘civic values’ such as ‘trust, tolerance and solidarity’ (Putnam, 1993; cited in Soon and Koh, 2017: xv), and groups with civic characteristics are ‘largely apolitical, non-critical, and are comport with the dominant values of a conservative patriarchal society’ (Chong, 2005: 283; also see Chua, 2017). In Singapore’s context, this ‘communitarian model of service provision and nation-building’ encourages groups to: forge these civic values and promote collective interests, rather than serve as an independent check on state power […] uncovering problems and delivering solutions to citizens where the State or mainstream community have neglected or should do better in, or where citizens want such collaboration. (Soon and Koh, 2017: xv) (emphasis by author)
Situating these concepts within the heritage preservation movement in Singapore, the term civic activism is used to describe a loose network of individuals and groups whose communitarian approach in advocating community heritage reinforces notions of citizenship and belonging to the place (Singapore). Activism is conducted usually as forms of volunteerism to serve public needs to complement the government’s efforts – which acknowledges the state’s political dominance. Such bottom-up actors are good citizens working with the state rather than challenging its power, i.e., how activism is typically understood in other social movement contexts. Against the dynamics of an authoritarian state with a politically passive society, this approach could be posited as a socially acceptable mode of organizing for a society with relatively little experience in civic engagement. Such ‘ambivalent’ activism (Luger, 2016) which seeks to generate change through building social capital – the pooling of resources for collective problem-solving – has seen groups using creative ways of participation to cultivate public consciousness of issues before activating the interested to push for change. Through such ‘informal social activism’ (Hong, 2017, 2018), a particular kind of civic engagement via walking tours has resulted in promoting community heritage against the state’s neoliberal development policies.
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Heritage walks have become a popular leisure activity for Singaporeans as they meet an increasing desire for more in-depth understanding of community spaces and place-based histories, as well as a means to capture disappearing sights and experiences (Zhao, 2016). Civic groups like Temasek Rural Exploring Enthusiasts and Geylang Serai’s Integration and Naturalization Champions Committee organize free walking tours, which coexist with the ones by commercial enterprises and government agencies [such as the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) and Singapore Tourism Board]. The walks allow visitors to physically experience Singapore’s culturally diverse neighbourhoods and learn about little-known histories, which may not be accessible during the normal course of life. As they represent communities neglected in official discourse, Harrison (2010: 240) argues that walking tours by activists can be ‘unofficial processes of heritage’ which constitute the use of ‘social action […] at the local level to build a sense of community and identity’. Wang and Kao (2017: 1003) use three Taiwanese case studies to illustrate how guided walks could be used by activists and groups towards ‘subversive aims’ of constructing place-based narratives of ‘subsistence and welfare’ and of ‘resistance and civil rights’. The degree of subversion generated by these walks is, however, mediated by activist agency with ‘specific social contexts’. An important point to be made about the attraction and relevance of walking tours is that they serve a particular form of ‘living heritage’ activism which is based on the everyday interactions with the physical environment – social experiences of residents and business owners – that is developed and sustained within the local community. These walks are conceptualized as ‘social action’ (re)creating heritage as means of advocacy by bottom-up actors to engage the public and authorities for desired changes to be made (Harrison, 2010). They allow activists to insert the narratives of the ‘everyday past and present’ which have been displaced by rapid urban renewal. These perspectives align with what other scholars suggest about guided walks contributing to community awareness (Fink, 2011), placemaking (Barlett, 2002) and democratic participation (Solnit, 2006). Drawing from the above literature, walking tours embody social action for heritage in three aspects: (1) gathering residents’ involvement to assert their rights to heritage; (2) connecting tour participants to the place and community through the articulation of these social experiences; and (3) facilitating participants’ appreciation of community heritage and resonance with alternatives of urban development. The tour routes become spaces for civic activism, as residents and participants gain understanding of related issues and opportunities to engage with the causes advocated. Knudsen
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and Clark’s research in US cities (2013) found a positive link between walking and social movements, as the experiential benefit of walking enables social interactions within and with the physical spaces, thereby generating ‘socio-physical capital’ (citing from Coleman, 1988). Face to face contacts during walks cultivate trust, solidarity, and friendship, and more effectively ‘encourage collective political action’ (Knudsen and Clark, 2013: 633–635). Engaging citizens in asserting their ‘right to the city’ helps them claim ownership of their living environments (Harvey, 2008). Heritage Preservation Movement and Walking Tours in Singapore Singapore’s history of heritage preservation could be traced back to the 1950s with a non-government group, Friends of Singapore, which contributed to the list of historic sites, monuments, and buildings for preservation in the 1958 Master Plan for the colonial government. However, Friends of Singapore faded in importance after British rule ended, as the group’s approach to heritage preservation was incompatible with the new government’s. In the 1960s to 1970s, the newly independent Singapore went through massive developments to accommodate housing, commercial and employment needs. The Preservation of Monuments Board set up in 1971 struggled with limited resources (Blackburn and Tan, 2015; Henderson, 2008). While policymakers considered the importance of heritage preservation in the 1960s and 1970s (Kong, 2010), decisions on the preservation of historical sites and buildings were side-lined by urbanization (Blackburn and Tan, 2015), before being structured towards the objectives of nation-building, consolidating state legitimacy, and generating income. Conservation and tourism-linked projects were implemented from the 1980s onwards, to enhance Singapore’s cultural diversity and historical heritage (Saunders, 2004). The conservation of the Civic and Cultural District and ethnic enclaves of Chinatown, Little India, and Kampung Glam, was strategized to transform these historically significant areas into cultural, economic, and political bases (Henderson, 2008; Sim, 1996; Teo and Huang, 1995; Yeoh and Kong, 1999). In 1993, the National Heritage Board (NHB) was established to oversee the preservation and promotion of Singapore’s heritage, but civic consciousness for heritage protection remained low. Signs of public awareness for heritage preservation became more apparent with two ground-up appeals for heritage preservation in the early 2000s. Members of the public made impassioned appeals against the government’s decision to demolish the former National Library Building to make way for a traffic tunnel. Once criticized for its poor architectural aestheticism, the
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old library building was a site of cherished memories for many middle-class educated Singaporeans. The public opposition was nonetheless disregarded by the government (Xu, 2015; Zaccheus, 2014a). The other case related to Chek Jawa, an ecologically-rich intertidal flatland which houses six unique habitats of wildlife (Prasad, 2014). Chek Jawa was planned for reclamation by the government as a reserve military training ground in 2001. Unexpectedly, public opposition came in the forms of research studies, site reports, appeal letters and petitions, public talks, published stories, and site tours. The popularity of the tours caught the attention of the authorities as attendance peaked to an unprecedented 1,000 visitors to the island. The perceived value of Chek Jawa through these collective responses influenced the government’s decision to conserve Chek Jawa for ecotourism (Goh, 2007). The campaigns to save Bukit Brown and Green Corridor in 2011–2013 displayed both similar and new dynamics in civil society’s efforts to convince the authorities to preserve these sites. Walking tours were employed to generate public awareness and recognition of the value of these places. The Bukit Brown activists curated a variety of themed walking tours which attracted over 18,000 visitors by early 2018. They successfully lobbied for Bukit Brown’s recognition as a site under watch by the World Monuments Fund (Zaccheus, 2013b), and the walking tours achieved a top activity listing on the peer-reviewed Tripadvisor website. The tour participants’ experiences – including images of the tombs and artifacts, scenery, and wildlife – were posted on social media as personal connections to the site, whether or not they had ancestors buried there. Unlike the Green Corridor campaign in which the environmentalists successfully worked with the authorities (Strand, 2014), the Save Bukit Brown campaign failed to engage the government’s interest due to the lack of prior collaboration between the Bukit Brown activists (many of them first-time activists) and government officials (Jamal, 2017). Nonetheless, the Bukit Brown movement was important in bringing together groups and coalitions that would not (normally) come together, representing ‘the growing momentum of activism in spreading awareness of things beyond commercial value and the intrinsic value of place, and is an important step in the re-appropriation of place away from top-down, hyper-planned forms’ (Luger, 2016: 187). There is also the broader sociocultural context behind the growing public interest in heritage alongside increasing demands for more political freedom in expression and consultation rights in policymaking. Singaporeans are exhibiting a collective desire for greater ownership of their national identity and cultural sources, which includes a more in-depth understanding of local heritage. When Singapore celebrated its 50th year of independence in 2015,
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state and grassroots organizing contributed to the surge in projects to document local history and heritage. Examples include ‘The Singapore Memories Project’, a state-endorsed nation-building exercise for Singaporeans to post their recollections of Singapore’s past (Liew and Pang, 2015; Tan, 2016), and citizen-created blogs and social media content (notable examples being ‘The Long and Winding Road’ and ‘Nostalgic Singapore’). Prevalent everyday use of information and communication technologies has removed barriers to connect like-minded individuals and groups with common interests, thereby making it easier for groups to pool resources for organizing protest action, documenting experiences and memories, and projecting this collective desire for heritage preservation into the public agenda (see Liew, Pang, and Chan, 2013; Luger, 2016; Pang and Liew, 2014; and Sadoway, 2013). The case studies in this chapter complement existing efforts to understand the mobilizing strategies of the activists, by illustrating how walking tours are operationalized as a means of civic activism in placemaking, heritage awareness, and community building.
Cases: My Community and Geylang Adventures Methodology My Community and Geylang Adventures, based in two distinctly different neighbourhoods, illustrate how walking tours are used as spaces of civic activism to materialize knowledge production, civic engagement and participation in community heritage, and related issues. The two groups, exhibiting different forms of civic organizing, address varied aspects of community and physical heritage. My Community is based in Queenstown, a residential district with archetypes of public housing developed by the colonial and current governments. Their walking tours showcase Queenstown as the Singapore development story from its agricultural and industrial beginnings during the colonial administration, to the nation’s development (and renewal), and the multiculturalism of communities residing and working in the area. In contrast, Geylang is associated with Singapore’s main legalized red-light district and is a popular food haunt. It also houses predominantly private residences and migrant worker accommodation. Geylang Adventures’ walking tours use the eclectic happenings of Geylang to generate awareness about socio-economic issues transforming the area and the migrant workers’ challenges. These walks engage locals from all walks of life – residents, business owners, heritage enthusiasts, students,
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Figure 2.1 Queenstown and Geylang neighbourhoods, Singapore
Source: Jeffrey Hou. Drawing by Hoilok Heather Lam. Map data © 2020 Google
parents with young children, academics, and bureaucrats – in local histories, landscapes, and social experiences. Residents and participants connect through these interactive encounters, as they relate their experiences to question the impact of development on these spaces and communities. To examine their civic activism, related media articles, reports, and social media pages are referenced to understand their trajectories, functions, and activities. Semi-structured interviews with four organizers and
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six guides were held between June 2017 and June 2018 to identify their motivations for organizing and conducting these tours, challenges they faced and the perceived impact of their activism. Furthermore, an ethnographic understanding of the walking tours was conducted through participant observations during the same period to inform the analysis. Queenstown: My Community My Community, a volunteer group focusing on community heritage of Queenstown, was started in 2009 by Kwek Li Yong and Jasper Tan, who were undergraduate students and enthusiasts of Singapore’s history. The group documents the history and living heritage of Queenstown, and provides free walking tours as key outreach activities to engage with residents and visitors. Registered as a charity in 2015, My Community derives its funding from sources such as individual and corporate donations as well as state sponsorship in projects such as publications and special events. By its twelfth year in 2020, My Community has organized over 1,000 walking tours attended by more than 30,000 people (My Community, 2020), with three routes in Queenstown covering the areas of Tanglin Halt, Margaret Drive, Labrador Park, Alexandra, Commonwealth, and Holland Village. The walking tours, based on extensive archival research and vernacular accounts, are highly popular and often fully booked within a few days. Queenstown was named by the British colonial government in 1953 to mark the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and the housing estate was developed by the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT)1 to alleviate overcrowding in Chinatown. Comprising seven neighbourhood areas, Queenstown boasted several ‘f irsts’ in Singapore – technical school, polyclinic, branch library, sports complex, and flats by the Housing and Development Board (HDB)2 . Queenstown is rich in sociocultural life with 1 The SIT was established by the colonial government in 1927 to improve the sanitary conditions of Singapore’s buildings and later took on the development of public housing. SIT-developed flats, such as those in Tiong Bahru and Dakota Crescent, are highly valued by civil society and residents for their unique architectural designs and heritage. 2 Set up in 1960 to replace the SIT, the HDB has been an important organ of the ruling PAP government to make the citizens homeowners (and hence an increased stake in Singapore’s nation-building) through the provision of affordable public housing. By its fifth year, HDB had accomplished the construction of 50,000 units, which surpassed the resource-strapped SIT’s 23,000. The astute management of public housing policies has been a crucial contribution to the PAP’s ruling legitimacy and longevity (Chua, 2017).
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several places of worship, educational institutions, and entertainment facilities. In the early days of My Community’s formation, the founders’ quest to preserve the heritage of Queenstown was not supported by NHB’s former management, according to co-founder, Kwek Li Yong (interview 7 June 2018). From 2012 to 2015, they visited nearly 80% of the residents to ask for their memories, artifacts, and photographs in order to document Queenstown’s history. These engagements enhanced residents’ awareness of the significance of Queenstown being Singapore’s first satellite town3 and its 60 years of history. The two-week Queenstown Festival celebrating its 60th anniversary was organized by My Community with the Citizens’ Consultative Committee (CCC; a state-affiliated grassroots group), and symbolized what the group advocates as the ‘alternative voice in heritage’: ‘voices of the common men which should be emphasised […] Our ethos is community […] it can be your father, mother and uncle, your friends […] Our message is “your stories do matter” (Kwek, interview 7 June 2018). From the residents’ enthusiasm in contributing their stories, the activists put together a brochure on Queenstown and started their own guided walk. Residents attended the walks and added more content with their memories and experiences. Over time, some residents volunteered as tour guides, thereby reinforcing their community heritage and identity: [Being] a community tour we want people to participate in their own heritage trail and people to know about the community through the [resident’s] mouth […] Most importantly for the residents, we want them to participate in heritage tours as well […] it makes our tours unique and special […] Residents don’t get a single cent, and [are motivated] by their love of their estate that they come every month or every two weeks to tell stories. (Kwek, interview 7 June 2018)
As tour guides who are actively engaging in practices of constructing ‘social memory’, the residents’ participation contributes towards a ‘production of locality’ (Appadurai, 2008), in which they reinforce their sense of community belonging and identity from the articulation of their memories and social experiences. Librarians and firefighters at the Queenstown Library and Alexandra Fire Station, as well as religious organizations such as the Baptist 3 This was mistakenly attributed to Toa Payoh, which was actually the second satellite town. The wrong fact was presented in social studies textbooks until it was corrected due to My Community’s campaigning.
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Church and Church of the Good Shepherd, have also become community partners for the tours with their own curated narratives. Through this involvement, these stakeholders participate in placemaking and reinforce their love of and celebration of their unique heritage. There have been no studies drawing the links or quantifying the impact of the heritage walks, but Choo Lip Sin (interview 14 July 2017), My Community’s secretary (at the time of the interview) and tour guide observed a rise in heritage appreciation over the years, as witnessed in numerous official and personal projects to document perspectives of Singapore’s history, with a portion of these referring to the walks. Choo explained the popularity of the Queenstown walks (and heritage walks in general) as the reflection of Singaporeans’ increasing interest to understand their cultural and natural heritage against the backdrop of economic affluence, social mobility, and access to global information. Singaporeans have more opportunities for overseas travel where they get to share their country’s experiences, and this increases the interest for a deeper understanding of Singapore’s history and heritage (Zhao, 2016). In recent years, the state’s investment in ground-up initiatives celebrating food and cultural practices distinctive to Singapore was a big push in public appreciation of local heritage (The Sunday Times, 2018). Hence, the walks could be argued to contribute to and perpetuate this interest in community heritage by telling the Singapore story with alternative narratives curated according to the guides’ interests. Each My Community tour is a composite of themes ranging from its flora and fauna to Singapore’s early development of its trading port and other industries; from tales of the British’s miscalculations during World War II to the evolution of housing facilities and related social memories. My Community also prides itself in offering balanced perspectives on key events in the area (My Queenstown Facebook, 10 December 2014). An example is the ‘Hock Lee Industrial Action’ 4: ‘the official version – they [the authorities] called it a “bus riot” […] as a heritage guide I’ll try to be balanced and offer both [versions] and let the participants decide’ (Choo, interview 14 July 2017). 4 Also known as the ‘Hock Lee Bus Riots’, the event started as a strike by the workers from Singapore Bus Workers Union (SBWU) against their employers in the Hock Lee Amalgamated Bus Company for better working conditions. After all the SBWU workers were dismissed, the strikes escalated into clashes with the police which resulted in four dead and several injured. The protests by the Hock Lee bus workers for better working conditions was backgrounded against the political struggle between a fledgling local government (led by Labour Front) and a budding alternative party (PAP) with the threat of communist influence in the region. The protests and violent outcome have become commonly framed as the communists’ manipulation of blue-collar workers and students (Loh, 1998), though historians have disputed these claims (Loh, 2014).
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Figure 2.2 My Community’s My Alexandra Heritage Tour takes participants through multiple narrative themes curated by former residents, firefighters, and volunteer guides
Source: Shiau Ching Wong
The number of My Community volunteers has increased steadily. By early 2020, the group has expanded beyond their tours in Queenstown to six tours in the neighbouring districts of Tiong Bahru, Redhill, Telok Blangah, and Sentosa Island. Personal interactions and identification with the narratives facilitate connections between the guides and the participants, who may become influenced to join My Community as volunteer guides. The group has around 500 volunteers interested in guiding, research, logistics, and other organizational support (My Community, 2020) and these include older (‘Charlie’ who has lived in Queenstown for more than 40 years) and newer residents (‘Jason’ who moved to Queenstown a few years ago), and non-residents (‘Mark’, a science teacher, and ‘Thomas’, a public servant and history enthusiast)5 . Queenstown has undergone rapid changes to the neighbourhood and many distinctive landmarks of the area, such as a bowling alley, cinema, and prison have been demolished. Several early-era housing blocks have either been demolished or soon will be to make way for new housing development. My Community highlights these changes during the tours and raises questions about the state’s fast-paced development at the expense of cherished community spaces and social connections: Heritage walks […] bring people to the […] site, to walk through that space and feel it. They can reconnect when they go back home, to wherever they 5 My Community tour guides interviewed on 10 June 2017. Names in inverted commas are pseudonyms.
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stay today. Because in ten or 20 years, it could be their own neighbourhood [to go]. It’s time to think about the same issue [development versus preservation]. About what to keep, what to go, and why. (Choo, interview 14 July 2017)
The sustainability of My Community is rooted in its long period of presence in Queenstown and ability to build ties with the residents, religious organizations, and business owners. From these connections, the group has managed to raise S$100,000 for the setting up of the Queenstown Heritage Museum (Kwek, interview 7 June 2018). The National Arts Council has supported arts engagement events which promote the unique architecture and sights of the neighbourhood, and local arts groups have also approached My Community for collaborations. The group has amassed regular press coverage with human interest stories about ground-up community engagement and leaders have been vocal about preserving community heritage (Baharudin, 2019; Zaccheus, 2014b, 2018a, 2019). The group’s familiarity with the Queenstown-based residents, business owners, and social groups from their long period of engagement has given them the social capital and credibility to work with different state agencies and non-state groups on ad hoc projects. Besides collaborations with the CCC in publications and community events, a notable example of recognition for My Community’s ground experience was that they worked with the Member of Parliament to obtain public opinion on whether to rebuild a wet market and hawker centre to replace the to-be-demolished ones. In what was an unprecedented practice which recognized My Community as a key representative of Queenstown, government officials informed the group prior to the official announcement of the demolition of the old driving centre and early HDB-built housing blocks. The group engaged the residents in commemorating their experiences at these places (My Queenstown Facebook, 10 December 2014; 3 October 2015). The group has enjoyed small successes in engaging state planners to consider a more conservation-oriented approach to redeveloping Queenstown. My Community submitted a conservation paper supported by 2,000 residents to the URA, and obtained its commitment to conserve three sites out of 18 proposed ones (My Community, 2018; Zaccheus, 2013a). Their selection of the buildings and sites listed in their conservation paper was based on heritage impact assessment criteria with the input of the ‘community’ – Queenstown’s residents, business owners, architects, academics, and relevant government agencies. The group did not push for the cinema and bowling alley which were distinctive sociocultural
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landmarks to be conserved as these buildings had structural faults, thereby debunking the state’s perception that heritage preservation groups want to ‘preserve everything’ (Kwek, interview 7 June 2018). On the prospects of further collaboration with the authorities, key members acknowledged there has been more dialogue in recent years with the relevant government agencies and officials. Rather than being regarded as co-option by the state, these increased interactions are believed to allow the group to understand the policymakers’ concerns and constraints in order to ‘find the best way forward’ in balancing development needs with heritage preservation (Choo, interview 14 July 2017; Jasper Tan, interview 27 September 2017). Geylang: Geylang Adventures Started by student Cai Yinzhou in 2014, Geylang Adventures conducts walking tours of Geylang, which is more commonly known for its red-light district and food. Geylang Road was the earliest trunk road linking the north-eastern part of Singapore to the town area. The settlement has its origins in the early 1840s, when residents from the Malay floating village at the Singapore River were relocated to the Kallang and Geylang Rivers. By the early twentieth century, Geylang had expanded into two parts which retained their sociocultural distinctions: the eastern part now known as Geylang Serai was populated by the Malays, and the western area, mainly occupied by the Chinese, is organized into a series of lanes called ‘lorongs’ (URA, undated). Today, the upper lorongs (Lorong 24 onwards) are known for the high concentration of religious places of worship and clan associations, and the lower lorongs for the brothels. As a residential area, Geylang offers a mix of low-cost housing to migrant workers and higher-end apartments to a smaller number of expatriates and local residents. Having grown up and spent his life in Geylang, Cai has had opportunities to gain exposure to different community experiences – raids, prostitutes, and migrant workers – as compared to his peers. He considers Geylang as a place with multiple meanings – to him it is ‘home’; to Singaporeans ‘food’ and a ‘red-light district’; and to the migrant workers a ‘home away from home’ and a ‘refuge […] to chill out’. In his teens, he befriended the migrant workers who lived in the area. When Cai realized his Bangladeshi friend was avoiding haircuts to save money for his family, he learnt to barber and started Back Alley Barbers for volunteers to interact with the migrant workers through free barbering services in 2013 (Cai, interview 19 July 2017).
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The Little India riot was the key event which inspired Cai to create the tours to bring up the unknown aspects of Geylang and its communities. The riot occurred in December 2013, when a large group of migrant workers attacked police and civil defence personnel and vehicles, after a worker was fatally run over by a bus (Neo and Chia, 2013). The Little India riot6 had spillover effects on nearby Geylang, as state measures implemented – such as the liquor control zone (sales are restricted to specific hours) and an increase in surveillance cameras, street lighting, and police enforcement – have changed the sights and dynamics of Geylang. Cai decided to take action after witnessing what he perceived as a more discriminatory treatment by the police towards the migrants relative to the locals: The distinction in treatment got me thinking […] What do people think of migrant workers? What do people think about the context of spaces that Geylang [means] to them? And more importantly, how do I change that? The thing I had was access [because] I stayed there all my life and I made friends with them and I understood the context of their lives. (interview 19 July 2017)
While Singapore has a substantial low-wage migrant worker population totalling nearly a million (with almost half engaged in the construction, marine, and processing sectors)7, this community has largely remained invisible within the broader society. Opposition by residents concerned about property prices and social order has pressurized authorities to house migrant workers in specially built dormitories segregated from neighbourhoods and from regular social interactions with the locals. Public awareness and concern for the dismal living and social conditions of the migrant workers have been low, with a handful of non-government organizations facing an uphill battle to get the workers’ rights recognized. Believing that policy change comes from better understanding between the locals and migrants, Cai employs walking tours as his social action for locals to understand Geylang’s different communities and sociopolitical issues: ‘my methodology is using tours to talk about complexities of social issues and taking time [for 6 The Committee of Inquiry set up to investigate the causes of the riot identif ied three contributors: differences in perceptions about the cause of the accident and towards law enforcement, and effect of alcohol consumption. While non-government organizations were proactive in highlighting the contextual issues of poor living conditions and socio-economic discrimination underlying the riot, the authorities concluded the riot was an isolated incident incited by alcoholism and unruly behaviour of a few. 7 Numbers as of December 2016 (Ministry of Manpower Singapore, 2021).
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visitors] to walk through spaces to understand them better […] Along with that we also pair with initiatives […] to change the status quo’ (interview 19 July 2017). In contrast to conventional tours emphasizing history, Geylang Adventures’ tours let participants experience and understand issues relating to Geylang’s sex industry, illegal trading activities, shifts in economic structure, and the living conditions of migrant workers. This is not the typical tourist trail of Geylang’s food and nightlife, but a ‘behind-the-scenes’ exploration of the business activities and living conditions. Cai, as the key tour guide with local knowledge, acts as the medium through which residents, business owners, and participants become involved in the placemaking of Geylang. The participants visit a few distinctive shophouses and businesses in the area, where they get to interact with the residents and business owners. The walks also bring participants through the back alleys, where they are asked to ‘engage their five senses’. They could see, feel, and smell the diverse activities within the parameters of the red-light district: working girls, make-shift street peddling of aphrodisiacs, and empty prescription cough medication (used as an abuse substance) bottles clogging drains. Personal stories of the business owners and residents in the area are shared. For example, a 70-year-old ‘mama shop’ (i.e., local provision shop) had to close down due to poor business impacted by the liquor sale restrictions. This contrasts with the account of a nearby ‘beer garden’ coffee shop which lost much revenue due to the liquor control laws, but regained its former customers when it reverted to its former operations as a restaurant and gained Michelin recognition. Upon connecting participants to Geylang’s activities and effects of the Little India riot, the narrative shifts to highlight the social conditions of migrant workers. Participants witness their cramped living conditions and the importance of their limited leisure spaces and non-government organizations in addressing their needs (for instance, HealthServe which offers subsidized medical services). The inequalities faced by these migrants are compared with that of ordinary Singaporeans to invoke empathy and interest in understanding them. This astutely links Geylang’s distinct living heritage to the impact of Singapore’s neoliberal development and heavy reliance on low-wage labour – addressing the systemic subjugation of these transient workers for better protection of their rights and social needs. This has become a key rallying call by Cai. While not seeing himself as an advocate to dictate what is best for policy change, Cai uses his tours to change misconceptions about migrants by ‘garnering enough compassion from the ground’, in order to achieve public
58 Shiau Ching Wong Figure 2.3 Geylang Adventures’ founder and tour guide, Cai Yinzhou (second from the left), takes participants through the streets and back alleys of Geylang
Source: Shiau Ching Wong
consensus in addressing their rights: ‘a space we want to change which is the locals’. Further integrating the boundaries between the locals and migrant workers, Geylang Adventures organizes activities to facilitate local–migrant interactions, such as Back Alley Barbers and food and music events. Cai has also connected tour participants with non-government organizations for volunteer opportunities to help the migrants. Geylang Adventures’ social initiatives appeal to millennials who comprise over 70% of its volunteers. The key challenge, he said, is to make the opportunities to volunteer accessible for Singaporeans, focusing on ‘meaningful’ local–migrant interactions that bring about the ‘change in perspective’, ‘connections as humans’ and ‘non-judgmental conversations’ (interview 19 July 2017). Geylang Adventures uses word-of-mouth publicity to market the paid tour to locals, and has established a sustainable business model in working with educational and community organizations. Policymakers attend his tours to understand local conditions. Tour attendees were usually unaware of the content prior to participating as they were invited by friends, and most had not spoken to migrant workers (Cai, interview 19 July 2017). Online reviews of the tours often relate to how surprised and enriched the participants were by their newly gained contextual understanding of Geylang and the economic and sociopolitical issues (examples can be found on Geylang Adventures Facebook, 24 January 2017, 19 November 2017, 30 April 2019). Sharing similarities in relating to living spaces and community heritage like My Community, Geylang Adventures’ activism serves an existing gap in a unique area in which migrant workers constitute the majority of the residents. The walking tours extend the appreciation of Geylang’s diverse
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socio-economic activities to recognizing the marginalized migrant workers as part of Singapore’s broader heritage and communities. Cai’s work has won him state recognition as a Youth Award winner in 2017, for his role in bridging the divide between locals and the migrant workers. His walking tour was part of the Singapore Biennale held from late 2019 to early 2020, and featured a segment in which participants interacted with migrant workers to understand their lives and challenges.
Civic Activism in the Making? The Potentials and Limits of Placebased Organizing As forms of civic activism addressing issues related to community heritage, My Community and Geylang Adventures exhibit distinct characteristics aligned to communitarian politics (Soon and Koh, 2017), adopting a collaborative approach to address gaps which state policies have neglected. My Community provides archival and discursive spaces for collecting and presenting the histories and lived experiences of Queenstown, and the walking tours empower the residents (and non-resident guides) to take ownership in preserving the community’s heritage and identity and reinforcing these processes. The Queenstown tour narratives extend Singapore’s whitewashed history by allowing guides to incorporate multiple perspectives and sociocultural rituals typically overlooked in national discourse. The ‘personal’ and ‘community’ aspects of heritage are emphasized and given value against institutional accounts which play down socio-economic inequalities, vanished landscapes and buildings, and social memories. On the other hand, Geylang Adventures leverages on the unusual and deviant legacy of Geylang as it explores the seedy activities the area is known for – prostitution, alcohol and drug consumption, and illegal gambling – and enriches the narratives by drawing upon the broader sociopolitical and economic forces which mediate these activities and other business and social activities. The idea of community heritage is extended to the migrant workers who have contributed greatly to the country’s infrastructural development but are marginalized from the Singapore story. The humanization of migrant workers arouses participants’ empathy, thereby encouraging positive attitudes towards their rights and greater local–migrant worker integration. In Hong Kong, ‘place-attachment’ and ‘place-based identity’ lay the foundation for ‘strong resistance to the uprooting and demolition of urban landmarks’, and shift the movement approach from ‘right to property’ to ‘right to planning’ (Huang, 2015; Sham, 2017: 14). In Taiwan’s place-based
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heritage movements, scholars (Den, 2014; Wang, 2013) suggest the importance of bottom-up social action in def ining the meanings of the places and asserting residents’ rights to define how places should be preserved and renewed for future relevance. My Community’s and Geylang Adventures’ walks critique the state’s approach to rapid development by highlighting the consequences of the destruction of communal places and the displacement and alienation of communities, bringing to light often overlooked social experiences. While providing the residents with place-based values (such as social memories, heritage, and sense of belonging) which scholars (González and Vigar, 2008; Martin, 2003) posit to be important for mobilizing collective action, there are nuances in how place-based values are applied in Singapore as compared to Hong Kong and Taiwan. As Singapore’s land administration is centralized by the government, the use of place-based values to challenge the authorities in urban planning policies remains limited. The tour experiences activate citizens (often residents and business owners of the neighbourhoods) to participate in social action for their community heritage, and together with participants, to consider the neglected issues. Place-based values and identity are linked to the identif ication of what makes up Singapore: incorporating richer layers of history as well as the present realities and future aspirations. Hence, while advocating for more humanistic approaches to urban development, they paradoxically constitute a form of broader imagining of belonging to a nation which embraces diverse communities and social experiences. Unlike the Choi Yuen Village (Ng, this volume) and Lo-Sheng Sanatorium (Yen, this volume) movements, such civic activism exhibited by My Community and Geylang Adventures ends with a softer ‘call to action’ for inclusiveness with little hint of confrontation and resistance to state policies. It could be argued that the civic groups’ apolitical methods of generating awareness of community heritage and preservation, and recognition of migrant workers’ rights have lowered the barriers of participation for collective action. The support of the public via donations and fees for the walks have helped in the continuation and expansion of their activities which further promote their causes. The credibility of these walks as a channel for community voices has drawn politicians and bureaucrats to participate in the walks to understand conditions on the ground. Moreover, the long-term presence of these groups in the communities means they act as intermediaries through which policymakers could reach out for citizen feedback and participation in decision-making. In the given examples, Geylang Adventures has conducted tours for government officials who are
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interested in understanding issues affecting Geylang’s business owners and residents, while My Community helped the state to collect resident feedback for selected decisions on the development of Queenstown. These collaborations, though ad hoc, reflect the authorities’ recognition of these civic groups as the means to reach and understand public demands. With a substantial pool of volunteers and residents’ support, My Community started a cultural mapping project to help some 7,000 residents (from 3,480 flats in 31 blocks) who would be relocated from 2020 to 2021 through the Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme to record their social interaction patterns and cultural resources. With the aim to create an interactive digital map with the residents’ stories and photographs, the group hopes that this project would assist estate planners and policymakers in understanding and maintaining the sociocultural resources and networks of the community which would be disrupted by the redevelopment (Zaccheus, 2018b). In addition, the group has organized activities for residents to co-design the new community museum (which will be relocated together with the affected residents to the new area), and to express what they want for their neighbourhood (My Community Facebook, 4 February 2020, 5 June 2020). In April 2020, Geylang Adventures formed a coalition, COVID-19 Migrant Support Coalition (CMSC), with other non-government organizations and informal groups to support the migrant workers during the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in the workers’ dormitories. Alongside a successful online fundraising and crowdsourcing campaign, the coalition set up a centralized procurement and logistics system to deliver meals and necessities to the workers who were confined to their quarters and assisted the dormitory operators to apply state-mandated measures (CMSC Facebook, 22 April 2020, 9 May 2020). At this time when public criticism was rife about the state’s role in exacerbating inequalities between the affluent citizenry and disempowered transient worker community, which contributed to the spike in cases among the workers, the coalition collaborated with the authorities by providing material and emotional support to the isolated workers and dormitory operators (Ang, 2020). These forms of engagement with the public and authorities beyond the walks also reflect a political environment in which ‘a higher level of conditionality in trust between the ruling party and an emboldened citizenry’ has opened up political space to ‘co-create policies’ but in a ‘sustainable form of volunteerism’ (Hong, 2017: 4). Civil society organizing has transgressed traditional formal organizations and such activism is not tied to specific places and narrow causes. Alliances among groups
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and individual activists could be formed whenever a new campaign arises in response to a government development plan or other urgent causes; these resemble web-like relationships of groups and activists overlapping in different protest campaigns that Chuang (2013) observed about social movements in Taiwan. Working in tandem with a group of architects who were pitching for the Dakota Crescent estate (which was SIT-built) to be conserved when it was slated for redevelopment, Cai and his peers set up Dakota Adventures to train residents to become tour guides. The project evolved into a resettlement initiative (and ongoing outreach service) to take care of the social and emotional needs of the relocated residents from less advantaged socio-economic backgrounds. Some My Community guides also volunteer their time in other heritage tours, for example ‘Alfred’ who guided walks in Bukit Brown. His motivation for joining the heritage preservation cause was aroused by the helplessness he witnessed related to the demolition of the old National Library building (interview 10 June 2017). There is also some degree of similarity with the movements for the preservation of Choi Yuen Village in Hong Kong (Ng, this volume) and Lo-Sheng Sanatorium in Taiwan (Yen, this volume) in terms of how activism evolves over time with the inflow and outflow of differently experienced individuals and groups, changing sociopolitical conditions and collective capacities gained from challenges met and overcome. The fluidity of the heritage preservation movement and the mobility of individuals and activist groups (Luger, 2016) to create and join different campaigns whenever issues emerge pose additional pressure on the state to respond to the collective voices. While they are not likely to take on a more aggressive approach to their activism for reasons such as the continuing political restrictions for groups to organize collectively (Ortmann, 2015: 133), activists are creating ways to build their ‘coalitional capital’ through pooling efforts and working within the bureaucratic machinery (136). Often, they make innovative use of ‘methodologies and practices enabling citizens to regain democratic control of urban processes’ so as to co-create ‘alternative socio-political and spatial imaginaries’ that in turn further their causes (Hong, 2017: 17). It means the state cannot continue to bypass civil society in its urban renewal projects, like it used to in the late 1990s and 2000s. By not getting their spaces of activism clamped down, the civic groups have proven their credibility among the public and to the government as being ‘good citizens’. Using walking tours, they are carrying out a form of on-the-ground engagement with the public, who are stakeholders of Singapore’s heritage and constitute the people power that could be more easily activated in future campaigns.
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Conclusion The civic activism of My Community and Geylang Adventures offers an understanding of the nuanced ways in which the heritage preservation movement has advanced in Singapore. The nature of such ambivalent activism reflects the particular agencies of the organizers in navigating their perceived roles vis-à-vis the state, acknowledging the government’s right to land use and development and are willing to work with the state to make changes. These are strategic choices made for movement sustainability with the belief that confrontational strategies are ineffective in engaging the authorities to change policies. Instead, they bridge the gap by generating public awareness and creating opportunities for the public to express collective desire and action in working with the state to co-create change. At this juncture, their impact appears to fall short of generating actual policy changes, bringing one to question whether these could be construed as budding forms of civic urbanism and if so, how sustainable are these practices for systemic changes? Suggesting nascent civic urbanism, the case studies show capacity building in progress for activists, residents, and the broader public to claim ownership and make collective decisions for their neighbourhoods and communities, as well as spontaneous formations of coalitions for immediate needs. With bureaucrats noting their presence and engaging these groups on a case-by-case basis, there is potential for more sustainable co-participation in urban development and social policymaking. This does raise concerns that civil society groups are co-opted into becoming ‘state-controlled institutions’ (Chong, 2005: 281), and fuel scepticism relating to the debate between the proponents of a collaborative civic society who recognize the need to work within the existing power relations ‘to achieve concrete results and to avoid marginalisation’; and their opponents who prefer that civil society groups assert their interests and independence to avoid compromising the checks and balances on the state they are responsible for (Chong, 2005: 282). In this respect, the groups are balancing their creative strategies to generate change amidst challenges presented by the state restrictions, a ‘depoliticised civic space’ and disagreement among members which may arise in cases of long-term collaboration (Ortmann, 2015: 133). There is a possibility that civic groups and walks could be co-opted into alternative forms of ‘museumizing’. In particular, social media documentation of destroyed/disappearing sites or the selfie culture may hijack practices of heritage preservation by facilitating collective preferences to digitize heritage into records for public memory, and then
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forgotten (Liew and Pang, 2015). Adding to these are unaddressed worries that state–civil society collaborations are just ‘gestural politics’ (Lee, 2005), or a one-time fix for issues (for example, in the current ‘firefighting’ response to COVID-19). Nevertheless, the civic activism of groups like My Community and Geylang Adventures should not be dismissed as their longterm work has strengthened the concept and articulation of communities, and prepared citizens for upcoming challenges. The contribution of My Community and Geylang Adventures shows that Singapore’s heritage preservation movement is multifaceted; it does not only cover historic sites and architecture, but also social experiences and invisible communities. Their work reveals the complexities brought on by constant development and urbanization, and the lengthy process required to generate awareness and motivate civic engagement amidst challenges of the state’s dominance over land use and low (but rising) public recognition for community heritage. Their civic activism therefore has to be viewed along the continuum of Singapore’s heritage movement. It shows that much remains to be done as the rising popularity of heritage walks has yet met its full potential of mobilizing citizens to greater levels of collective dialogue and participation to protect Singapore’s remaining sources of built and living heritage. The lack of an established funding structure for heritage walks also raises questions about the sustainability of the walking tours, but their potential to stay viable lies in their ability to bridge the gap of citizen participation in urban development. Most importantly, they contribute towards a distinct form of bottom-up nation-building, and provide an alternative framework in understanding evolving state–society relations in Singapore’s urbanism.
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Hong, Danielle. 2017. ‘Exploring Informal Social & Cultural Activism in Singapore: A Study on Local Ground-up Initiatives’. ISEAS Working Paper No. 2. Hong, Danielle. 2018. ‘Building the Urban Commons in Singapore: the Cemetery, Red-light District and Public Housing Estates as Sites of Contestation’. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 19(3): 1–14. doi: 10.1080/14649373.2018.1497901. Huang, Shu-Mei. 2015. Urbanizing Carescapes of Hong Kong: Two Systems, One City. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Jamal, Faizah. 2017. ‘Three Lessons for Engagement in Environment Activism in Singapore’. In Civil Society and the State in Singapore, edited by Carol Soon and Gillian Koh, 31–48. London: World Scientif ic Publishing Europe. doi: 10.1142/9781786342478_0002. Knudsen, Brian B. and Terry N. Clark. 2013. ‘Walk and be Moved: How Walking Builds Social Movements’. Urban Affairs Review, 49(5): 627–651. doi: 10.1177/1078087413490395. Koh, Gillian and Debbie Soon. 2016. Singapore Chronicles: Civil Society. Singapore: Institute of Policy Studies and Straits Times Press. Kong, Lily. 2010. Conserving the Past, Creating the Future: Urban Heritage in Singapore. Singapore: Urban Redevelopment Authority. Kwok, Kian-Woon. 2017. ‘Civil Society in Singapore: Ideals and Idealism’. In Civil Society and the State in Singapore, edited by Carol Soon and Gillian Koh, 3–30. London: World Scientific Publishing Europe. doi: 10.1142/9781786342478_0001. Lee, Terence. 2005. ‘Gestural Politics: Civil Society in “New” Singapore’. SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 20(2): 132–154. doi: 10.1353/soj.2005.0009. Liew, Kai Khiun and Natalie Pang. 2015. ‘Neoliberal Visions, Post-Capitalist Memories: Heritage Politics and the Counter-Mapping of Singapore’s Cityscape’. Ethnography, 16(3): 331–351. doi: 10.1177/1466138114552939. Liew, Kai Khiun, Natalie Pang, and Brenda Chan. 2013. ‘New Media and New Politics with Old Cemeteries and Disused Railways: Advocacy Goes Digital in Singapore’. Asian Journal of Communication, 23(6): 605–619. doi: 10.1080/01292986.2013.790911. Liow, Eugene Dili. 2011. ‘The Neoliberal-Developmental State: Singapore as CaseStudy’. Critical Sociology, 38(2): 241–264. doi: 10.1177/0896920511419900. Loh, Andrew. 2014. ‘Historians question accuracy of CNA’s historical documentary’. The Online Citizen. Available at https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2014/02/07/ historians-question-accuracy-of-cnas-historical-documentary/ [accessed 30 April 2021]. Loh, Kah Seng. 1998. ‘SINGAPORE STORY: The Use and Narrative of History in Singapore’. Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 12(2): 1–21. Luger, James. 2016. ‘Singaporean “Spaces of Hope?”’. City, 20(2): 186–203.
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Strand, David. 2014. ‘A Walk in the Park: Singapore’s Green Corridor as a Homegrown Import’. ARI Working Paper No. 223. Tan, Kenneth Paul. 2007. ‘In Renaissance Singapore’. In Renaissance Singapore? Economy, Culture and Politics, edited by Kenneth Paul Tan, 1–14. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. Tan, Kenneth Paul. 2012. ‘The Ideology of Pragmatism: Neo-liberal Globalisation and Political Authoritarianism in Singapore’. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 42(1): 67–92. doi: 10.1080/00472336.2012.634644. Tan, Kenneth Paul. 2016. ‘Choosing What to Remember in Neoliberal Singapore: The Singapore Story, State Censorship and State-Sponsored Nostalgia’. Asian Studies Review, 40(2): 231–249. doi: 10.1080/10357823.2016.1158779. Teo, Peggy and Shirlena Huang. 1995. ‘Tourism and Heritage Conservation in Singapore’. Annals of Tourism Research, 22(3): 589–615. doi: 10.1177/004728759503400224. ‘The Sunday Times Says: Memories, One Neighbourhood at a Time’. 2018. The Sunday Times, 30 September. Wang, Chih-hung. 2013. ‘Heritage Formation and Cultural Governance: the Production of Bopiliao Historic District, Taipei’. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 19(7): 679–691. doi: 10.1080/13527258.2012.687696. Wang, Chih-hung and Yu-ting Kao. 2017. ‘Re-assembling the Memorial Landscape: the Politics of Walking Tours in Taipei’. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 23 (10): 1002–1016. doi: 10.1080/13527258.2017.1362575. Xu, Terry. 2015. ‘Was the Demolishing of the Old National Library a Well-thought Decision?’ The Online Citizen, 20 October. Available at https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2015/02/03/was-the-demolishing-of-the-old-national-library-awell-thought-decision/ [accessed 10 October 2017]. Yeoh, Brenda S.A. and Lily Kong. 1999. ‘The Notion of Place in the Construction of History, Nostalgia and Heritage’. In Our Place in Time: Exploring Heritage and Memory in Singapore, edited by Kwok Kian Woon, Kwa Chong Guan, Lily Kong, and Brenda Yeoh, 132–151. Singapore: Singapore Heritage Society. Yue, Audrey. 2007. ‘Hawking in the Creative City: Rice Rhapsody, Sexuality and the Cultural Politics of New Asia in Singapore’. Feminist Media Studies, 7(4): 365–380. doi: 10.1080/14680770701631570. Zaccheus, Melody. 2013a. ‘Three Historic Buildings in Queenstown to be Conserved’. The Straits Times, 4 October. Zaccheus, Melody. 2013b. ‘Bukit Brown Cemetery Named on Global List as a Site at Risk’. The Straits Times, 9 October. Zaccheus, Melody. 2014a. ‘What Future of Our Past’. The Straits Times, 22 June. Zaccheus, Melody. 2014b. ‘Group Wants Councils to be Formed to Champion Heartland Heritage’. The Straits Times, 10 November. Zaccheus, Melody. 2017. ‘Playing Tourist on Home Ground’. The Straits Times, 6 May.
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Zaccheus, Melody. 2018a. ‘Bringing Queenstown’s Past Back to Life’. The Straits Times, 2 July. Zaccheus, Melody. 2018b. ‘Capturing Spirit of Queenstown through Cultural Mapping’. The Straits Times, 30 July. Zaccheus, Melody. 2019. ‘The Balance Between National Progress and Preservation of Heritage’. The Straits Times, 6 May. Zhao, Wanyi （赵琬仪）. 2016. ‘Heritage Walks: Humanistic Awaking’.（文化散 步，人文觉醒）Lianhe Zaobao （联合早报）, 1 May. [In Chinese]
About the Author Shiau Ching Wong has a multidisciplinary research background in social movements, media sociology and political communication. She obtained her PhD from the University of Melbourne, and has published on activist communication in East Asian contexts. Her current research includes the community heritage and civic technology movements in Singapore and Taiwan.
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Resistance and Resilience A Case Study of Rebuilding the Choi Yuen Village in Hong Kong Mee Kam Ng Abstract This chapter employs a synthesized theoretical framework to interpret the struggles of Choi Yuen Village (CYV), a non-indigenous yet closely knit multigenerational village, when the government decided to remove it in 2008 to make way for an emergency rescue station for the Express Rail Link (ERL) that connects Hong Kong with China. Unlike indigenous villages, non-indigenous ones are not entitled to village reconstruction if affected by government projects. CYV, therefore, resisted the decision. Resilience of the village was boosted by the broader anti-ERL social movement. Although CYV was eventually removed, many stakeholders within and outside the government on opposite sides of the controversy helped rebuild CYV as an eco-village, an unprecedented and unique case that realized socio-spatial justice for non-indigenous villagers. Keywords: Community resistance, resilience, social capital, rural development, Hong Kong
Introduction While there is a rich set of literature on community resilience in the face of climate crisis and natural disasters (Berkes and Jolly, 2002; Berkes and Ross, 2013; Brown, Dayal, and Del Rio, 2012; Pfefferbaum, Pfefferbaum, Van Horn, Klomp, Norris, and Reissman, 2013) as well as on relationships between resilience and urban planning or power relationships (Bahadur and Tanner, 2014; Brown, 2014; Davoudi, 2012; Jabareen, 2013; Lombardi, Leach, Rogers, and the Urban Future Team, 2012; Wilkinson, 2012; Wilson, 2014), few (Amundsen, 2012; Maguire and Cartwright, 2008; Wilson, 2013) have
Cho, Im Sik, Blaž Križnik and Jeffrey Hou (eds), Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia. Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei beyond Developmental Urbanization. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463728546_ch03
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attempted to use the concept of resilience to understand the emergence of community-based actions to counteract state-initiated spatial injustice and to protect people’s rights to use space. This chapter is an attempt to tell the story of a community that tried to rebuild itself in the midst of a seemingly unjust institutional and political context. This case study illustrates how a community leveraged internal and external resources to counteract the state’s entrenched unjust spatial practices, resulting in getting what ‘they morally deserve’ (Sandel, 2009: 10) – the rebuilding of their multigenerational village. This chapter views resilience from a cultural geography perspective, examining ‘how cultures, individuals and societies are responding to changes’ (Denevan, 1983 cited in Amundsen, 2012: 46). Berkes and Ross (2013: 6) define community resilience as the ‘existence, development and engagement of community resources by community members to thrive in an environment characterised by change, uncertainty, unpredictability and surprise’. Community resilience depends on intentional actions taken to enhance the personal, collective, and institutional capacity to respond to and influence socioeconomic and political changes (Adger, 2000 cited in Wilson, 2014). Such moves require practical wisdom – a kind of moral virtue – ‘a reasoned and true state of capacity to act with regard to the human good’ (Sandel, 2009: 197). Wilson (2014: 16) argues that ‘super-globalized communities’ are the most prominent examples of profit-driven lock-ins, closely related to globalization and capitalist accumulation, resulting in a loss of alternative economic pathways for local stakeholder groups (Gray, 2002) as well as weakly developed social and environmental capital. Indeed, social movements resisting the capitalist logic of ‘conquering’ people’s lived spaces for capital accumulation are most found in urban Hong Kong (Kuah-Pearce, and Guiheux, 2009). Rural development in Hong Kong has always been marginalized. Hence, the ‘death and rebirth’ of CYV, a non-indigenous village (established after 1898, when Britain leased the rural New Territories for 99 years), related to the construction of the ERL to connect Hong Kong with mainland China (Figure 3.1) provides a window for us to understand the possibilities of resistance and resilience even for a peripheral community in an executive government-led society where policies always privilege exchange values over use values (Lefebvre, 1991). The story showcases the coming together of different stakeholders to help boost existing community resources including active agents, networks, and institutions to create new adaptive and learning capacities to pursue actions that counteract state-imposed vulnerabilities, enacting spaces of hope.
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Figure 3.1 The location of the original Choi Yuen Village and the new village site
Source: Jeffrey Hou. Drawing by Hoilok Heather Lam. Map data © 2020 Google
A qualitative approach was adopted for the case study research. Besides reviewing and synthesizing literature on state–civil society relationships, resilience, social capital, and spatial justice to formulate a theoretical framework, news reports were studied to develop a timeline of the whole CYV saga and to identify key stakeholders. Twenty semi-structured interviews of one to several hours were conducted with the major stakeholders including
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the Choi Yuen villagers, activists, and volunteer experts in 2014 and 2015. Since the author was a member of the Railway Objections Hearing Panel set up by the government, the author was informed of the construction of the ERL before the mega project was announced to the public and was eventually involved in hearing the Choi Yuen villagers’ objections to the ERL. Hence, the author had the opportunity to understand both sides of the story. Since the government’s announcement of the construction of the ERL in April 2008, the author has been involved as a participant observer of the various activities organized by the villagers who were aided by social activists. The author has regularly visited the new CYV up to this date. The research team has endeavoured to triangulate various sources of information in order to verify the research findings. The following section outlines a theoretical framework for analysing the resistance and resilience of the Village. The case is discussed according to the synthesized framework, followed by some concluding remarks.
Theoretical Framing Space is formed out of social interrelations at all scales, rendering the identities of place unfixed, contested, and multiple (Massey, 1999). As a result, ‘space’ is created out of intricate relationships, full of ‘power and symbolism’, a complex variable web of domination and counteraction (ibid: 254). The commodification of space and place has deep roots in the history of capitalist development through the manufacturing of consent and the suffocation of genuine agonistic conflict (Boyle, 2011), rendering invisible social vulnerabilities in local communities, and undermining the basic conditions of their everyday lives. While the idea of using spaces and the related resources to fulfil the basic needs of citizens and to nourish deep and rich human relationships should be seen as fundamental values to any development process, such aspirations and values are often downplayed, if not neglected completely in many development contexts. Resistance to the commodification or destruction of people’s lived space is related to the resilience of local communities (Logan and Molotch, 1987). As argued, resilience is the capacity of a community to respond to a vulnerable situation or change (Maguire and Cartwright, 2008). A community’s vulnerability can be def ined by its internal qualities such as poverty or inequality, etc. (Maguire and Cartwright, 2008) or the frequency, magnitude, timing, and intensity of external threats (Fenton, Kelly, Vella, and Innes, 2007). Bahadur and Tanner (2014) also argue that power imbalances
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Figure 3.2 Community resistance and resilience
Source: Author through synthesizing the literature and case study materials
in society encourage, create, and sustain vulnerabilities. The question is how resources and adaptive capacity can be mobilized and developed to counteract or battle vulnerabilities embedded in existing institutional, cultural, and political regimes. And true resilience adapts in order to further sustainability (Leichenko, 2011) (Figure 3.2). Resources are the assets, strengths, and abilities of a community that enable it to overcome its vulnerabilities and to respond adaptively to change and uncertainties (Maguire and Cartwright, 2008). Community-based resources include leadership, social capital, information, knowledge, skills, institutions, and the capacity to learn (Nelson, Adger, and Brown, 2007). Outside parties such as active agents with their knowledge, skills, power, and experience could also help boost community resources and their capacity building. Hence, the capacity of a community to resist is a function of the motivation (values, attitudes, and beliefs) of the stakeholders concerned, their commitment, self-organization, connections to their internal and external environment, adaptive learning, constructive feedback loops, creative capacity, reflexive learning, flexibility, diversity, positive attitude,
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and proactive stance (Amundsen, 2012; Nelson, Adger, and Brown, 2007; Pelling, 2011; Pierce, Budd, and Loyrich, 2011). In other words, adaptive capacity is reflected in the community’s ability to mobilize internal and external socioeconomic, environmental, and institutional resources to overcome its internal and external vulnerabilities. Actions such as resistance are, therefore, context specific and path dependent (Pelling, 2011). As argued by DeFilipppis (2001), communities and their abilities to act are outcomes of a complex set of power-laden relationships. Actions are mobilized to pursue positive changes, to promote transformative scenarios towards greater environmental, economic, and social justice (Folke, Carpenter, Walker, Scheffer, Chapin, and Rockstrom, 2010; Pelling, 2011). Very often, positive messages or discourses are invoked to (re)frame actions. For instance, discourses highlighting the use values of spaces and related resources to nourish deep and rich human relationships (Logan and Molotch, 1987). In other words, a resilient community is not one that just resists and strives to maintain the status quo – a truly resilient community involves a ‘politics of moral engagement’ (Sandel, 2009: 261) to build a more socioecologically sustainable future in face of adversities, uncertainties, and risks through people working together, exercising their internal bonding and external bridging (horizontal), and linking (vertical) social capital (Gittel and Vidal, 1998). Such a community will courageously explore with the involved internal and external actors the right way to value things, to learn how to disagree and compromise (Sandel, 2009), to trust that collectively the community has the capacity to turn risks into opportunities as depicted in its Chinese translation, ‘危機’, literally meaning ‘risks’ and ‘opportunities’. If the purpose of resistance is to build a more resilient community, then the impacts of a movement can be evaluated by examining if a better and more sustainable community has been created or if new values, discourses, and some kind of collective identity are developed (Earl, 2004). More fundamentally, one needs to examine if changes were made to state initiated plans, policies, laws, and institutional set up, the sources of external threats to a vulnerable community.
The Death and Rebirth of a Non-Indigenous Village in Hong Kong Postcolonial Hong Kong has continued to be a market-oriented society, consisting of ‘super-globalized communities’ (Wilson, 2014). Ever since the city’s previous incarnation as a British colony, the city has been privileging exchange values over use values in the production of space (Lefebvre, 1991).
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This phenomenon intensified after the city returned to Chinese rule in 1997, because China then was eager to please the capitalists lest there would be capital flight after the political transition. The hegemonic importance of economic growth has been sustained not only by plans and institutional arrangements but also through discourses and everyday cultural practices (Lam, 2004). The commodification of space and place has in turn produced everyday ‘vulnerabilities’ for those communities that depend on the use values of a place, values that are usually not clearly visible or simply neglected in the existing top-down planning and development processes. Besides the seemingly fixed physical environment that can easily blind urbanites from reimagining the possibilities of transforming the urban form to realize basic use values for citizens and hence promote spatial justice, hard and soft institutions alike may also marginalize and trivialize certain values, rendering particular groups and their aspirations of producing certain types of space irrelevant, undesirable, or even illegitimate. Society’s privileging of technical knowledge in the making of urban plans over everyday knowledge or common sense by the general public also means that conceived plans very often do not speak to the use values of a community. Many have even argued that this is part of a systematic attempt to ‘legitimise the sectional interests of hegemonic groups […] to sustain forms of domination in the everyday context of “lived experiences”’ (Giddens, 1979: 179, 191). Hence, in Hong Kong, local communities are vulnerable to the constant commodification of places into spaces for exchange values and few actually possess the resources, adaptive capacity, and audacity to counteract the trends. CYV, a non-indigenous village in the New Territories of Hong Kong, is a rare exception. The village ‘died’ a tough ‘death’ to make way for an emergency rescue station that would serve an ERL connecting the Special Administrative Region to the China mainland, and was eventually ‘reborn’ due to the rallying of resources internal and external to it that helped boost its capacity to mobilize and (re)frame the various issues. Inspiring discourses were invoked and courageous actions were carried out to temporarily transform the spatial practices and produced spatial outcomes unthinkable in previous incidents. External and Internal Vulnerabilities and Resources In the New Territories, indigenous villagers (villagers who dwelled in the New Territories before 1898) are entitled to the Government’s full support in re-establishing their villages should they be affected by development projects. Such a right is not extended to non-indigenous villagers, even
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though some of them might have purchased land from the ‘indigenous’ villagers and lived in the New Territories for generations. CYV is one such non-indigenous village. In April 2008, the Government announced the construction of an ERL to the high-speed rail network in China. However, it was only in November 2008 that the project was officially gazetted. One interesting thing is that in the city’s long-term physical strategy, Hong Kong 2030 (Development Bureau and Planning Department, 2007), the Hong Kong Section of GuangzhouShenzhen-Hong Kong ERL is listed as a committed project by 2020. The sudden advancement of this project was probably related to China’s accelerated development of high-speed railways as part and parcel of her economic stimulus plan during the global financial tsunami in 2008-2009. As stated by the then Secretary for Housing and Transport, ‘it is important for us to tap into the mainland national high-speed railway network as soon as possible’ (Lam, 2009). In fact, the Secretary then signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Transport and pledged to start building the Hong Kong section by the end of 2009 (Lai, 2010). In other words, scale politics was probably involved in the rush to deliver this planned long-term project. And unlike land use planning, the making of transportation plans and development of infrastructure projects in Hong Kong do not have provision for citizen participation. As a result, the villagers were not consulted before the project was gazetted in November 2008 and they were not aware of their vulnerable situation until the Lands Department started marking their properties with red paint. The need to resume CYV for the development of the emergency rescue station alongside the ERL dealt a heavy blow to the non-indigenous villagers who had to face eviction almost overnight, with no hope of rebuilding their homes because they are not entitled to whole village resettlement. Some had even speculated that the non-indigenous CYV was chosen because of its ineligibility for village reconstruction. To the Government, bulldozing a non-indigenous village in theory should be much cheaper and less time-consuming. The villagers felt that the government had evaluated the mega-transport plans only in terms of money and exchange value and had completely ignored the fact that members of the CYV had developed a close connection with the soil and nature, with intricate social networks that gave meaning to their lives, a sense of identity, and great memories. These had been lifesustaining resources for the local villagers. As stressed by one villager who had worked in the fields, farming was something she could not live without because it could actually feed her soul and stimulate her creativity – things that money could never buy (Lau, 2009). Not only had the farmers raised
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families through growing crops, their houses were very often a refuge for their offspring, for the widowed, or for children with a failed marriage. It is because, unlike typical Hong Kong urban dwellings the small sizes of which often discourage traditional extended family formation, homes in CYV were more spacious, facilitating the consolidation of traditional family culture.1 In fact, it was through the experience of facing eviction that the villagers began to identify and value their internal resources. The convenor of the CYV Concern Group argued that they had been in the village for three generations and so they deserved to be ‘valued as a thriving community, just like any indigenous village’. Various interviewees in this research who had supported the Village in their fight against displacement, mentioned that they were impressed by the strong sense of family in the Village, a typical Chinese culture that has been rapidly disappearing in urban Hong Kong due to the long working hours and the lack of relationship-nourishing spaces and places. The strong sense of community is a unique resource of the Village, an important source of resilience (Theron and Theron, 2013). One villager contended that no compensation could buy the friendship he had with his neighbours (Leung, 2010). Indeed, the following resources, unique to CYV, are commonly held by the villagers: – The social network; – The extended family: taking care of the old and living with children; – Familiarity and connectivity to the surrounding natural and built environment; – Living and practising farming simultaneously; – Living harmoniously with animals and plants; – Sharing expert and local knowledge; and – Enjoying the coexistence of one another. Through highlighting the harmonious relationships with nature, the environment, and fellow human beings as a family and as a community as core resources and values in CYV, these discourses served to contrast dramatically with the government’s top-down place-marketing projects launched in the past decades that aimed at spurring economic growth. As argued by a university student who had joined the protest movements to support the villagers, the government’s version of urbanism created barriers between human beings and nature and made urbanites look down on agriculture and the rural areas (Lai, 2010). The unique internal culture of CYV attracted help from some social activists and also a new generation of 1
Interview with a local villager on 5 February 2014.
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young students who were warmed by the CYV’s family-based community culture, a component distinctively missing in their urban lives. External Resources Boosted Community Capacity and Actions When the government announced the demise of CYV in November 2008, the timetable was to evict the 150 households and to bulldoze CYV by 2010. Ms Ko, convenor of the Village Concern Group, told us that the villagers tried to seek help from existing lawmakers but this turned out to be not very useful and the villagers did not manage to attract much public attention. The turning point came when intellectuals and social activists worked together to oppose the construction of the megaproject. Professionals including academics provided expert advice to the villagers; some suggested alternative locations for the ERL emergency rescue station in order to save the integrity of CYV. Although all the proposals were deemed not appropriate, the whole process empowered and emboldened the villagers. One of the most instrumental persons of the movement was a journalistturned-activist, Mr Hoi Dick Chu. Attracted by the warmth and simplicity of the villagers, he joined the campaign in February 20092 and began documenting residents’ lives and initiating an oral history project with ten villagers, aged between 40 and 80 years old.3 The oral history project not only provided background information for guided tours organized for those who were concerned about the fate of CYV, it also helped the villagers appreciate their own history and placemaking efforts and achievements. For instance, one of the houses was a parting gift to his beloved wife from a husband who died of cancer, and many others recounted stories of how farming had raised their multigenerational families. These soul-searching incidents boosted the identity of the villagers who slowly reaffirmed their rights to ‘processing’ or ‘reinventing’ their living place (Capron, 2002) and became determined to f ight against their marginalization in the decision-making process (Purcell, 2002) (Figure 3.3). Chu also organized a forum comprising invited lawmakers, engineers, planners, government representatives, and district councillors. He represented the villagers in stating their uncompromising stance: no relocation; no demolition; no top-down planning; and a need for dialogue. 2 Interview with Mr Chu was conducted on 13 January 2014. 3 Videos can be found on YouTube, such as: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_ embedded&v=VNAavJSI3ck, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULKUC01j4wY, http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=z9u0kJFlBRY, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzoUxdJhyHE.
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Figure 3.3 Old Choi Yuen Village—‘Defending Housing Rights’
Source: Jeffrey Hou
The traditional mass media and the new internet media also played important roles in disseminating information, debates, and new perspectives, as well as mobilizing participation and mutual support. These discourses and practices in turn helped further transform people’s understanding of the values held by the Choi Yuen villagers and hence their living rights to
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the place they called home (Alexander 2007). Then a series of newspaper reports showed that the rail project was ultra-expensive due to ‘its cavernous, state-of-the-art underground terminus’ construction and that the ERL would not speed up Hong Kongers’ travel to Guangzhou as the terminus actually lies outside the city centre (Lai, 2009; Lai and Lam, 2009). These reports made the social activists more determined to fight for CYV to stay. When the funding application for the construction of the ERL was debated by the Finance Committee of the Legislative Council on 18 December 2009, thousands of young people surrounded the Legislative Council to show their disapproval of the expensive (HK$66.9 billion or US$8.6 billion) project (Lai, 2009, 2010). Pan-democrats in the Finance Committee succeeded in withholding funding for the scheme. Riding on this temporary success, a repertoire of creative actions was launched by the villagers and their supporters in January 2010, including a group performing a ‘prostrating walk’ imitating Tibetan pilgrims (‘Prostrating Walk of Five Districts’) for four days and three nights to feel the plight of the land that had been ‘spoiled’ by ‘economic growth’ and to encourage more people to join their campaign (Lui and Lui, 2010). When the financial proposal returned to the Legislative Council for debate and decision on 15 January 2010, more than 10,000 people showed up besieging the Legislative Council and it took the Council 24 hours to deliberate and eventually approve the funding request. The villagers organized themselves and served their traditional food outside the Legislative Council. The huge turnout then surprised everyone and proved the power of social media. More importantly, the event revealed the younger generation’s frustrations with the institutional and cultural realities in the city: a bias towards building expensive mega-infrastructure and a lack of genuine public consultation (Lai, 2010). As argued by a university professor, the passing of the funding request in the face of public objection at boiling point revealed the structural bias of the undemocratic political system of Hong Kong4 (ibid, 2010). Nevertheless, the villagers considered that the whole saga could be ‘a victory in disguise’ because the events brought the whole village together and earned the recognition of the people of Hong Kong. The villagers were even interviewed by overseas media5 .
4 Only half of the 70 seats in the Legislative Council were open to direct election by voters on a geographical basis. The other half were elected by about 230,000 voters in functional constituencies dominated by business and professional sectors. 5 Interview with a local villager on 5 February 2018.
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The urban supporters of CYV quickly developed a very strong bond with the villagers. They became devoted volunteers in the Village and helped form the ‘CYV Living Museum’ through showcasing farming, as well as organizing educational activities and local tours. The support of these young urbanites became a very strong moral force backing the villagers’ fight for their rights to an alternative lifestyle. The funding approval by the Legislative Council gave the green light to the megaproject. Hence, by February 2010, the villagers were under a lot of pressure. Fighting to stay would not yield any result and hence they started to sign the documents to be eligible for receiving proper compensation. At the same time, they continued to explore a way forward and some core families decided to negotiate with the government about the possibility of rebuilding CYV through an agricultural land rehabilitation scheme under the Agriculture, Fishery, and Conservation Department (AFCD, 2014) to help reinstate their houses and farming activities affected by the construction of the ERL rescue station. They also tactically demanded ‘rebuild first and demolish later’. Rebirth of CYV: Bonding, Bridging, and Linking Social Capitals While bonding and bridging social capital had been instrumental to the eventual rebirth of CYV, linking social capital was also critical. Mr Chu had become the intermediary between the villagers and the government officials who were responsible for the project. The intervention of the educated social activists had been instrumental and turned a potentially disastrous situation, where different parties lacked a common language into a more civilized negotiation process.6 As most of the land in the New Territories is owned by the indigenous villagers, Choi Yuen Villagers also appealed for the help of the Rural Council (Heung Yee Kuk) to identify suitable farmland. According to the villagers, the government had requested the assistance of the Rural Council, a traditional council first recognized and set up by the colonial government in the New Territories, in settling the saga of CYV. When the villagers agreed to rethink their stance, the then Rural Council Chairman provided continuous support in the land search process. Without his support and assistance, it would not be conceivable to have the new CYV built on its current site. Nevertheless, the road to rebuilding the Village was not an easy one as there was no precedent case and little policy support. While rehousing 6 Interview with a local academic who offered help to CYV during its campaign. The interview was conducted on 13 January 2014.
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and compensation were handled by the Transport and Housing Bureau, agriculture rehabilitation was the policy domain of the Food and Health Bureau. There were no integrated actions from the two Bureaux. The ‘Agricultural Land Rehabilitation Scheme’ is run by the AFCD with almost nil policy support. The Scheme was launched in 1988 to encourage interested farmers to utilize fallowed agricultural land for productive farming, to loan them farming equipment, to provide technical advice to improve the soil or control pests, to provide low interest loans, to assist in their application for building farming related structures, and to improve irrigation and other facilities (AFCD, 2014). For the planning of the new village, a university professor, Y.C. Chen, helped establish the ‘CYV Community Building Workshop’ in March 2010 and recruited volunteers from different professions such as planners, architects, landscape designers, engineers, ecologists, and farmers to start a community planning process. He even invited a team of planners and planning students from his alma mater, the National Taiwan University, to launch the event. Several planning and design principles were established: a car-free environment; saving 40% of land for collective farming purposes; conserving existing orchards and f ishponds and the cultural landscape as far as possible; and recycling water through physical means. Then an architecture professor facilitated the design of the new village through thorough research on the existing built form and community engagement. Three prototypical housing forms were proposed for the villagers to choose from. Eventually a plan for ‘New Choi Yuen Eco-village’ was developed.7 The exercise was a courageous move fully revealing the resilient spirit of CYV: as they had to move on, they envisioned rebuilding an environmentally more sustainable and socially harmonious settlement that helped facilitate the continuation of their lifestyle, as well as inspiring others to an ecologically balanced living style. However, before the villagers could complete the land purchase of a suitable relocation site to construct their new homes, the Mass Transit Railway Corporation (MTRC) had to start their phased onsite work in November 2010, meaning that the CYV had to be demolished. For the newly purchased site, the surrounding indigenous villagers threatened not to grant CYV road access unless they agreed to ‘resell’ a piece of ‘inadvertently’ sold land good
7 Shared by Prof. C.Y. Chen, who was then at the Baptist University, and Mr Hoi Dick Chu on 13 January 2014 and Prof. Wei Jen Wang, The University of Hong Kong, on 15 February 2014.
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for building small houses8 – 9,000 square feet of fishpond. Since the pond was planned to become an ecological facility for treating recycled water, Choi Yuen Villagers refused to heed the demand. The stalemate was temporarily resolved again by the intervention of the then chairman of the Rural Council. And after much negotiation with the MTRC, the Corporation eventually agreed to build temporary housing and related necessary infrastructure such as water, electricity, and sewerage systems for them on the new site (Ngo, 2012). The tendering process took a much longer time because of the escalation of construction costs and the concerns of some villagers over budgets and affordability. The villagers therefore had to compromise on the original ecological design. It had not been an easy experiment and when they were ready to build their new homes in 2012, they found out that the road access issue had not been resolved properly. It was only in June 2013 that the road access problem was finally resolved (through buying the access right from the indigenous villagers) and the construction of their homes began to take place. The land access issue also created problems for the water and electricity supply and it was not until 2017, after more than five years of living in the temporary structures, that the villagers were able to move into their new houses and to rebuild their community. An Inspiring Eco-village? Figures 3.4-3.5 capture some images of the new CYV. The resettled CYV has not exactly followed the ecological design finalized by the architecture professor. For instance, houses are not gated in the original design, but in reality the villagers have used different types of materials to fence off their houses. Instead of collective farming, it seems that the villagers are practising farming in fields close to their own living quarters. The original idea of treating wastewater naturally was not feasible and it is not clear how this has been resolved. However, compared with other rural villages, the new CYV is much greener, with visible agricultural activities, for subsistence as well as produce for sale. The community has continued to be a closely knit one with strong social capital. Villagers have continued to celebrate different festivals and the Chinese New Year together. The CYV movement has also changed people’s perception of rural villages and the value of farming activities. The movement has helped people refocus on the use values of a place to local communities that have lived 8 Male descendants of indigenous villages are eligible to build a small 3-storey (700 ft 2 for each floor) house. Hence, the pond would be invaluable for the indigenous villagers.
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Source: Mee Kam Ng
Figure 3.5 New CYV – Gardens inside House Allotment
Source: Mee Kam Ng
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there for decades. The villagers’ strong belief in the importance of having local agricultural activities and their healthy impacts on the environment, flora and fauna, and people’s food security have been confirmed. Especially when the safety of imported food, including vegetables, has increasingly become an issue. The citizen values articulated have appealed to other social activists and many young folks who have been frustrated by the exchangevalue-driven development logic of the city. The villagers’ determination to farm and live harmoniously with nature has inspired young participants of the movement to produce various art forms9 to investigate the values of rural Hong Kong and to reflect on the relationships between conservation and development. These have shaped a very different identity for farmers in the New Territories in general and for the Choi Yuen villagers in particular. Unfortunately, the courageous movement has not resulted in any significant policy change. CYV has remained a unique case.
Concluding Remarks The story of the CYV proves that, even in a highly capitalist society such as Hong Kong, people do long for closer human relationships and more intimate people-land relationships (Barton, Thompson, Burgess, and Grant, 2015). In a sense, the professionally assisted bottom-up planning processes and design outcomes showed that planning with reference to the principles of justice and humanity is possible (Marris, 1998), though the implementation has been marred by all sorts of institutional and technical problems, suggesting that the learning pathways towards grassroots resistance and resilience to fight for spatial justice are always full of challenges. Nevertheless, the CYV saga serves as a wonderful example of turning a crisis into an opportunity to transform socioecological relationships as well as the underlying values of a society (Pelling, 2011). It has offered many important lessons for sustainable community development, for vulnerable and marginalized communities to fight for their right to the city. Without a genuine community, conservation of the village would be impossible. The question is how to communicate to the state that it is important to respect people’s lived space and their accustomed ways of using land to satisfy their multidimensional well-being needs in the development process. This is not easy in Hong Kong, a capitalist city that 9 Examples of art forms include drama (https://ps.hket.com/article/47384); film (https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=nmUpNZ0NHzc), and books (https://www.hkreadingcity.net/book/det ails/579f07c76a0b6237418b4600).
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always privileges exchange values, marginalizes the farming population, most of whom are non-indigenous villagers, and shows little interest in planning the New Territories strategically. Hence despite the fact that CYV has succeeded in rebuilding itself against all odds, the established institutional and cultural spatial practices have remained rather intact in Hong Kong. CYV was ‘reborn’ through the almost ‘empty-shell’ (that is, without actual resources or material support) agriculture rehabilitation policy. It could be done because CYV practises farming. The government approved this unprecedented case because it faced a two-front war. On the one hand, the project was urgent and had to be delivered according to the MOU with the central government. On the other hand, the ERL was vehemently objected to by the civil society and allowing the rebirth of CYV could somehow help ease the tension. Nevertheless, the CYV story sheds light on how to enhance the resilience of vulnerable and marginalized communities. The essence of true resilience rests with the building of strong social capital and networks within and between communities, using every opportunity to boost one another’s capacity, doing things anew, reaching a higher level of functioning, and transforming creatively our space and place into socio-spatially just communities (Folke, 2006; Folke, Carpenter, Walker, Scheffer, Chapin, and Rockstrom, 2010). Help from external agents, such as the journalist turned social activist and many other built-environment related professionals, as well as the then chairman of the Heung Yee Kuk (Rural Council) (so that indigenous villagers were willing to sell them the land) in the CYV narrative is essential, especially for vulnerable communities. The bridging of (horizontal) social capital with intellectuals and social activists has helped reframe and communicate alternative development discourses, allowing different stakeholders to see the importance of farming, homes for families, and communities nested in nature, as well as use values of land to the marginalized non-indigenous villagers vis-à-vis a need to build a rescue station for the ERL. The linking of (vertical) social capital with the most powerful person in the Rural Council has been essential in resolving problems on the ground. However, the case has made practically no impact on the solidified institutional framework that does not recognize the rights of non-indigenous villagers nor provides concrete support to the rehabilitation of agricultural practices, issues related to deeper structural problems in Hong Kong. The CYV saga was one of the community-based social movements that preceded Hong Kong’s 79-day Umbrella Movement (Ng, 2016) in 2014 that eventually re-emerged in the anti-extradition bill movement in 2019, resulting in a series of urban dramas such as violent protests, the landslide victory
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of the district councils by the pan-democrats, and the imposition of the National Security Law by the central government in 2020 (Ng, 2020). These events directed people’s attention from institutional reforms to conserve use values in local communities to the fight for political democracy. As the Central Government is seen by some as the biggest hurdle for Hong Kongers to enjoy universal suffrage, which is regarded as an important right to change the government and correct the biased institutional set up that privileges the rich and powerful, the tension between the local government and civil society has been complicated by people’s grudges towards the central government. Furthermore, from the 2014 Umbrella Movement to the National Security Law in 2020, Hong Kong has become a more polarized and divided society across families, communities, trades, and organizations, etc. Perhaps in the face of this social and political crisis, the CYV story has continued to communicate the importance of building a resilient community in the face of power play and socio-spatial injustice. The CYV experience shows that a necessary first step is to build a strong local community to counteract social vulnerabilities created by a state-led economics-first developmentalism. As argued by Lefebvre (1991: 88-89), ‘the simplest matters concerning housing, roads […] have their place in a hierarchy of requirements which may lead to the transformation of the state’ as long as people are seen as the source of moral values (Friedmann, 1973), possessing a right to the basic conditions of life and human flourishing (Douglass and Friedmann, 1998). Sadly, the cleavage between the state and civil society has now developed into widespread conflicts throughout Hong Kong, within government, communities, organizations, schools, and even families. It is not easy to relearn what the CYV has done, that is, to pull our resources together to strive for a nature cum human-centred development pathway and practise mutuality. Perhaps we all have to go back to step one: to pull everyone together, despite their political differences and stances, to refocus on building local communities, to relearn how to manage our differences and settle arguments, to transform space into places through our everyday practices in balancing exchange and use values, to prepare for externally imposed threats, and to extend mutuality to other vulnerable communities.
Acknowledgements Some information and thoughts in this chapter are inspired by research works supported by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project Numbers CUHK146526516 and CUHK14604218).
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About the Author Mee Kam Ng is Professor and Vice-chairman of the Department of Geography and Resource Management, the Director of the Urban Studies Programme and Associate Director of the Institute of Future Cities at the
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Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is a fellow of the Hong Kong Institute of Planners, the Royal Town Planning Institute and the Academy of Social Science in the UK.
4
Urban Planning, Public Interest, and Spatial Justice A Case Study of the Lo-Sheng Sanatorium Preservation Movement in Taipei Liang-Yi Yen
Abstract Using the Lo-Sheng Sanatorium Preservation Movement as a case study, this chapter examines several substantial problems in urban planning theories, including the multiplicity of public interests, the necessity of framing public interest from the perspective of spatial justice, and the changing relationship between the state and civil society in the planning process. By exploring various urban discourses proposed by a plurality of groups concerning the Lo-Sheng heritage site, I argue that the Lo-Sheng Preservation Movement demonstrates how heritage activism can reshape public interest and change the state’s relationship with civil society. As such, the movement was an invaluable milestone in the emergence of civic urbanism in Taipei. Keywords: Heritage preservation, public sphere, urban social movement, planning theory, Hansen’s disease
I.
‘Can You Afford It?’
This chapter is inspired by the Lo-Sheng Sanatorium（樂生療養院) (hereafter referred to as Lo-Sheng) Preservation Movement in Taipei. Lo-Sheng was a facility established in the 1930s to house patients suffering from Hansen’s disease (what used to be called leprosy), and it is located in what is now the Xinzhuang District of New Taipei City, Taiwan. The sanatorium was constructed by the Japanese colonial government to isolate leprosy patients from the general public. In 2002, a series of preservation actions took place when plans were
Cho, Im Sik, Blaž Križnik and Jeffrey Hou (eds), Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia. Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei beyond Developmental Urbanization. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463728546_ch04
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announced to locate the depot of the Taipei Mass Rapid Transport (MRT) Xinzhuang Line at the site of the sanatorium. In April 2002, two months before the construction began, the Lo-Sheng Alliance for Old Tree Protection in Xinzhuang was established by groups including the Xinzhuang Community College, Xinzhuang Culture and History Association, and Lo-Sheng residents. This alliance successfully advocated for saving many old trees on the site and raised awareness of Lo-Sheng’s cultural value for Xinzhuang residents, the media, and other civil society groups. Then, in 2004, Youth for Lo-Sheng（青 年樂生聯盟）was established by students mainly from the National YangMing University, Chang Gung University, and Kaohsiung Medical University, to preserve all the buildings and outdoor spaces on site. However, public authorities – including the Taipei City Government’s Department of Rapid Transit Systems (DRTS), which led the construction, and the Department of Cultural Affairs of Taipei County (now New Taipei City), which oversaw cultural affairs – denied the groups’ petition, claiming that the preservation efforts would delay the construction of infrastructure critical for the country. On 26 January 2005, the then Vice-President Lu Hsiu-Lien visited Lo-Sheng to learn about the preservation efforts during this conflict. After she heard presentations from the Director-General of the Office of Health Affairs, a representative of the Executive Yuan, a representative of the Council for Cultural Affairs, and a representative of Lo-Sheng, she replied: ‘Heritage sites are important, but they also demand a lot of money from the government. Are you willing to pay? Can you afford it?’1 Lu’s statement reflected one of the greatest difficulties facing heritage preservation work in Taiwan, that is, the seemingly inevitable conflict between the development, expansion, and construction of a city and preserving its traditional environments and local heritage. One can find proof of this conflict all across Taiwan, in many urban development and urban renewal projects spanning the past decades. Since the end of the 1980s, many heritage sites in Taiwan have been at risk of disappearing from the landscape altogether because of developmental urbanization (see Introduction). These sites included Dihua Street, the Wanhua Bopiliao historic block, and Parks 14 and 15 in Taipei,2 and Minquan Street 1 Reported in Liberty Times, 27 January 2005. 2 Parks 14 and 15 were two adjacent urban park reservations assigned by the Japanese city masterplan. They were also graveyards for Japanese soldiers at that time. In the 1950s, some low-rank military members from Mainland China started building a shelter for themselves on these reservations; the sites then gradually grew into settlements to house other disadvantaged groups, such as urban-rural immigrants. In 1998, the Taipei City Government decided to tear down the reservations and build the parks. Still, the efforts were stymied because of strong opposition from residents and civil groups because the government had no relocation plan.
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Figure 4.1 The overlapping locations of the Lo-Sheng Sanatorium and the Taipei MRT depot
Source: Jeffrey Hou. Drawing by Hoilok Heather Lam. Map data © 2021 Google
Furthermore, the government’s decision was also criticized for overlooking the settlements’ landscape, which could be interpreted as important artifacts in Taipei’s urban history.
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in Sanxia.3 In fact, Lo-Sheng was already scheduled for demolition to make way for a new MRT depot – a clear result of developmental urbanization. Thus, these cases have raised questions whether urban planning necessarily means the demise of heritage sites, local communities, and disadvantaged social groups. If the state-led planning projects are the enemies of heritage, communities, and disadvantaged groups, then both the objectives and the legitimacy of Taiwan’s professional planning system and values must be closely investigated, especially the definition of public interest as asserted by planning theories. Viewing from this point, Lu’s statement at Lo-Sheng can be translated as: ‘The construction of the MRT is in the public interest of all citizens. Lo-Sheng may represent interests of certain groups, but the demolition of Lo-Sheng is appropriate for the greater good of the public interest overall.’ In fact, the protection of public interest has been key to the legitimacy of the modern urban planning system and the field as a whole. As Rexford Tugwell, a pioneer of American city planning, said, ‘Planning is a lifelong vocation for the pursuit of public interest’ (Wu, 1998: 84). Modern planning theories, however, usually assume the state to be a neutral entity, and that planners can objectively determine what the public interest actually is without taking into account opinions from stakeholders. Having inherited the modern planning tradition, urban planners in Taiwan hold similar beliefs. As a result, it’s not surprising that many planning projects have resulted in intense protests throughout Taiwan. Therefore, this chapter poses the following questions: (1) How does the state urban planning institution define public interest? (2) How can social movements initiated by heritage activists challenge the definition of a mainstream concept of public interest? and (3) How can heritage activism help build a just city and contribute to civic urbanism? Among the recent social movements in Taiwan, the Lo-Sheng Sanatorium Preservation Movement is a significant example. More specifically, for this chapter, the case of Lo-Sheng was selected for the following reasons. First, the Lo-Sheng preservation movement challenges what constitutes public interest in the context of a city’s planning process. Second, Lo-Sheng is one of Taiwan’s most extensive heritage preservation movements. Since the 3 Dihua Street, Wanhua Bopiliao, and Minquan Street are amongst Taipei’s oldest districts. Each of these three districts was developed in the early- or mid-19th century. They each faced demolition crises because Taipei’s masterplans ignored the existing streets and buildings. However, these demolition plans were ultimately prevented because of opposition from experts and civil groups.
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movement’s inception in 2002, innumerable social activists have protected the site from demolition and supported residents’ efforts to fight against eviction. Finally, Lo-Sheng is Taiwan’s first heritage preservation movement that explicitly links the preservation of a site to human rights, social history, and spatial justice. Thus, analyzing how the movement developed and its impact on urban policies – as well as public awareness – is critical. The rest of this chapter is organized into four additional sections. Section II reviews the epistemological source of modern urban planning. This section also considers the public interest’s predicament in urban planning and how it relates to the idea of spatial justice. Section III analyses the urban discourses that surfaced during the Lo-Sheng movement and what their impact was. Section IV examines these discourses through the lens of spatial justice and suggests an alternative urban discourse that was more inclusive in terms of public interest. Finally, section V discusses the new planning practices and subjects that emerged during the preservation movement and how they relate to Taipei’s growing civic urbanism.
II. Public Interest, Social Mobilization, and Spatial Justice This section concerns the influence of the social mobilization planning discourse within the heritage preservation field. To begin with, I will briefly discuss how the social mobilization planning tradition developed. Modern Western planning theory and methodology are firmly based on the following epistemological foundations: rationality, totality, the scientific method, the state-led process, and planners attempting to objectively assess and define public interest (Sandercock, 1998: 62). Definitions of public interest vary from one planning theory to another. Public interest may refer to the fundamental rights of life, the establishment of physical urban environments, efficient urban management, and rational resource distribution, or overall social interest as defined by an authority (Wu, 1998). Although these varying definitions have evolved with time, one overriding definition of public interest has persisted. Planners first conceptualize a utopian city based on principles of public interest, and then they modify an existing city by realizing their plan in that space. Or, they might establish social mechanisms, such as market economy, to see their utopian concept completed. While urban planning is often considered a tool for transforming cities into utopian ideals, the state apparatus is assumed to be a neutral, unbiased implementor of this tool (Sandercock, 1998: 87–88). However, the very concept of public interest has triggered fundamental concerns: (1) whether a common public
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interest even exists; (2) whether the planner can serve as the sole authority on deciding what the public’s interest is; and (3) whether the public interest, as defined by planners, is both objective and neutral. These questions are deeply conceptual and have not yet been raised in academic circles; rather, they are raised by urban social movement actors. During the 1950s and 1960s, mainstream American planners found themselves overwhelmed by upheavals throughout U.S. cities, in the face of urban renewal projects or other developmental agendas. Leftist scholars, such as Manuel Castells (1977) and David Harvey (1978), criticized mainstream planners, arguing that they often became accomplices of property flipping in the name of public interest. Within the field of planning theory, Paul Davidoff (1965) formulated the idea of advocacy planning and proposed a bottom-up planning practice that involves community mobilization. Davidoff argued that ‘public interest’ is often a proxy for protecting white middle-class citizens’ interests. Mainstream urban planners tend to overlook other social groups’ interests, such as the Black community or other underprivileged folks. Davidoff (1965) advocated for planners to represent disadvantaged and diverse groups and fight for their interests that were ignored by mainstream planning under state institutions. The advocacy planning discourse continued to develop and became the model of other theories, such as equity planning, social learning, communicative action, and radical planning. As advocacy planning developed, the central planning body shifted from state institutions to local communities, thus expanding the horizon of planning theory (Sandercock, 1998). John Friedmann (1987) proposed the broadest interpretation of planning to date, claiming that planning in the public sphere is a process of transforming knowledge into action. According to Friedmann, because social mobilization is one avenue for transforming knowledge gained from social-spatial analyses into social-spatial action, it is, without doubt, a significant form of urban planning. However, a dilemma remains unresolved in this social mobilization planning model. According to the ideals of early advocacy planning, planning professionals must redefine public interest from the perspective of disadvantaged communities and bring community interests into the debate of public policies. Yet, because each group only claims partial public interests rather than a comprehensive public interest, conflicts concerning the public interest often become a zero-sum game, creating a Balkanized society with constant conflicts between different social groups (Cenzatti, 1987: 440). Furthermore, under the structural inequality of capitalist cities, social mobilization, which focuses on individual and partial public interests, may not be capable of fighting against the comprehensive public interest
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defined by the mainstream society, without a revolution. In other words, with the conflicts among various public interests, pluralistic liberalism cannot provide an answer to the question of how we can build an urban commons accessible to every member of society. To overcome this dilemma, I argue that the goals for urban planning and policies must be determined according to the criteria of spatial justice. Proposed by Edward Soja (2010), the concept of spatial justice claims that justice or injustice in society must contain a spatial dimension – or consequential geography. If geography enhances injustice, such injustice can be corrected by remapping the space. The central profession in any remapping effort is – of course – urban planning. Several claims proposed by David Harvey may be adopted as referential benchmarks for practical operations. Harvey borrows and modifies a set of principles of justice proposed by political philosopher Iris Marion Young (1990) and argues that both the planning and policies of justice must fit the following criteria (2003: 112–3): 1. They must create a sociopolitical organization and a productionconsumption system with minimal exploitation of labour. 2. They must address marginalization and liberate groups that are captured and oppressed by it. 3. They must empower the oppressed to approach political authorities and express themselves. 4. They must be sensitive to concerns over cultural imperialism and eliminate imperialist ideas from urban design projects and public discussions. 5. They must achieve societal control through non-exclusive and nonmilitary means so as to not destroy the self-empowerment and selfexpression of the public while handling increasingly severe personal or organizational violence. 6. They must pay attention to any ecological effect of any social plan on future generations or people who live far away and endeavor to reduce any negative impact. With this theoretical framework in mind, let us now review the contentious process of the Lo-Sheng Preservation Movement. 4 4 I myself was intensely engaged with the preservation movement from 2004 to 2005; since then, I have continued to participate intermittently in social actions addressing preservation issues, including workshops, meetings, and protests. Research data sources are gleaned from participant observation, direct observation, media reports, and secondary materials, such as research papers and master’s theses relating to the preservation movement.
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III. Whose Public Interest? The Preservation Movement as a Battlefield for Urban Discourse Lo-Sheng was established in 1930 at Dingpojiao, currently the Huilong district in Xinzhuang. At the time, leprosy was incurable, and its cause had not yet been identified. Isolating patients completely from society was the accepted medical treatment. Xinzhuang was an agricultural area abundant with rice fields and with a small population. The site was far from the more densely populated Xinzhuang Street, which rendered it a favourable location for isolating the patients. Lo-Sheng thus came into existence – yet was by nature a rejected part of the community. Although Lo-Sheng’s spatial configuration and architecture remained the same, in the 1990s, its surroundings underwent a great change. In 1993, to resolve Taipei’s fast-growing transportation needs, the new Xinzhuang Line was planned. According to the original plan, the depot was intended to be in the Wenzaizun agricultural district behind Fu Jen Catholic University. However, the then Taipei County Government opposed the idea, stating that Wenzaizun was about to be converted into a residentialcommercial district; furthermore, Fu Jen Catholic University also opposed the idea because it wanted to expand its campus. The following year, the mayors and local representatives of Xinzhuang and nearby townships suggested extending the MRT line into the Huilong area, four kilometres away from Wenzaizun. Finally, bending under local representatives’ pressure, the DRTS dropped its original plan, opting instead for constructing a depot at Lo-Sheng, citing the following reasons: (1) acquiring public land was easy; (2) Huilong’s population was continuing to grow; and (3) Lo-Sheng had already been scheduled for remodelling (Chen, 2006: 98). In 2004, two years after the official construction began, Lo-Sheng came under the media spotlight – thanks to the appeals and actions of the preservation groups. A battlefield of discourses in the public sphere was created, upon which various actors gradually surfaced, included Lo-Sheng residents, Youth for Lo-Sheng, the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, relevant planning units within the central government, local political groups in Xinzhuang, and scholars in relevant fields (myself included). Based on their respective knowledge bases and practices, each group projected a different vision onto the Lo-Sheng site and developed different urban discourses. These urban discourses diverged and fragmented with some groups sharing similar visions for the site, while individual group members have other opinions. Nonetheless, several main discourses can be identified, including
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public transportation, culture preservation, and human rights protection. Notably, each urban discourse reflects its own distinct idea as to for what and for whom public interests are defined. Of all these discourses, the most dominant was the one regarding public transportation. According to the DRTS, once the Xinzhuang Line was in full operation, transportation between Taipei City and Xinzhuang would be improved, which would lead to increased land development along the MRT line and increased local tax revenue. Additionally, completing the MRT construction would be highly symbolic. According to Anru Lee (2007), the Taipei MRT system offered an innovative, high-quality spatial experience for citizens and would raise Taipei’s prominence in terms of global competition amongst cities, rendering the MRT itself a symbol of Taiwanese identity. Such arguments not only dominated the imagination and planning of the Xinzhuang Line but also created the desire for local development amongst Xinzhuang residents, who had been living on the outskirts of the Taipei metropolitan area. As such, the MRT construction became a proxy for local development (Yao, 2010: 92). When the DRTS claimed that the Xinzhuang Line could not begin operation before the Lo-Sheng depot was finished, Lo-Sheng and its residents were perceived as public enemies who stood against local development and the public interest. In March 2007, the Taipei County government announced a mandatory relocation of Lo-Sheng residents and demanded that they move by the following month – on their own, which breached the original terms of the deal. Another substantial urban discourse was culture preservation, which was the central driving force of the Lo-Sheng Preservation Movement in the beginning. The concept in this discourse comprised two essential parts: preserving the heritage of medical care and architecture. Regarding the heritage of medical care, Lo-Sheng had a rich history that differed from modern medical care by redef ining the doctor-patient relationship. As stated in a petition for Lo-Sheng to be designated a registered heritage site (submitted by Youth for Lo-Sheng to the Department of Cultural Affairs of the Taipei County), from the perspective of medical education, Lo-Sheng’s mutually supportive community of patients and its overall ethos (stemming from being a small community) were gradually disappearing. As such, Lo-Sheng serves as an excellent model for today’s community-based care for chronic diseases. The petition argued that such meanings and values could only be preserved if Lo-Sheng were preserved at its current site.
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One can interpret this urban discourse as a topic of public interest for all Taiwanese society because this type of settlement should be preserved and used to educate the public, allowing them to understand and reflect on the relationship between disease and society. The buildings of Lo-Sheng also play a crucial role in establishing the identity of Taiwanese architectural heritage. In fact, an official report on the building type of Lo-Sheng suggested giving up its entire landscape and retaining only the hospital’s main body, which is more delicate. The same report suggested dismantling the building and reassembling it at another location near the future MRT depot. This proposal was actually a compromise that the DRTS was willing to accept.5 These ideas, which were based on a morphological understanding of architectural heritage, represented the interests of those who cared about Taiwanese culture and history. The third urban discourse focused on human rights protection and the interest of disadvantaged groups – namely Lo-Sheng residents, who are among the most disadvantaged populations in Taiwan, having long suffered from discrimination in society. On the one hand, Lo-Sheng residents were forcibly isolated from society because of historical factors and were forced to await their death in the hospital. On the other hand, the old facilities at Lo-Sheng provided a decent setting for residents to socialize and communicate. In contrast, the new medical facility that the residents were moved to more resembled a prison. Numerous residents voiced their opinions; for example: ‘I just wish that there will be sun, wind, and trees when I open the door, so simple’; ‘Here we have natural air and wind, but we will not have these when we move there. We will not be able to move freely. Living in the new building will be much like being in prison’; and ‘The size of the room does not matter, but there is not enough space to relax outside of the room. If the corridor was wider, at least we could still have a place to chat. However, the path is so narrow and there is no way for mobility scooters to go upstairs or downstairs. One can only stay indoors. It is mental abuse’ (Chen, 2006: 122) (Figure 4.2). On 31 August 2004, Lo-Sheng residents submitted an open letter to the DRTS and the Council for Cultural Affairs in a coordinated attempt to request that the facility’s buildings be preserved, which would allow them to spend their twilight years in peace. The petition prompted numerous human rights groups to participate in the movement, including the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, Green Citizen’s Action Alliance, and Labour Rights Association. 5
The Cultural Bureau of Taipei County suggested this proposal repeatedly during meetings.
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Figure 4.2 A typical dwelling unit in Lo-Sheng Sanatorium
Source: Liang-Yi Yen
In mid-May 2005, two members of Youth for Lo-Sheng travelled with two Lo-Sheng residents to Geneva, Switzerland, and accused the Taiwanese government of violating human rights and the right to healthcare in front of the global media covering a World Health Organization meeting. This action achieved global attention, and on 6 June, the chairperson of a Japanese organization that supports patients with leprosy, Miyoji Morimoto, visited Lo-Sheng and then returned to Japan with residents who had been admitted to the clinic during the Japanese colonial period. Morimoto even won a lawsuit on their behalf to seek compensation. From an international perspective, this incident confirmed Lo-Sheng residents’ right to remain in the facility, which placed immense pressure on the Taiwanese government. Finally, the Council for Cultural Affairs declared Lo-Sheng an ‘interim heritage site’ on 13 December 2005. According to the new Cultural Heritage Act, the site could not be touched due to a six-month moratorium. Although the council did not eventually declare Lo-Sheng an official heritage site within six months, its declaration of Lo-Sheng as an ‘interim heritage site’ bought the preservation movement some buffer time to negotiate with the government.
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IV. Inserting Spatial Justice into the Debated Definitions of Public Interest These three urban discourses – public transportation, culture preservation, and human rights protection – represent three different expectations for the future functions and meanings of Lo-Sheng. These dialogues have complicated the meanings of public interest and resulted in forming competitive–cooperative relationships among the diverse discourses. Because each discourse seems to have its own rational basis and validity, a rational conversation in the public sphere and a consensus can be achieved. In reality, however, the context in which these discourses were generated was a society with structural inequality. Specifically, the exchange of interest between the state and landowners monopolized the distribution of social resources and wilfully resisted any challenge to this strategy. The discourse of public transportation, in particular, disguised this monopoly and formed a cultural hegemony over the definition of public interest. As such, the seemingly pluralistic discourse became inherently biased. Under such circumstances, the critical actors in the public sphere – planning professionals – must deduce their own stance and intervention strategies to ensure that planning does not result in sacrificing the interest of any disadvantaged groups. In response, I suggest that we examine the legitimacy of the urban discourses according to Harvey’s principles of justice and that we construct a more comprehensive and inclusive planning discourse. To begin with, the discourse of public transportation seems to have violated Harvey’s principles three, four, five, and six. First, planning the MRT depot ignored the existence of a marginal group – the Lo-Sheng residents. Furthermore, the fact that the government did not offer residents an adequate political channel to express their opinions concerning the relocation, but instead dispatched police to violently suppress the protests of pro-preservation groups directly, violated three principles: empowering the oppressed to approach political authorities and express themselves; eliminate imperialist ideas from urban design projects and public discussions; obtaining social order via non-military means. Additionally, the DRTS planned a large-scale excavation of the hill where Lo-Sheng stands, which required the forced relocation of old trees and compromised soil and water conservation on the site. These consequences violate another principle, the reduction of any negative impact on the ecosystem for both future generations and the current residents. There were indeed positive effects of the Xinzhuang Line, and they cannot be overlooked. Once this route entered operation, the commute time for
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Xinzhuang residents into Taipei City was drastically reduced and their quality of life was immensely improved. If public transportation is considered a type of urban collective consumption (Castells, 1977), the construction of MRT lines can indeed balance the development of metropolitan centres and marginal areas. To a certain degree, the MRT construction did align with the first principle, to create a sociopolitical organization and a production–consumption system with minimum labour exploitation. By contrast, cultural preservation discourse aligns with Harvey’s principles two, four, and six without contradicting any principles of justice for planning. The academic communities in public health and architecture both advocated preserving Lo-Sheng’s historic buildings, an act of assuming responsibility for future generations. Additionally, preserving the buildings would be a means of eradicating cultural biases by eliminating the public’s fear and rejection of patients with leprosy. To a certain degree, confronting the stereotypes concerning patients with leprosy in such a positive way would align with the principle of liberating marginal groups. Similarly, the human rights protection discourse aligns with Harvey’s principles two, three, and four because it addressed the issues concerning marginal groups and empowered Lo-Sheng residents to involve themselves in politics and express themselves (Table 4.1). Table 4.1 Examining different urban discourses using the principles of justice for planning Urban Discourse Principles of Justice for Planning
Public Culture Human Rights Protection Transportation Preservation
1. Reducing the exploitation of labour from political organizations and production systems. 2. Liberating marginal groups. 3. Giving power and the chance for self-expression to the oppressed. 4. Eliminating cultural imperialism from urban design plans. 5. Employing non-exclusive and non-military control over society. 6. Reducing the negative impact on the ecosystem for future generations and current residents who live far away. (x = contradiction; ○ = agreement; blank = unrelated)
○
○
○ ○
○
○
× × × ×
○
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Under these premises, another discourse seemed to have surfaced to mitigate the conflict amongst the first three discourses and it identified their commonalities. The fourth urban discourse could be called the regional development approach, which argued that Xinzhuang could be transformed from a conventional industrial district into a cultural tourism-oriented district focusing on local culture and the increasing importance of the cultural industry. Presently, Xinzhuang could be established as a critical cultural hub by integrating the academic resources of Fu Jen Catholic University, the growing middle-class population attracted to the secondary urban centre and new transportation systems, the vigorous local manufacturing industry, and local heritage sites, including Lo-Sheng and Xinzhuang Old Street. Lo-Sheng, in particular, can play a critical role in advancing Taiwan’s human rights and local medical heritage. Preserving Lo-Sheng is intimately related to Taiwan’s rich and complex history of public health. For instance, a medical culture exhibition centre could be developed based on this history and these premises, and the activists argued the government could even request to make Lo-Sheng a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This urban discourse identifies overlapping interests amongst Lo-Sheng residents and other interests for establishing an alternative discourse that diverges from the artificially circumscribed existing discourse. In other words, the regional development approach could reshape the existing public sphere and guide the discussion on public interests to align more fully with the principles of spatial justice, thereby establishing a more democratic and equal city. Notably, the regional development discourse prompted new projects and incited new actions. First, Youth for Lo-Sheng re-established the preservation project that focused on Lo-Sheng’s entire cultural landscape and sought help from experts and scholars in architecture and engineering. In February 2007, scholars such as Liu Ko-Chiang (Graduate Institute of Building and Planning, National Taiwan University) and Yu Chao-Ching (Department of Landscape Architecture, Chung Yuan Christian University), alongside Mott MacDonald (a British consulting firm) and the Taiwanese Continental Engineering Corporation, proposed the Lo-Sheng 90% Preservation Project that sought to preserve 90% of the buildings and create open spaces and parkland for the community. In response, the DRTS softened its stance in response to public opinion and proposed a project that would preserve 41.6% of the site, even though this project would still require excavating most of Lo-Sheng and force residents to relocate. Although there remained an enormous difference between these parties’ preservation methods, the conflict between MRT construction and heritage preservation had lessened. However, before the deliberation between the public sector and civic groups had barely begun,
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the DRTS and the Taipei County Government proceeded with the 41.6% plan on 3 December 2008, and forcibly relocated Lo-Sheng residents. In the end, only 18 out of the original 62 buildings have remained (see Figure 4.3). One must also note that, since 2008, the government has been more proactive in preserving Lo-Sheng, albeit under pressure from civil society groups. For example, the Department of Cultural Affairs of the New Taipei City (formerly Taipei County) Government registered Lo-Sheng as a Historic Architecture and Cultural Landscape in 2009. Then, in 2012, the Xinzhuang Lo-Sheng Sanatorium Preservation Implementation Committee was established, and the Cultural Landscape Preservation Project was developed in September 2014 to serve as the basis for subsequent planning. The Ministry of Health and Welfare listed a budget of NT$170 million for the establishment of Lo-Sheng Culture Park (樂生文化園區), which covered the restoration of 62 buildings and the establishment of the Museum of Medical History of Hansen’s Disease.6 The park was planned as the Enjoy Living Settlement (樂生活聚落), a place for the original residents to live in, and will eventually be open to others as well. Overall, the building restoration and landscape construction are expected to be completed in 2022. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Culture (formerly the Council for Cultural Affairs) is proactively implementing the inscription of Lo-Sheng through the Negative Heritage Project by collecting the history of Hansen’s disease, gathering additional human rights data, and filming documentaries. In conclusion: the government has begun supporting the maintenance and preservation of Lo-Sheng. The competing interests of different parties, however, remain a challenge for the government. Without a specifically designated unit managing the entire project, the realities of coordinating the physical construction with cultural and historical research are uncoordinated and even chaotic. LoSheng remains a highly troublesome project for the government. In 2016, before the Lo-Sheng Culture Park project was approved, the construction of Lo-Sheng’s second overpass was also approved. This overpass connects the main medical building with Zhongzheng Road. However, the end of the overpass that reaches Zhongzheng Road is 10 metres above ground level, which means that access in and out of Lo-Sheng will require an elevator, hinder convenience, and compromise the original landscape. In response, Youth for Lo-Sheng held a panel with experts and proposed the Lo-Sheng Platform project, a gradual slope to connect Lo-Sheng, Zhongzheng Road, and the sanatorium’s original landscape (Figure 4.2, Right). However, the 6 Hansen’s Disease is the official scientific name for leprosy.
110 Liang-Yi Yen Figure 4.3 Top: The remaining Lo-Sheng campus in January 2007; middle: the LoSheng campus based on the 41.6% preservation proposal; bottom: the Lo-Sheng campus based on the 90% preservation proposal
Source: Adopted and modified from Yen (2013: 218-19)
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Figure 4.4 The second overpass
Source: Keng-Jung Chang
project ultimately failed because it would have required a reduction of the number of tracks and that the MRT depot and nearby areas be covered. The result was unsatisfactory for all: the entrance design for the overpass did not satisfy the residents, and the structure was abandoned, left hanging like a cliff at Zhongzheng Road (Figure 4.4). In 2020, seven years after the Xinzhuang Line to Huilong started operating, Lo-Sheng remained caught in limbo between different government policies. The remaining complex continues to stand alone, upon the top of its hill, slowly fading away along with its aging residents. The expedient government actions in response to social movements hindered the implementation of Lo-Sheng’s reconstruction plan. Lo-Sheng’s future unfortunately remains unclear. Activists for preserving Lo-Sheng and citizens concerned with cultural heritage and spatial justice must come together and decide how to approach the government and influence policies. Together, they must establish proper and effective discourse platforms, bringing the issue to a higher practical and conceptual level to differentiate Lo-Sheng from the preservation of other cultural heritage sites, and implementing the Enjoy Living Settlement project to advance the movement.
112 Liang-Yi Yen Table 4.2 Major events occurring during the Lo-Sheng Preservation Movement Dates
Events
August 1994
MRT Xinzhuang Line was approved, and the MRT depot would be located on the Lo-Sheng Sanatorium site. Establishment of the Lo-Sheng Alliance for Old Tree Protection Movement. The beginning of the construction work for the MRT depot. Establishment of Youth for Lo-Sheng and the beginning of the Lo-Sheng Preservation Movement. Vice President Lu visited Lo-Sheng. Youth for Lo-Sheng accused the Taiwanese government of violating the human right to healthcare at the World Health Organization (WHO) meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. Lo-Sheng residents who had been admitted during the Japanese colonial period won a lawsuit for compensation in Japan. Lo-Sheng was declared as an ‘interim heritage site’ by the government. The preservation campaign proposed Lo-Sheng 90% Preservation Project, while the DRTS proposed Lo-Sheng 41.6% Preservation Project. The 41.6%-preservation project was executed, and Lo-Sheng residents were forced to relocate. The government registered Lo-Sheng as a site of Historic Architecture and Cultural Landscape. MRT Xinzhuang Line commenced passenger service to the Lo-Sheng station. The Ministry of Health and Welfare listed a budget of NT$170 million to build the Lo-Sheng Culture Park and establish the Museum of Medical History of Hansen’s Disease. The Youth for Lo-Sheng proposed the Lo-Sheng Platform Project. The DRTS completed Lo-Sheng’s second overpass.
April 2002 June 2002 March 2004 26 January 2005 May 2005
6 June 2005 13 December 2005 2007
3 December 2008 9 September 2009 29 June 2013 September 2014
2016 February 2018
V. Conclusion: Civic Urbanism, Public Interest, and the Commons Using the Lo-Sheng Preservation Movement as a case study, I examined several interrelated topics in urban planning theories, including the multiplicity of public interests, the necessity of framing the public interest from a perspective of spatial justice, and the changing relationship between the state and civil society in the planning process in Taiwan. To be specific, I explored a plurality of urban discourses proposed by different groups with regard to the Lo-Sheng heritage site – each offering a unique definition of
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the public interest. Through the long-term advocacy of the preservation movement, in addition to the numerous struggles and negotiations between preservation activists and the state, a new discourse of regional redevelopment has emerged that considers the interests of the majority population and the disadvantaged groups. The powerful combination of these factors gradually shaped the political process surrounding Lo-Sheng. Although the result was far from being achieved, it’s fair to say that Lo-Sheng heritage activism has challenged the state policy and transformed the understanding of public interest regarding the future development of Lo-Sheng. There are two final points I would like to make. First, the public interest is not a matter of course or self-evident, but is constructed in the political process of planning. This political process requires ‘strong’ citizen engagement, which I argue refers to a sort of ‘social-movement-ization’ of the planning process. To a certain degree, this process resembles the social mobilization planning model that Friedmann proposed, which overthrew conventional planning practices involving top-down analysis and decisionmaking. However, to make this strategy feasible, it is necessary to build an analytic framework based on the principle of spatial justice. From here, it is possible to eliminate the parts that do not comply with the spatial justice principle while enhancing those that do, and in doing so creatively and collectively build and rebuild the urban commons in a fast-changing world. Secondly, in this new planning model government officials, experts, and scholars are no longer the only effective actors in the planning process. The preservation movement’s participants joined forces to create a new space that effectively empowered them to intervene in the decision-making process. Notably, student groups and Lo-Sheng residents have both grown considerably and become empowered in the process. Members of Youth for Lo-Sheng have moved beyond the boundaries of their own expertise (coming from different academic fields) and acquired practical knowledge about participating in real-world struggles. Of significant moral and social import, Lo-Sheng residents have been transformed from individuals who endure injustices into a stronger collective equipped with a solid identity; they have become proactive participants in public and political affairs – a true movement towards social justice and equality. Before the movement, with the combination of low self-esteem and isolation, most residents were primed to accept their fate and follow state policies. However, with the encouragement of the members of Youth for Lo-Sheng and other scholars, Lo-Sheng residents gained higher self-esteem and acquired the skill in public speaking. In the beginning, they often said: ‘We simply do not want to move. We are not willing to move. Tall buildings
114 Liang-Yi Yen Figure 4.5 The first petition march held by Lo-Sheng residents and Youth for LoSheng in December 2004. Four main requests (as shown on the banner hanging on the gate) were made in the petition: (1) securing civil rights for Lo-Sheng residents against forced evictions; (2) respecting professional reviews for historic site designation; (3) preserving the sanatorium onsite by integrating structures with the MRT; and (4) assembling a team for the project and pausing MRT construction
Source: Liang-Yi Yen
are not fit for us.’ Over time, they learned to make articulate arguments such as: ‘This is our heritage site, a World Heritage Site’; ‘The right to housing is our constitutional right, it is a fundamental human right’; and ‘a foreign medical report revealed that older adults who live in a building without natural airflow die earlier’ (Jhong, 2007: 97). Thus, Lo-Sheng residents have, as Fraser (1990: 67) wrote, ‘invent[ed] and circulate[d] counter-discourses to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs.’ Oppositional interpretations have been a crucial tool in fighting for power in the public sphere (Figure 4.5). Regarding students who participated in the movement, the membership of Youth for Lo-Sheng has a high turnover rate because of personal career plans. However, the organization itself remained dynamic. Youth for LoSheng was founded mostly by medical students. Later, students from urban
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planning, architecture, and social sciences comprised the majority of its membership. As the movement’s impact grew, members’ backgrounds also diversified (Jhong, 2007: 96). Additionally, many students who were members of Youth for Lo-Sheng participated in other environmental, community, and political movements. The movement produced a fresh generation of activists for the urban social movements in Taiwan. As one participant said, ‘Youth for Lo-Sheng was never an organized, regulated group. Anyone who cares about the issue of Lo-Sheng preservation can claim to be a member of Youth for Lo-Sheng. Therefore, anyone on the internet with the banner of justice criticizing the skeptics can also be a member of Youth for Lo-Sheng.’7 Indeed, in an atmosphere of political power struggles in Taiwan, upholding the idea of spatial justice makes the Lo-Sheng Preservation Movement a critical field for young adults with a keen sense of justice to achieve social justice and self-realization. In summary, the Lo-Sheng Preservation Movement vividly demonstrates how heritage activism can redefine what ‘public interest’ means and change the relationship between the state and civil society. Indeed, the movement was arguably a milestone in the progressive growth of civic urbanism in Taipei. To conclude, I would like to dedicate a song from the Lo-Sheng Preservation Movement to everyone concerned with Lo-Sheng:8 Excavators dig, dig, dig; they never stop digging. The MRT forced us to move and agitated our minds. Government officials violated human rights. Can you afford it? Can you afford it? We will take care of one another, support one another. We will go on fighting. To the streets, to Switzerland, to the presidential office. Won a lawsuit in Japan; our government is still passing the buck. Government officials violated human rights. Can you afford it? Can you afford it? We will take care of one another, support one another. We will go on fighting! 7 Youth for Lo-Sheng, 20 March 2007, http://minke33.blogspot.com/2007/03/blog-post_20. html, accessed 15 September 2020. 8 . This song is titled: Can You Afford It? The lyrics are written by Youth for Lo-Sheng, Blackhandnakasi, and Lo-Sheng residents, and the melody is arranged from Song of Lo-Sheng Sanatorium, which was composed during the Japanese colonial period. Can You Afford It? is included on the album, The Forgotten National Treasure, released by Youth for Lo-Sheng and Lo-Sheng Self-help Association, 25 December 2005.
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References Castells, Manuel. 1977. The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach. (Translated by Alan Sheridan). London: Edward Arnold. Cenzatti, Marco. 1987. ‘Marxism and Planning Theory’. In Planning in the Public Domain: From Knowledge to Action, edited by John Friedmann, 437–47. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Chen, Hsin-Yi (陳歆怡). 2006. Prison or Home? – A Research on Taiwan Leprosy Patients’ Segregation and Self-rehabilitation (監獄或家？－台灣痲瘋病患者 的隔離生涯與自我重建) (master’s thesis). The Graduate Institute of Sociology, National Tsing-Hua University (清華大學社會學研究所). [In Chinese] Davidoff, Paul. 1965. ‘Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning’. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 31(4): 331–338. Fraser, Nancy. 1990. ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy’. Social Text, 25/26: 56–80. Friedmann, John. 1987. Planning in the Public Domain: From Knowledge to Action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Harvey, David. 2003. ‘Social Justice, Postmodernism and the City’. In Design Cities: Critical Readings in Urban Design, edited by Alexander R. Cuthbert, 101–15. Malden: Blackwell. Harvey, David. 1978. ‘On Planning the Ideology of Planning’. In Planning Theory in the 1980s: A Search for Future Directions, edited by Robert W. Burchell & George Sternlieb, 213–34. Newark, NJ: Rutgers University Center for Urban Studies. Jhong, Sheng-Shong (鐘聖雄). 2007. The Home-Protecting Movement of Hansen’s Disease Patients in Taiwan (樂生願：漢生病患的家園保衛戰) (master’s thesis). The Graduate Institute of Journalism, National Taiwan University (台灣大學 新聞研究所). [In Chinese] Lee, Anru. 2007. ‘Subways as a Space of Cultural Intimacy: The Mass Rapid Transit system in Taipei, Taiwan’. The China Journal, 58: 31–55. Sandercock, Leonie. 1998. Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Soja, W. Edward. 2010. Seeking Spatial Justice. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Wu, Kang-Li (吳綱立). 1998. ‘Evolution of Planning Ideas and the Concept of Public Interest: Constructing a New Model of Planning to Achieve Public Interest’ (規 劃思潮與公共利益概念的演變—建構一個新的規劃典範來尋找公共利益). Man and Land (人與地) 179/180: 74–86. [In Chinese] Yao, Yao-Ting (姚耀婷). 2010. Rethinking Governmentality and Everyday Practices: The Boundary Work between Lo-Sheng Sanatorium and Hsin-Chuang City (重 思治理術與日常生活實踐：以樂生/新莊對立語境為例) (master’s thesis). The
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Department of Geography, National Taiwan University (台灣大學地理環境資 源學研究所). [In Chinese] Yen, Liang-Yi (顏亮一). 2013. ‘The Lo-sheng Story: Historic Preservation and Social Justice’ (古蹟保存與社會正義：樂生啟示錄). In City Remaking (反造城市), edited by Jeffrey Hou (侯志仁), 212–29. Taipei: Gauche Publishing House (台 北：左岸文化出版社). [In Chinese] Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
About the Author Liang-Yi Yen, PhD is Chair and Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Fu-Jen Catholic University in Taipei. His research interests include heritage preservation politics, cultural geography, community planning, and urban social movement. He is frequently and proactively engaged in multiple heritage preservation movements and anti-eviction movements in Taipei.
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Placemaking as Social Learning Taipei’s Open Green Programme as Pedagogical Civic Urbanism Jeffrey Hou Abstract This chapter examines the Open Green Programme in Taipei that provides funding support for community placemaking projects to spur communitybased urban regeneration. By involving multiple stakeholders including community organizers, volunteers, professionals, and government staff, the programme offers an opportunity to examine processes and mechanisms that facilitate social learning in community-based planning and placemaking. Through interviews with different stakeholders, including community participants, professionals, and government staff, this chapter explores the processes through which social learning and capacity-building have occurred. It further examines the ongoing issues and challenges facing the programme and reflects on the implications for the ongoing development of civic urbanism and urban governance in East Asia. Keywords: Social learning, placemaking, community engagement, civic urbanism, Taipei
Community planning and placemaking have been a bright spot of progressive planning practice in Taiwan in recent decades. The emergence of a community-engaged, participatory practice has paralleled the process of political liberalization in the country since the 1990s. The growing prominence of participatory practice and civic engagement in Taiwan was no small feat given the history of authoritarian rule and top-down planning, dating back to the colonial era under Japan when modern planning was first introduced. The transition from a long-standing, top-down model of urban governance to
Cho, Im Sik, Blaž Križnik and Jeffrey Hou (eds), Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia. Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei beyond Developmental Urbanization. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463728546_ch05
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one that supports community engagement begs the following questions: How do different actors and stakeholders, including those from the state and civil society organizations, learn to engage in a participatory planning process? How do planning professionals and government staff overcome persistent institutional and cultural barriers to engage the citizens? How do community stakeholders acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to participate meaningfully and effectively in the planning process? Furthermore, how do these learning processes contribute to the practice of civic engagement and the emergence of civic urbanism locally? This chapter explores what and how multiple actors and community stakeholders in Taipei have learned through collaborative placemaking processes. It examines how such learning may lead to a greater capacity for civic engagement in urban governance, distinct from the conventional, state-driven approach that characterizes the planning practice under the developmental state. As case-study research, the chapter examines more specifically the learning processes that have occurred through the Open Green Matching Fund Programme (打開綠生活) in Taipei launched in 2014 (Figure 5.1). Unlike typical urban regeneration approaches with a focus on large-scale urban redevelopment, the Open Green Programme provides funding for neighbourhood and community groups to undertake bottom-up, community-driven placemaking projects to improve local conditions and engage in community building. More than just monetary support, the programme also provides professional assistance for community groups in developing and implementing their projects. By involving multiple stakeholders, including community organizers, volunteers, professionals, and government staff, the programme offers an opportunity to examine specific processes and mechanisms that facilitate social learning in communitybased planning and placemaking. A substantial amount of literature on learning and urban planning already exists. However, there has not been an adequate focus on the role of specific actors as well as the design of initiatives and programmes that support learning. To advance this literature, this case study focuses on how the respective actors and stakeholders learn from and interact with each other, and how the capacity for engagement has been nurtured or facilitated through the programme. It further examines how issues or challenges have been overcome or have persisted, and what the implications are for the ongoing development of civic urbanism in Taiwan and East Asia. Through interviews with different stakeholders, including community participants, professionals, and city government staff, this study explores the specific processes through which learning has occurred, and how the outcomes
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Figure 5.1 Locations of Open Green project sites in Taipei
Source: Jeffrey Hou. Drawing by Hoilok Heather Lam. Map data © 2021 Google
may be linked to a greater capacity for collaboration among the different actors in the future. Fieldwork for this study was conducted intermittently from summer 2015 to late 2019, through targeted interviews with key government staff,
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professionals, and community stakeholders. Altogether, twenty-two individuals were interviewed.1 On-site observations through visits to fifteen sites have also been performed to gather additional data including how the sites have been used.2 The chapter begins with a review of the literature on learning and urban planning, followed by an introduction to community planning and placemaking in Taiwan and the case of the Open Green Programme. After a discussion of the findings, this chapter concludes with a few reflections on the opportunities and lessons for urban governance in East Asia.
Learning in Planning Learning has emerged as an important aspect of urban planning discourse in recent decades. Among the planning scholars, Friedmann (1981) was one of the first to present social learning as a critique of the predominant model of rational decision-making by so-called experts without regard to the complexity of social and political processes. Starting in the 1990s, Forester (1998, 1999) further documented how planners and mediators often learned in practice rather than just exercising their expertise. He argues that we must listen more insightfully to ‘the stories that planners tell and hear as they work with others’, and how ‘planners and policy analysts learn in practice about the fluid and conflictual, deeply political and always surprising world they are in’ (Forester, 1999: 22, 26). Accounts of planners and mediators, according to Forester (1998: 224), provide windows for understanding deliberative democratic practices – ‘the challenges of dealing with differences, the challenges of transforming diverse and plural voices into concerted democratic action.’ Practitioners are far from the only ones learning from planning practices and the processes of engagement. In the case of participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, Abers (1998) notes that as people participate in associational life, they also learn about collective decision-making. ‘[People] have to learn some basic democratic practices […] such as how to hold a meeting’, and gain ‘organizational skills that they might be able to use in other spaces 1 Altogether, three members of the city staff, eight professionals, nine community stakeholders (including project leads), and the staff of two non-profit organizations were interviewed for this study between 2015 and 2019. 2 The author served as an advisor to the programme on and off from 2011 to 2015, and continued to serve as a reviewer of citizen proposals. Participant observation also took place through participation in meetings, workshops, and community events.
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and in other contexts’ (Abers, 1998: 50-51). Furthermore, it was found that participants also learned to negotiate with the administration on highly technical issues. Through negotiations, they gain knowledge about ‘the government’s capacity to supply them with investments that fulfill those needs’ (Abers, 1998: 51). Additionally, Webler, et al. (1995, cited in Muro & Jeffrey, 2008) have argued that social learning allows the group in a participatory setting to transform from a collection of individuals pursuing private interests to a ‘community’ with a common purpose and shared interests. Among the different modes of learning, social learning, in particular, has emerged as a widely recognized framework in a variety of planning practices. Drawing from principles of participatory practice and theories of action research, for example, Percy-Smith (2006: 155) examines a dialogical ‘social learning’ model of participation in community health planning, seen as supporting young people’s participation in community development and local decision-making. The model focuses on ‘creating spaces for dialogue, interaction, and learning between groups as part of the participatory process’ to help mediate conflicts and differences (Percy-Smith, 2006: 155). Participation in this sense becomes not just a method of data collection but instead as learning and social action (O’Kane, 2000, cited in PercySmith, 2006). In the area of natural resource management and sustainable development, social learning has also emerged as a prominent and even normative framework (e.g., Pahl-Wostl & Hare, 2004; Muro & Jeffrey, 2008; Reed, et al., 2010; Albert, et al., 2012). Specifically, social learning has been recognized for contributing to co-management success (Koontz, 2014, citing Pinkerton, 1994; Borrini-Feyerabend, et al., 2000; Wondolleck & Yaffee, 2000) and as a way to address growing complexity and uncertainties (e.g., Koontz, 2014, citing Lee, 1993; Innes & Booher 2010; Pahl-Wostl, Mostert & Tàbara, 2008). Among the different definitions of social learning, Reed, et al. (2010: 2) suggest that a new school of social learning conceptualizes social learning as ‘a process of social change in which people learn from each other in ways that can benefit wide social-ecological systems’. Referencing social cognitive theory, Muro and Jeffrey (2008: 328) suggest that ‘[t]hrough engaging with each other, different perspectives are likely to adapt to each other, thus perhaps coalescing into shared or complementary perspectives’. Furthermore, ‘whereas classical social learning theory emphasizes behavioral changes, more recent theories of situated learning and cognition emphasize the generation of knowledge, and changes in beliefs and attitudes’ (Muro & Jeffrey, 2008: 328-329). In the context of collaboration
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and through deliberation, ‘stakeholders with different perspectives and information can learn from each other and develop a shared vision and plan for moving forward’ (Koontz, 2014: 1572). Beyond practitioners and invited participants in the planning process, learning also takes place within institutions and among state actors. Hall (1993: 289), for instance, argues that the state is ‘linked to the society by a flow of ideas between the two spheres’. It was further suggested that social learning may lead to changes in social networks and wider societal and institutional structures (Reed, et al., 2010). It is through the notion of social learning that the case of the Open Green Programme in Taipei becomes particularly significant, as the programme provides opportunities for state, professional, and civil society actors to engage with and learn from one another, and is itself an outcome of social learning among these actors. In examining the post-developmental transition among states in East Asia, cases like the Open Green Programme provide a window into how different actors and networks engage in deliberative experiments that produce new knowledge and shared experiences. As Abers (1998: 64) has argued in the case of Porto Alegre, ‘For citizen participation to be feasible, a great deal of support on the part of the state is necessary’. The case of the Open Green Programme shows precisely how state-sponsored programmes can overcome their bureaucratic tendency and limitations to support a learning environment through civic engagement and community placemaking.
Community Planning and Placemaking in Taipei Emerging alongside political liberalization in the late 20th century, the practice of community and urban planning in Taipei has been a part of the profound social transformation in Taiwan in recent decades. In the early 1990s, a social movement focusing on historic preservation was one of the first to influence the model of decision-making in urban planning. Specifically, heritage activists and volunteers were instrumental in promoting historic preservation through education programmes and public campaigns, leading to legislations that consider the protection of local, culturally significant properties. It also served as a precedent in which community organizing influenced planning outcomes. During a period of experimentation in cultural policies in the 1990s, the Community Empowerment Programme (社區總體營造) introduced by the Council for Cultural Affairs at the national level provided the impetus for the rapid expansion of community-based
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planning practices across the country.3 Many of these projects have focused on community building and local cultural and economic development, intending to transform ordinary people into actively engaged citizens and strengthen civil society in Taiwan (Chen, 2013). In Taipei, the District Environment Improvement Programme (地區環境 改造) was introduced by the City Government in 1996, under then-Mayor Chen Shui-Bian, and encouraged ordinary citizens, including those without professional training, to apply for grants to improve their neighbourhood environment (Huang, 2005). Since 1999, the City’s Department of Urban Development further developed a programme for training and certifying community planners to provide technical assistance in neighbourhood improvement (Lin, 2005). The Open Green Matching Fund programme represents the latest iteration in the evolution of community-based planning in Taipei, focusing on placemaking and community-centred urban regeneration. In Taipei, the difficulties of pursuing large-scale redevelopment coupled with relatively strong support for civic participation have led to several experiments in alternative approaches to urban regeneration. Open Green Matching Fund is one of such programmes introduced by the City’s Urban Regeneration Office (URO). Starting with a series of pilot projects focusing on the activation and transformation of both private and government-owned spaces for urban greening and community use, the programme was formally launched in 2014. Under the Open Green Programme, placemaking proposals from citizens and community organizations were solicited once a year. The submissions were evaluated by a committee of invited experts, practitioners, and government staff, based on a set of criteria, including (1) the creativity of the proposed project, (2) the making of a ‘new public space’, (3) the opening up of the community boundaries, (4) the loosening of the rigid uses of space, and (5) the laying down of the foundation for regenerative cycles. Unlike programmes administrated directly by government staff, the management of the Open Green Programme was contracted by the City to a professional firm with extensive knowledge and experience in community-engaged design. The firm organized the information meetings for the public, collected applications, and advised the project teams on selected projects on all aspects of the projects, including community engagement and even site design. They also helped with connecting project teams to resources 3 The policy was the brainchild of Dr. Chi-Nan Chen, an anthropologist who was appointed as the vice chair of the Council for Cultural Affairs from 1994 to 1997. He became the head of the Council in 2004.
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that may be relevant to a project. From 2014 to 2017, Collaborative O, a firm with extensive experience in community engagement, was contracted by the City to run the programme. During that period, the number of funded projects grew from 15 to 25 each year, located in different corners of the city, involving a wide variety of stakeholders, including activation of alleyways, vacant lands, and the making of trails and other neighbourhood amenities. Between 2014 and 2017, a total of 61 projects were completed throughout the city (URO, 2019). Unlike large-scale urban regeneration projects, the Open Green Programme presents an alternative approach that integrates public engagement, space activation, and community-driven placemaking. Rather than top-down decision-making, it represents a collaborative approach to urban improvement and regeneration. Furthermore, unlike previous community-based planning programmes in Taipei that considered communities as place-bound and provided funding only for community-based organizations, submissions to the Open Green Programme are open to anyone (Lien & Hou, 2019). To be eligible for funding, the applicants only had to obtain permission to use the property (for a minimum of five years) and demonstrate support from the community. Collaboration has been key to the programme as the planning and implementation of projects require participation by multiple stakeholders, including applicants, property owners, neighbours, interested citizens, civil society groups, and planning and design professionals. The collaboration provides learning opportunities for the City staff, professionals, and community members alike.
Learning through Open Green In the following, findings from the study are organized around the three initial questions, which set the stage for discussing specific processes and mechanisms for learning. Overcoming Persistent Institutional and Cultural Barriers to Engage the Citizens As a programme that provided learning opportunities, the Open Green Programme itself was also a product of learning. Specifically, it was the outcome of a series of events that began with the Taipei Floral Expo 2010 and the planning process that took place before the Expo. In 2009, as the host city for the Floral Expo, the Taipei City Government organized an initiative
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called Taipei Beautiful (台北好好看) to encourage property owners and developers to turn vacant properties into temporary green spaces through incentives of development bonuses. Through the initiative, property owners and developers would receive up to 10% more floor-area ratio in exchange for turning vacant properties into temporary green spaces for a minimum of eighteen months. The initiative was met with intense criticisms from several civil society groups who argued that incentives unfairly favoured private developers while adding to real estate speculation in a city where affordable housing was already a challenge. Citing the temporary and shortlived nature of these green spaces, ‘Fake parks’ became a rallying cry and criticism against the city government. As the agency in charge of the programme, URO staff who were receptive to the criticism sought to turn the critique into opportunities for experimentation in community-based regeneration. First, Collaborative O was hired to work with community stakeholders on a series of vacant properties along Roosevelt Road in the southern part of the city. The sites were highly visible because of their locations along a major thoroughfare. Two key issues became the focus of the project: creative uses of the temporary sites beyond just grass turfs, and the management and maintenance of these spaces following the design implementation. The solution was to engage a broad spectrum of civic actors, including non-profit organizations and local businesses, beyond the traditional participants such as local community leaders and neighbourhood managers (里長), with the hope that the process would broaden community ownership, seen as critical to subsequent maintenance and management.4 The pilot projects led to innovative outcomes including the making of a community garden (involving neighbours), a rainwater harvesting demonstration park (involving an environmental NGO), and a reading garden (involving local independent bookstores) (Figure 5.2). These positive results encouraged the URO staff and agency leaders to expand the experiment, which led to the establishment of the Open Green Programme in 2014. The growing placemaking discourse and initiatives around the world at the time lent further legitimacy and reassurance for the programme, and thus, acceptance by the agency director who gave the programme its name, Open Green.5 Among the URO staff, the approach of expanding the involvement 4 The neighbourhood manager (里長) (also translated as ‘neighbourhood chief’) is an elected position at the lowest level of city administration. Among their responsibilities, neighbourhood managers are charged with organizing neighbourhood improvements. 5 The term placemaking is used here to broadly include practices of creative placemaking (Markusen and Gadwa 2010; Zitcer 2020), tactical urbanism (Lydon and Garcia 2015), etc., with an emphasis on small-scale site improvements through community engagement.
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Figure 5.2 Rain Harvesting Park: An early pilot project in collaborative placemaking
Source: Jeffrey Hou
beyond the traditional actors in community planning also allowed them to better engage citizens and civil society members in the urban redevelopment process and bypass local politics that tended to be dominated by community and neighbourhood leaders (personal communication, 28 March 2019). In sum, the URO staff, together with the help of the professional team, learned from the process and turned the criticisms against the Taipei Beautiful initiative into an opportunity to reconsider how civic engagement is approached in local planning. Besides overcoming the institutional barriers, the successful involvement of additional actors seemed to have a positive impact on overcoming pre-existing biases as well. In particular, community stakeholders saw the benefit of broader engagement and collaboration, including greater levels of participation in the neighbourhood, as well as the skills and assets that the additional actors brought to the table. In the neighbourhood of Gufeng (古風), for example, where multiple Open Green projects have been implemented, including a community makerspace, the conversion of a dormitory residence into a community space, and the improvement of a back alley, these projects would not be possible without the support of volunteers outside the community. The outcome changed the perception of the neighbourhood manager in Gufeng towards community engagement.
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Figure 5.3 The White Hut involves users and volunteers both locally and from afar
Source: Jeffrey Hou
Specifically, she learned that non-residents had as much to contribute as the residents. In situations where neighbourhood resources are limited, the additional actors can bring additional assets, skills, and creativity to a project and contribute to its success. The case of Gufeng demonstrates how cultural barriers regarding community boundaries and community engagement can be overcome and how learning has played a role in overcoming the barrier. Acquiring the Skills and Knowledge to Participate in Planning and Placemaking In the case of Open Green, three distinct processes appear to be critical to how community stakeholders acquire skills and knowledge for a more meaningful engagement: First, as indicated above, by expanding the scope of involvement beyond the typical, limited set of actors in a given neighbourhood, the Open Green projects were able to engage and benefit from those with additional skills and knowledge outside the existing network. In the Gufeng neighbourhood, one of the best-known Open Green projects was the White Hut (小白屋) (Figure 5.3). Initially envisioned as a tool library, the influx of volunteers, particularly a recruited, retired engineer with extensive knowledge of repairing household appliances, expanded the operation and transformed the place into a community repair shop and makerspace. Rather
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Figure 5.4 Lane 344 – A project that led to expanding collaboration in the neighbourhood
Source: Jeffrey Hou
than providing just free repair service, the volunteers would teach residents and others in performing the repairs themselves. The interactions have built social bonds within and beyond the neighbourhood (Hou, 2017). The additional volunteers and participants also helped snowball the operation into other initiatives in the neighbourhood, including a community kitchen and workshop space, and the expansion of the White Hut itself into the adjacent property. Secondly, social learning in the Open Green projects is often facilitated through the work of the project itself. In the case of Lane 334, located next to a secondary school for girls in the Changwen neighbourhood (璋文里) in Taipei (Figure 5.4), the project involved the collaboration between a non-profit organization focusing on prevention of domestic violence, the neighbourhood manager Ms. Lin, secondary school teachers and students, residents, and a graphic design firm based in the neighbourhood. It was the first time these different actors worked with each other. The non-profit organization first suggested Ms. Lin to apply for the Open Green grant. Ms. Lin was then connected by Open Green staff to a graphic design firm located in the neighbourhood for design support. The graphic design firm
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in turn worked with the local secondary school students in developing the design. The finished design transformed a formerly dimly lit alley into a welcoming and safer space for the neighbourhood. The success led to further collaboration between the school, the design firm, and the neighbourhood, including a project that transformed planter boxes along the secondary school fences into community gardens and using the vegetables for cooking classes. The graphic design firm also assisted with the design classes in the school with students helping the local business with designing product packaging. Together, Ms. Lin, the graphic design firm, and the secondary school also co-organized a street market/festival showcasing the local businesses. Learning by doing was evident in my interview with Ms. Lin. ‘I always wanted to take a class on community planning but I never had time. [Open Green] allowed me to learn by doing. Every corner in the neighbourhood became a classroom for me. And there is so much homework!’ (personal communication, 19 December 2018). Thirdly, having an experienced professional firm manage the Open Green Programme played an important role in the social learning process. As mentioned previously, Collaborative O was hired not only to run the programme but also to provide technical assistance to the selected project teams and help with navigating the community and administrative process, especially when participants were less experienced. Firm staffs were also instrumental in connecting communities to available resources. For example, in a project located in the Mingshin neighbourhood (明興里), the neighbourhood manager learned from the staff about a more environmentally sustainable method of construction and has since become a strong advocate of the technique. In the Lane 334 case, Ms. Lin described the support she received from the staff as follows (personal communication, 19 December 2018): The assistance from Collaborative O was comprehensive, much better than public agencies. Public agencies typically only provide the funds and require you to deliver results. But Collaborative O would help identify resources that we did not know before […]. They are still in our social networking group and continue to stay involved even after the project was completed.
In addition to the professional firm, the communities also received specific input and suggestions from a committee of invited experts and practitioners who participated in reviewing applications, visiting sites, and inspecting the project outcomes.
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Figure 5.5 The original ParkUp site: from temporary open space to a design brand
Source: Jeffrey Hou
Building Capacity for Civic Engagement and Collaboration Greater capacity for civic engagement and collaboration is evident in many Open Green projects. Starting with the White Hut, additional projects have sprouted in the Gufeng neighbourhood and involved additional residents and volunteers, demonstrating enhanced capacity. The organizers of these projects have since been selected to run the city’s main community design service centre and to support the training of community planners in other cities. Taipei Umbrella, one of the early Open Green projects, is now in its second iteration and has produced various spin-offs. Starting with a makeshift installation, the organizers for the project received another Open Green grant and developed a more permanent design based on their observations on how the site was used by their neighbours. Specif ically, the new modular design took into account the need for the neighbours to dry blankets in an outdoor space on a sunny day (a particular need in Taipei where apartment units are small), and flexible uses for events and play (Figure 5.5). The group has branded their design as ParkUp and has implemented similar designs in two other locations in Taipei.
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Located in the Southeastern part of Taipei, the Songde Campus (松德 院區) of the Taipei City Hospital is the site of two Open Green projects. The hospital staff had a working relationship with Hsiliu Environmental Greening Foundation (錫瑠環境綠化基金會) that suggested to the hospital to apply for Open Green funds to activate and improve sites adjacent to the campus with a focus on mental health services. The projects, a seating area near the main entrance and a community garden on the hill, provided opportunities for the hospital staff to work with additional partners and stakeholders, including the local branch of the Community University (with expertise in urban gardening),6 the Taiwan Disability and Welfare Association (with an interest in horticultural therapy), and the adjacent neighbourhood. The engagement and interactions with the neighbours have eased the tensions between the neighbourhood and the mental health facility. The hospital staff have also learned more about the design of green spaces from the projects and have since improved other gardens and green spaces inside the hospital. As institutional actors, the URO staff have also learned from the process. Specifically, one staff mentioned that they learned to step back and allow the communities to find their own way through collaboration with other partners and stakeholders. ‘Government resource is not necessarily a good thing. We learned how to work with existing assets in the community rather than just providing government incentives’, said a URO staff member (personal communication, 3 July 2018). The importance of informal interactions was another lesson learned for the URO staff. Specifically, they learned about the importance of informal events and activities that allowed stakeholders, professionals, and even government staff to familiarize and connect with each other. Similarly, they found that informal communication is equally important between different departmental agencies. The approach of the Open Green Programme has recently been incorporated into other municipal programmes, including the activation of social housing spaces. Similar to the Open Green model, applications for the programme are open to the public, not just limited to residents. Also, initially separate from the community planning programme in the city, the Open Green model has been integrated into the training of community planners in Taipei. For the staff of Collaborative O, the Open Green Programme provided them with important learning opportunities as well. First, the programme allowed the team to experiment with new approaches to community placemaking. 6 Community University is a non-profit organization focusing on continued education and civic engagement in Taiwan. There are thirteen campuses in Taipei alone.
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At the time when Open Green was conceived, the concept of placemaking was still novel to the planning and design profession in Taiwan. The Open Green Programme, including the process leading to its establishment, allowed the team to develop methods and mechanisms through trial and error. Internally, by engaging and supporting the communities through the process, the projects provided the staff, many of whom were new to professional practice, with opportunities for learning and training. ‘[The staff] learned to work with different kinds of people, develop social relationships, respond to different scenarios’, said a senior member of staff (personal communication, 21 December 2018). Using their experiences and newly acquired networks and perspectives, the team has developed other similar projects, including ‘Way to Community’ (社區交往), a programme that facilitates learning and exchange between communities and professionals in Taipei with their counterparts in other cities in Taiwan and overseas.
Mechanisms of Social Learning What specific mechanisms allow social learning to occur in the Open Green Programme? It is clear that trial and error played an important role even before the inception of the programme. Without the missteps of the Taipei Beautiful initiative and the Roosevelt Green Dots pilot project developed afterwards, the Open Green Programme would not have emerged. The criticisms faced by the city during the Taipei Beautiful debacle provided a window of opportunity for the experimentation. The pilot projects that followed suit brought additional learning opportunities. At the scale of individual projects, the Open Green projects themselves also provided opportunities for participants to collaborate, acquire new skills and knowledge, and develop social networks. With lessons learned from a given project, community stakeholders could apply for additional grants to improve upon the previous design, as in the case of ParkUp, or develop additional projects, as in the case of the White Hut, whose operation has expanded to multiple sites in the neighbourhood. Expanded involvement by a broader range of actors and stakeholders serves as the next level of mechanisms for social learning. By opening the programme to anyone rather than only to community members, the Open Green Programme enabled a broader range of actors to get involved. The projects were often the first time that different actors and stakeholders got to work together. Through the interactions that unfolded during a project, the participants were exposed to different perspectives, developed new
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understanding, formed new relationships, and expanded their networks and knowledge. They also learned to collaborate and overcome differences, as well as social and institutional barriers. In the case of the White Hut, the neighbourhood manager learned to appreciate the contributions of non-local volunteers. It was also a place where the locals acquired new skills in repairs through the help of the volunteers, and where the organizers learned about community engagement and expanded their practices elsewhere in the city and outside Taipei. Beyond the individual projects, the Open Green Programme itself also facilitated collaboration between the URO staff and the professional team in which the city staff learned to step back and learn new roles. Lastly, it is important to recognize the roles of intermediaries in facilitating learning. In the Open Green Programme, the professional firm Collaborative O played a critical role in facilitating the learning process for community stakeholders. They did so through both direct advising and connecting stakeholders with additional partners and resources. In the case of Lane 334, for instance, Collaborative O staff connected the neighbourhood manager with the graphic design firm that in turn got connected to the secondary school. The new relationships opened up further collaboration. Finally, the Open Green Programme has served as a vehicle for training new intermediaries. The organizers of the White Hut, for instance, have taken on the role of facilitating the learning process in several other neighbourhoods and cities in Northern Taiwan. The mechanisms and outcomes as discussed above correspond with those identified in the literature on social learning in many ways. Specifically, we see how social learning in the Open Green Programme has contributed to co-management success at both the project and programme levels (Koontz, 2014, citing Pinkerton, 1994; Borrini-Feyerabend, et al., 2000; Wondolleck & Yaffee, 2000). The learning process has helped address growing complexities and uncertainties in scenarios with multiple stakeholders (e.g., Koontz, 2014, citing Lee, 1993; Innes & Booher, 2010; Pahl-Wostl, Mostert & Tabara, 2008). It’s also evident that at least in the cases presented here, social learning in the Open Green Programme has led to changes in social networks and wider societal and institutional structures through new partnerships and programmes now adopted in several cities beyond Taipei (Reed, et al., 2010). Furthermore, as seen in the case of the Gufeng neighbourhood, social learning has brought a ‘generation of knowledge, and changes in beliefs and attitudes’ through a new appreciation of outside volunteers in neighbourhood initiatives, among other interactions and experiences (Muro & Jeffrey, 2008: 328-329).
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Issues and Challenges Despite these positive outcomes, like most municipal programmes, Open Green is not immune to issues and challenges. Two specific challenges stood out from this study. The first was a growing disconnect between URO and the community process, an unintended consequence of contracting a professional team in running the programme. With an outside team responsible for running the programme, the administrative procedure was drastically simplified, which in turn provided much-needed flexibility for projects, particularly on how funds could be spent and how accounting and reporting are done. The arrangement lessened the degree to which the communities had to deal with paperwork and bureaucracy. Also, instead of dealing with government staff who may not have direct experience on the ground, communities worked directly with experienced professionals from Collaborative O. At the same time, URO, with its limited staff, could focus on other administrative matters, including coordination and negotiation with other agencies. Furthermore, the arrangement also buffered the URO staff from having to deal with complex and sometimes contentious community processes. However, while this arrangement seemed to have benefited the communities and the URO staff alike, an important downside has emerged: With its distance and detachment from the frontline, the URO staff often do not have a full understanding of the community process or even the history of the programme itself. ‘Our learning has been more indirect […] filtered through the professional team’, said a URO staff (personal communication, 3 July 2018). ‘We have actually done a lot. But we are less visible. The communities tend to have a stronger and more intimate relationship with the professional team’, said a senior staff member (personal communication, 21 December 2018). Because of the different degrees of engagement, there have been tensions between URO staff and Collaborative O about the direction of the programme. For example, URO would like to see a more structured approach, including maintenance requirements for communities to fulfil, whereas the professional team would like to have the flexibility for a more organic way of community engagement and development of ownership. In 2018, Collaborative O decided not to renew their contract with URO, who in turn decided to pause the programme for one year to step back and recalibrate. In 2019, the programme was relaunched as Open Green 2.0., with a new team of professionals that included those who participated in previous projects. The renewed programme was given a stronger focus
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on subsequent maintenance and management, as well as on learning and training the community participants. In retrospect, Open Green represented a step forward in resolving a perennial issue in community planning in Taiwan – the barrier for community capacity-building and dependency on government support. Ironically, the municipal agency has now become dependent on support from professionals. Additionally, as a government initiative, the Open Green Programme is not completely detached from the process internal to the City Hall, including changes in staff and administrative leadership. As the support from agency leaders typically translates into support for the programme, the actual policy and practices are potentially subject to changes with the agency leadership. A high staff turnover presents yet another problem, especially when knowledge and experience are not passed down from staff to staff. Similar to the URO, there has also been attrition on the staff of the professional team. As Open Green becomes more established and more routinized, some of the Collaborative O staff have become less motivated. Another challenge for Open Green is the uneven degree of capacitybuilding and community ownership across different sites and different projects. In some projects, even when projects have been completed, the actual community capacity and the sense of community ownership may remain weak. In the historical Dachiao (大橋) neighbourhood, for example, the funded projects have been completed. But it was done mostly through the effort of a university-aff iliated, community-based design studio led by a university faculty. The overall community capacity remained limited according to those who were involved. As such, although the projects were successful and well used immediately after their completion, over time they became poorly maintained and managed. Also, a neighbourhood organizer commented that funds from Open Green were too modest, relative to the effort needed for implementation. The neighbourhood and the studio ended up spending more money than they received from the government. In a way, the project has ironically weakened the neighbourhood organizers’ capacity in carrying out future work. Lastly, measuring programme success presents yet another issue. The Open Green Programme was subject to evaluation by the Central Government that provided funding support. But because the evaluation criteria do not include community capacity, the programme has constantly received low scores. More recently, URO has decided to use other sources of funding to support the Open Green Programme.
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Conclusions and Reflections: A Pedagogical Model of Urban Governance Although Taipei’s Open Green Programme was launched in 2014, the process that led to its development began as early as 2009. The decade-long evolution provides rich materials for examining its outcomes, including successes and challenges. Given the total of 61 projects (and growing) throughout the city, this limited study presents more a snapshot of the entire programme than a comprehensive analysis. It’s important to note that some projects are more successful than others. Nevertheless, the evidence for learning and capacity-building is abundantly clear in terms of specific mechanisms and outcomes. They include opportunities for trial and error, as well as the involvement of a wider range of actors beyond bounded communities. With greater participation by a broader range of actors and stakeholders, project participants benefited from diverse perspectives and knowledge, greater assets and resources available to a community, and opportunities for collaboration. Furthermore, the programme provided opportunities for learning not just for community stakeholders, but also for agency staff and members of the professional f irm. Despite the ongoing issues and challenges, it is clear that the participants in the programme, including community stakeholders, agency staff, and professionals, have developed a greater capacity in civic engagement and collaboration. The case of the Open Green Programme in Taipei is significant in the context of changing urban governance in East Asia that includes evolving roles of state and civil society actors. As citizens demand greater accountability from local governments, as well as opportunities for participation in decision-making, municipalities need to develop more responsive and effective ways of engaging citizens and communities. But rather than treating citizens and communities as clients on the receiving end of services, municipal programmes need to step back and allow civil society actors to take on a more active and engaged role and to mobilize their assets including skills and expertise. City staff and professionals alike need to work with community stakeholders as partners, which requires learning and capacity-building on their part as well. Initiatives like the Open Green Programme in Taipei provided important opportunities for different actors to work together, learn from each other, understand different perspectives, and acquire the knowledge and experience necessary for a more participatory and collaborative kind of urban governance. By focusing on social learning, this pedagogical model of governance suggests an important pathway for emerging civic urbanisms in East Asia.
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Rather than a precondition or an outcome, social learning must be built into and become embedded in community planning and design practices. In other words, by treating urban governance and planning and design practices as vehicles of learning, they can serve as a form of empowerment and capacity building. The concept of civic urbanism suggests the capacity of communities and citizens to engage in urban governance on their own terms and as partners with state institutions. The capacity and partnership require knowledge, experience, the sharing and exchange of perspectives, and the building of trust and working relationships. A pedagogical model of urban governance is therefore critical to the emerging civic urbanisms in Asia and beyond.
Acknowledgments This study was supported by a grant from Global Taiwan Institute (2018-2019). Earlier fieldwork in Taipei in 2015 was supported by a Fulbright scholarship from Fulbright Taiwan. The author wishes to thank all those who were interviewed for this study and provided their insights.
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About the Author Jeffrey Hou is Professor of Landscape Architecture and director of the Urban Commons Lab at the University of Washington, Seattle. His work focuses on public space, democracy, community design, and civic engagement. His publications include City Unsilenced: Urban Resistance and Public Space in the Age of Shrinking Democracy (2017).
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Hong Kong’s Urban Renewal Fund A Step towards Citizen-driven Placemaking? Melissa Cate Christ and Hendrik Tieben Abstract This chapter investigates the relationship between Hong Kong’s Urban Renewal Fund (URF) and citizen-driven placemaking (CDP). The URF was launched in 2011, in response to growing public concern about projects undertaken by Hong Kong’s Urban Renewal Authority (URA). After discussing the evolving relationship of civil society to redevelopment and the background of the URF, the chapter presents three funded projects that utilize CDP approaches. The chapter examines the institutional frameworks and actors, and the achievements and limitations of CDP in the context of this state-sponsored programme. It also addresses prevailing contradictions between the small-scale, citizen-driven projects supported by the URF, and the large-scale redevelopment projects undertaken by the URA, as well as their implications for future civic urbanism in Hong Kong. Keywords: Hong Kong, Citizen-Driven Placemaking, Community Building, Public Space
Introduction: Hong Kong’s Economic-oriented Urban (Re)development in Crisis and Civil Society’s Response Initially gaining renown as an entrepôt (1840s-1940s) and manufacturing hub (1950s-1970s), Hong Kong is known today as a global financial centre, albeit with an increasingly complicated sociopolitical situation. While this historically technocratic economic orientation has led to an impressive growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and transformed the city into a modern metropolis, it has also been accompanied by cycles of economic
Cho, Im Sik, Blaž Križnik and Jeffrey Hou (eds), Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia. Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei beyond Developmental Urbanization. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463728546_ch06
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boom and bust, and the demolition and redevelopment of its older urban areas. Following the Asian Financial Crisis and handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1997, the newly formed Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government undertook a series of urban renewal actions in preparation for its 2047 integration with Mainland China. These perpetuate the land (re)development regime which is the backbone of the city’s economic prosperity (Tang, 2016; Tang, Lee, and Ng, 2011). Promoted as necessary for continuing economic development, these actions were developed with minimal public engagement beyond that of designated professionals and elites (Tang, Lee, and Ng, 2011), triggering citizen protests and the formation of organized ‘concern groups’. Key examples include: plans for large-scale land reclamation in Victoria Harbour in 1994; the demolition of the Star Ferry Pier and Queen’s Pier in 2006; and projects initiated by the government’s official (re)development arm, the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) for Lee Tung Street in 2004 and the Blue House cluster in 2006 in the Wan Chai district (Xia, 2010; Ku, 2012; Ng, 2008; Ng, 2018). After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis reached Hong Kong, civil society groups expanded their interest in public space issues. Citizen concern groups (formed by residents, and sometimes formalized into societies or charities), urban scholars, non-profit and private sector organizations, and students addressed issues such as: privatization; ‘unfriendly’, inequitable, and inaccessible public open spaces; the lack of coherent street management policies; continuing issues concerning heritage conservation; and a generally unhealthy urban environment (Lai, 2017; HKPSI, 2020; Chen and Szeto, 2017). This increased interest coincided with global protest movements, such as the 2011 ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement occupying New York City’s Zuccotti Park. Hong Kong’s own iteration of the international Occupy Movement, ‘Occupy Central’, occupied the HSBC headquarters’ plaza (11 September to 15 October 2012). The 2014 Umbrella Movement (UM) (26 September to 15 December 2014) transformed main vehicular thoroughfares in Admiralty, Causeway Bay, and Mong Kok into places of social gathering, political action, and citizen-driven placemaking (Normoyle and Cotter, 2016; Chen and Szeto, 2017). Demanding ‘true universal suffrage’ for Hong Kong’s Chief Executive elections (Yeung, 2014), the UM developed a range of tactical urbanism approaches for public space occupation and use (Bertollini, 2015). The emergence of these movements and approaches in Hong Kong, such as placemaking and tactical urbanism, can be understood as a type of
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civic urbanism, where citizens are actively engaged in shaping their own urban environment (Cho, Križnik, and Hou, this volume). The citizens’ desire to participate in determining the future of their city, paired with the government’s desire to quell protest actions, led the HKSAR to develop policies, agencies, and granting programmes. This chapter presents one of these programmes, the Urban Renewal Fund (URF), to ask how and whether this government programme is successful in enabling civic urbanism in the face of the continuing land redevelopment regime, or whether the programme instead co-opted community building, while appearing to support it. The chapter is organized into five parts. It begins with a discussion of its underlying theoretical framework, locates the study in Hong Kong’s specific urban renewal context and recent history of citizen involvement in urban planning, and traces how the URF programme was born. Then, three URF projects are discussed that aim to increase citizen engagement, community building, and placemaking in two urban areas redeveloped by the URA: the projects House of Stories and Community Dining Room in To Kwa Wan; and Magic Lanes in Sai Ying Pun. The chapter reviews the background of each project’s district, its relationship to URA projects, the actors and teams involved, and the major missions and activities of each project. The next section evaluates the cases, presenting lessons learned for more effective and inclusive placemaking practices. The paper concludes by addressing the dilemmas Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) face with respect to these state-initiated projects and using government funding for their work, and their contribution to the development of civic urbanism within Hong Kong. These issues became particularly pressing in the two years in which this chapter was produced, due to the social unrest of 2019-20, the COVID-19 pandemic, the pro-democracy success in the 2019 District Council elections, and the implementation of the National Security Law on 1 July 2020.1 Research methods include interviews, participatory observation, and analysis of relevant publications and reports. Interviews with project organizers and participants, as well as representatives of the URF, took place from May 2018 to October 2020. Also, it should be mentioned that one of the authors was a co-initiator of the URF project Magic Lanes, and both authors served on that project’s advisory board.
1 The implications of the National Security Law are beyond the scope of this chapter. See Kirby (2020) for a summary.
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Hong Kong’s Redevelopment Regime, Citizen-driven Placemaking, and the State Hong Kong’s Redevelopment Regime and Its Impact on Civil Society According to Tang (2017: 495), a combination of historical and geographical factors in Hong Kong have ‘produced the spatial consensus that the “urban areas” should be redeveloped, perpetuat[ing] the land (re)development regime’. The government represents older urban areas, or ‘pockets of decay’ (Ibid.: 495), as needing to be redeveloped to increase prosperity for all, although for many residents, these areas have long-established sociocultural networks and traditional services that define their lives and livelihoods. Added to this, HKSAR’s self-declaration as ‘Asia’s World City’, with the most modern and extensive conveniences, is promoted in marketing, advertising, and TV, but is experienced by only a fraction of residents, and certainly not by those 20.4% (pre-intervention, 2018 data) living below the poverty-line (HKSAR, 2020). It is argued by Tang (2016) that this disconnect, between how the government represents the city and residents’ lived experience of its spaces, creates an isotopia. This isotopia is one in which ‘redevelopment has, in fact, produced a built environment that alienates people, degrading the whole society, not least the displaced population’ (Tang, 2017: 487). Tang terms this socio-spatial displacement and alienation ‘hegemonic-cum-alienated redevelopment’, as opposed to gentrification, a concept that has also been interrogated for its contextual applicability by a number of other scholars (Cartier, 2017; Lui, 2017; Maloutas, 2012; Smart and Smart, 2017). Tang (2017: 487) sees ‘hegemonic-cum-alienated redevelopment’ as more nuanced and specific to Hong Kong’s ‘interrelated processes of land and property development … [where] displacement involves land relations and property processes that cut across rigid economistic class distinctions’ rather than the relatively straightforward economic displacement ‘of the working class by the gentry’ described by gentrification. From POPS towards Citizen-driven Placemaking This isotopic disconnect and the concept of hegemonic-cum-alienated redevelopment can be understood as underlying the citizen movements (Cho, Križnik, and Hou, this volume). It can also be extended to understand residents’ dissatisfaction and disempowerment concerning small-scale issues such as open space, wet market or streetscape redevelopment – situations where urban renewal and public space are intertwined.
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For instance, in Hong Kong, urban renewal projects often replace older, individually owned buildings, traditional street markets, and community spaces with large-scale Comprehensive Development Areas (CDAs), usually with blank street frontages perforated only by exclusive private entry lobbies (Tieben, Woo, and Yuet, 2008). In an attempt to compensate for the loss of traditional public open spaces, these large-scale developments provide newly created ‘privately owned public spaces’ (POPS). These POPS – or as they are technically known as in Hong Kong, ‘Public Open Space in Private Developments’ (POSPD) – are encouraged by the government through a plot-ratio bonus system. In this system, when private developers redevelop a group of consolidated lots, they create new open spaces and take on the associated construction costs and management responsibilities (Cuthbert and McKinnell, 1997). Similar to the first generations of POPS in New York (until the Amendments of the Open Space Zoning Provisions in 1975 [Fitzpatrick, 2010]), these spaces are often mere circulation corridors without further amenities. Their lack of seating and strict management rules tend to hinder social interaction (HKPSI, 2018). An additional reason for their low level of use is the lack of adequate public engagement in their planning processes. As in many urban renewal projects, these processes stay at a low rung on Arnstein’s eight-step ladder of citizen participation. These steps, from non-participation (steps 1-2), to tokenism (steps 3-5), to citizen control (steps 6-8) ‘help to illustrate the point that so many have missed – that there are significant gradations of citizen participation’ (Arnstein, 1969: 217). This is also often true with respect to public open spaces designed by the HKSAR and maintained by Hong Kong’s Leisure and Culture Service Department (LCSD): the public is usually only consulted (step 4), rather than being considered as a partner (step 6). As a result, many of these spaces are not seen as desirable places, as they fail to reflect the needs of the community. In addition, they are often spatially disconnected from their surroundings due to fences or walls. It can be seen, how even at the micro-scale, the lack of participation in shaping the urban environment is a common condition in Hong Kong. This has become increasingly frustrating for residents, resulting in increasing numbers of citizen movements, concern groups, and initiatives. In tandem with the growing critique of public spaces provided by the government and private developers and the lack of productive community engagement, the term ‘placemaking’ began to appear in recent initiatives of Hong Kong’s civic society groups. Placemaking can be understood as ‘a multifaceted approach to the planning, design and management of public space for improving urban environments and residents’ quality of life’ (Sofield, Guia, and Specht, 2017: 1) and as ‘a socio-political and geo-specific community
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engagement process where the value and meaning of a setting are used as a platform to achieve positive public space related outcomes’ (Beza and Hernández-Garcia, 2018: 193). The ethos and background of placemaking is often traced to critiques of top-down planning practices by activists and theorists such as Jane Jacobs (1961), Lynda Schneekloth, and John Friedman (Røe, 2014). The Public Space Project initiated by William H. Whyte began to consistently use ‘placemaking’ in the mid-1990s to describe their method of creating sustainable urban environments (Project for Public Spaces, 2007). Adoption of placemaking methods by tactical urbanism, also known as Do it Yourself (DIY) urbanism, became a strategy for testing temporary changes to public spaces, particularly after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Since then, tactical urbanism, as coined by Mike Lydon and formalized by the Congress for New Urbanism Next Generation (CNU NextGen) and the Street Plans Collaborative amongst others (Lydon and Garcia, 2015), has become an international movement whose temporary placemaking methods have led to formalized policies and permanent changes, such as the Pavement to Parks programmes in San Francisco, New York City, and Seattle. Compared with ‘megaprojects’, placemaking ‘[o]ccurs on a smaller scale […] targeting specific social or economic issues of concrete urban areas in a timelier manner, with greater flexibility and less resources required’ (Pak, 2018: 4). A further refinement, ‘citizen-driven placemaking’ (CDP), was specified by Normoyle and Cotter to distinguish ‘agency-driven’ or ‘citizen inclusive’ public spaces created by governments and private developers from CDP as ‘an unauthorized hack by local citizens to enhance or fix something’ (Normoyle and Cotter, 2016: 41). The goals of CDP are ‘identified by citizens’ action to develop, redefine, transform and/or rebuild their environment to create a stronger sense of place’ (Normoyle and Cotter, 2016: 46) and are therefore more closely aligned to the bottom-up ethos of tactical urbanism. These strategies and tactics started to be adopted in the early 2010s by Hong Kong’s civil society in the face of decades of top-down urban renewal and redevelopment processes. Urban Renewal, Citizen Involvement, and Placemaking in the Context of Hong Kong Real estate development has been the primary wealth accumulation mechanism in Hong Kong. To facilitate this, colonial and HKSAR socio-spatial narratives perpetuate a myth of land scarcity, and therefore, the necessity of continuing (re)development in order to improve the economic situation of residents, their housing, and overall quality of life (Lee and Tang, 2017). These
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actions are advertised as being undertaken for the people of Hong Kong, but predominantly benefit the wealthiest (Lee and Tang, 2017), contributing to the rise of social polarization, evident in the increase of Hong Kong’s Gini coefficient from 0.45 in 1986 to 0.539 in 2016 (HKCSS, 2018). After a century of land creation through reclamation and land development through private sector investment, New Town development, and housing projects (in collaboration with a limited number of land-holding private developers) began in the 1960s to accommodate the increasing PRC migrant population and address sociopolitical concerns raised in the 1966-67 Riots. The focus was primarily on new developments but changed in the 1980s when older urban areas came to the government’s attention as the colony prepared for its return to the PRC. In 1987, the Land Development Corporation (LDC) was founded to implement large-scale urban renewal projects mainly in the Central and Western and Wan Chai districts adjacent to the fast-growing financial centre. However, implementation of these projects stagnated due to complicated ownership relationships and costly and time-consuming compensation negotiations with existing residents. To speed-up the process, the LDC was transformed into the URA in 2001. It was given more legal authority to resume properties and implement redevelopment projects (Tang, 2017). However, the first projects, such as the redevelopment of a cluster of wedding card and related businesses along Lee Tung Street in Wan Chai, met resistance. In response to the URA proposal, the community developed an alternative scheme with the help of NGOs and professionals. This was the first time such a project was elaborated and submitted to the Town Planning Board by a citizen group in Hong Kong (Xia and Chan, 2014). Although the demolition of the area eventually went ahead, this initiative became a model for later citizen campaigns (Chan, 2015), such as the one mentioned in the Introduction of this book, that saved the Blue House cluster, a historic tenement building in Wan Chai which became a rare success story even as many other parts of the district were redeveloped. With these initiatives, the government, private sector, and civil society engaged in and tested new forms of negotiation (Douay, 2010). State Involvement: From Urban Renewal Strategy Review to Urban Renewal Fund Faced with the charged economic and political climate of the Global Financial Crisis and the protests against the demolition of Star Ferry Pier, Queens Pier, and Lee Tung Street, Hong Kong’s Development Bureau
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(DevB) acknowledged that ‘if these challenges are not properly handled, they would not only continue to impede the urban renewal progress, but also give rise to perennial social tension’ (DevB, 2010: 2). DevB identified ‘an imbalance in its 4R business strategy (i.e. Redevelopment, Rehabilitation, Revitalization, and Reservation) with too much emphasis on redevelopment’ (DevB, 2010). In response, DevB commissioned an Urban Renewal Strategy Review (URSR) in 2008 to answer the following questions: ‘How should we take forward urban renewal work in Hong Kong? What should be the role of the URA? How should affected districts and residents be effectively involved in the process?’ (Lam, 2008). Following the URSR and a two-year public consultation process, a new Urban Renewal Strategy was published, ostensibly ‘to introduce a people f irst, district-based, and public participatory approach to urban renewal’ (URF, 2020: 4). Main new policy measures of the Strategy included: (1) a District Urban Renewal Forum (DURF), with Kowloon City as f irst pilot study area; (2) the requirement for Social-impact Assessments for urban renewal projects at the inception stage of the redevelopment project, with a two-stage assessment conducted in 2012-2013 and an Executive Summary announced in June 2014 as part of the DURF; and (3) the launch of the URF.
Aims of the Urban Renewal Fund and Example Cases As one of the three key outcomes of the URSR, the URF was created to address preservation and revitalization within communities affected by URA redevelopments (Interview Joseph Wong, URF, 2019). To this end, the URF board was set up ‘to act as the trustee and settlor of the [HK$500 million endowed by the URA] Trust Fund’ (URF, 2020). However, although the board is composed of ‘a wide cross-section of the community’, it also includes members from DevB and the URA (URF, 2020), bringing into question its independence to ‘[d]evelop and review the application frameworks for the various programmes under the selection of applications’ as well as ‘[m] onitor and assess the performance of the successful applications’ (URF, 2020). The URF includes four parts (Table 6.1): 1) Urban Renewal Social Service Teams (URSST); 2) District Urban Renewal Forum Activities; 3) Urban Renewal Heritage Preservation and District Revitalization Funding Scheme (hereafter Funding Scheme); and the 4) Development of Kowloon City Themed Walking Trail (URF, 2020). This chapter is primarily concerned with the Funding Scheme.
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Table 6.1 Structure of Urban Renewal Fund URF Projects
Purpose
Urban Renewal Social To provide assistance to residents Service Teams (SST) affected by redevelopment projects implemented by the URA. To formulate and submit an Urban District Urban Renewal Plan for Kowloon City to Renewal Forum the Government, and undertake (DURF) Activities planning studies, social impact assessments, and a series of public engagement activities. To enable Urban Renewal Funding Scheme Heritage Preservation and District (First, second and Revitalization projects proposed by third rounds) stakeholders. To support heritage preservation Development and district revitalization initiatives of Kowloon City Themed Walking Trail in the context of urban renewal.
Additional notes
Approved Budget (HK$)
No relationship NA to public space Top-down
Around 4,870,000 (most recent data is from 2012) Approx. 82,180,000 (as of 2018)
Managed by a Around 79,000,000 religious NGO in Kowloon City
Source: Urban Renewal Fund, 2020
The Funding Scheme aims to enable community empowerment projects and to give civil actors, especially social service agencies (SSA), the ability to engage with the process of urban renewal. Of the thirteen projects funded in three rounds since 2012,2 one addresses urban renewal education, five address cultural preservation and community engagement, two (actually two phases of one project) are related to cultural preservation and place branding, and five propose placemaking beyond cultural preservation. Three of the five Funding Scheme projects that address cultural preservation and community engagement were selected because of their contribution to citizen-driven placemaking efforts (Normoyle and Cotter, 2016): (1a) The House of Stories (First round Funding Scheme) and (1b) the Community Dining Room (Third round Funding Scheme) both in To Kwa Wan and led by St James Settlement; and (2) Magic Lanes (Third round Funding Scheme) in Sai Ying Pun, led by Caritas MCSK Centre. These projects are also well suited for comparison as they are all in older areas under development pressure due to the construction of new Mass Transit Railway (MTR) lines and URA projects. 2 Three projects were funded in 2019 in the 4th round and the 5th round had its deadline in May 2020, but the selected projects had not yet been announced at the time of writing. These projects are not included in this chapter.
152 Melissa Cate Christ and Hendrik Tieben Figure 6.1 Locations of Funding Scheme projects (2012-2015, 2015-2018, and after 2018) and the URA projects (gazetted before 2012, 2012-2015, and 20152019)
Source: Hendrik Tieben. Drawing by Hoilok Heather Lam. Map data 2021 © Google
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To Kwa Wan House of Stories (2014-16) and Community Dining Room (2017-present) To Kwa Wan is a sub-district of Kowloon City that is located near Kai Tak, the site of Hong Kong’s old international airport until it closed in 1998. To Kwa Wan’s history reaches back to the time before British colonization, with relics dating back to the Song Dynasty. Since the early twentieth century, the area has housed a mixture of commercial, industrial, and residential uses, with residents mainly working in blue-collar industries and airport-related jobs (until 1998). Many residents are migrants from Mainland China, Southeast Asia, and Africa. With the completion of the MTR Tuen Ma Line in 2021, the area is now closely connected to the commercial centre in Tsim Sha Tsui, attracting the attention of private developers and the URA. To Kwa Wan was one of the areas included in the Kowloon District Urban Renewal Forum (DURF) as a test area for the government’s new ‘people centred urban renewal approach’. When social workers from St. James’ Settlement saw the ‘preliminary Scheme for Renewal of Kowloon Urban Area’ (Kowloon City DURF, 2014: 4), they started to fear similar effects to those seen in Wan Chai (Interview Ng Tze On, St. James’ Settlement, 2020). Before 2001, the Christian charity St. James’ Settlement mainly provided community support and residential care (St. James Settlement, 2015). In tandem with the first URA projects announced in 2001, it began supporting affected communities and reached out to academics, architects, and planners (St. James Settlement, 2006-2007). From 2006 to 2007, the charity invited diverse groups of people to help save the Blue House cluster which is located near its Wan Chai Integrated Family Service Centre. In collaboration with other groups such as the Heritage Hong Kong Foundation and Community Cultural Concern group, they organized workshops in dialogue with different government departments. Both the involvement in the Blue House project and the efforts to save Lee Tung Street grew from its long-term community services in Wan Chai. Given these experiences, when the URF Board members approached St. James’ Settlement in 2012, the charity proposed To Kwa Wan House of Stories (TOKA) as ‘a platform for community participation [to] engage local residents in discovering and unfolding the indigenous histories and local culture, with the purpose of cultivating people’s sense of belonging to the community’ (URF, 2017: 25). After receiving the fund, St. James’ Settlement invited the activist group Community Culture Concern (CCC) to join the team as a partner and Fixing Hong Kong (FHK) joined in 2014 (as their group was formed after the UM). After TOKA began in 2013, the team opened a
154 Melissa Cate Christ and Hendrik Tieben Figure 6.2 The shop-front of the To Kwa Wan House of Stories, 2018
Source: Hendrik Tieben
community studio in 2014 on the ground floor of an old tong lau building so that activities could extend into a pedestrianized part of Hung Fook Street. Activities were similar to those at the Blue House: collecting community history; cultural exhibitions and markets; Cantonese opera festivals; and a sports week. The team also organized Cross-Cultural Art Fairs to respond
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Figure 6.3 Workshop with community members, initiated by St. James Settlement (‘To Home’ House of Stories) co-organized with DOMAT at Hung Fook Street in To Kwa Wan, 2017
Source: Hendrik Tieben (left), DOMAT (right)
to the cultural diversity of the area. Workshops were organized by artists and designers and included the co-design of street furniture with reused materials. One of the design firms involved was DOMAT, which later became a consultant for St. James’ Settlement’s second URF project in To Kwa Wan, the Community Dining Room. During TOKA’s first two years (2014-16), the rent for the community studio was covered by the URF and additional funding for activities was secured through organizations such as the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation. From 2016-2018, TOKA was supported by St. James’ Settlement, CCC, and FHK, after which St. James’ Settlement transferred its financial support to the Community Dining Room project (described below), leaving CCC and FHK to fund TOKA to the present day. However, the future of TOKA and its community studio is not secure, as the URA gazetted most of the buildings on Hung Fook Street/Kai Ming Street for redevelopment in 2016, including TOKA’s building (URA, 2020). According to the URA (2020), ‘[t]he project is implemented in accordance with the “Urban Renewal Strategy” (URS) (2011) which [offers] domestic owner-occupiers […] cash compensation or […] new flat-for-flat in-situ in the new development or in the same district or in Kai Tak development’. However, this option only applies to owners, while renters likely will find it unaffordable to stay after redevelopment. To continue their engagement with the community in a new location, St. James’ Settlement began the URF-funded project To Kwa Wan Community Dining Room in 2017 (Figure 6.4). The idea came from TOKA (Interview A. Lai, 2018), and became the URF’s highest funded project (HK$8,800,000) in the 2018 funding round (Interview George Yuen, project leader, To Kwa Wan Community Dining Room, 2018), with a planned duration of three years
156 Melissa Cate Christ and Hendrik Tieben Figure 6.4 To Kwa Wan Community Dining Room studio space; Design workshops were held on the street in front of the studio
Source: Hendrik Tieben
(2017-2020). According to Yuen, part of the proposal was to develop public spaces in To Kwa Wan to connect local residents and immigrants, particularly during the demolition period of the URA schemes. In the first phase of the project, in collaboration with the design firm DOMAT, workshops with residents, community members, and students were organized (Figure 6.4) to ‘[e]xplore the potential of public spaces with participants’ and to ‘[p]rocess the upcoming construction’ (Urban Renewal Fund, 2017-2018: 26). In 2018, the St. James Settlement team organized an exhibition of around 300 design ideas co-created with the community in the nearby Cattle Depot Artists Village. Community feedback included a desire for environmental improvements and economic activities for the grassroots, in addition to the project’s objective of ongoing physical improvements. In May 2020, the team organized a second exhibition in the same location called ‘Participatory Public Lab: To Kwa Wan Community Dining Room Project Exhibition’. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, it attracted 150 visitors in the first two days (Interview Yuen, 2020). The exhibition presented three years of the project’s work of ‘observing community needs, intervening in space imagination, sharing life possibilities, and constructing design ideas’ (Interview Wenhuipo, 2020). Regarding the intent to make permanent physical improvements, the project is ongoing, having encountered challenges in getting approvals by the District Council, so may not be completed within the funded duration of the project. Magic Lanes (2017-2020) The third URF case discussed in this chapter is Magic Lanes. It is located in Sai Ying Pun in the Western District of Hong Kong Island, one of the
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first expansions of the British colonial city in the 1850-60s. Despite the construction of many private projects since the 1970s, Sai Ying Pun retained its long-established community and traditional businesses (Tieben, Woo, and Yuet, 2008). However, since 2010 it has undergone rapid changes due to the construction of the MTR West Island Line (2015) and three URA projects. After a series of jointly organized tactical urbanism events and District Council Election Forums, the Christian charity Mok Cheung Sui Kun Community Centre (Caritas MCSK Centre) applied successfully to the URF with the Conservancy Association Centre for Heritage (CACHe) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) to develop the Magic Lanes project. The team includes chapter authors Hendrik Tieben and Melissa Cate Christ, who served on the advisory board (Tieben and Kang, 2017). Since the early twentieth century, the lead organization, Caritas, has focused its operations in Hong Kong on social work, medical and education services, and community building. While conducting grassroots services, Caritas MCSK Centre gradually developed bottom-up initiatives to counter the effects of topdown urban planning. To make these more effective, it reached out to academics, architects, and planners (Interview Edmond Wong, Caritas MCSK Centre, 2018) and conducted forums and planning workshops. According to Wong, the joint activities created a shift in the thinking of local District Councillors, who started to pay more attention to the integration of the new MTR West Island Line into the public spaces of the Western District (Wong, 2018). Since 2013, Magic Lanes evolved from the project series Magic Carpet, developed by co-author Tieben, which employed tactical urbanism interventions and community filming (Tieben and Kang, 2017). The first Magic Carpet project engaged secondary school students from King’s College to produce video interviews with residents and shopkeepers which were shown in a Mid-Autumn Festival cinema event on Centre Street in Sai Ying Pun. In 2014-2015, similar projects were organized in Tin Shui Wai and To Kwa Wan. In 2015, the Magic Carpet team was approached by Caritas to co-organize community workshops to collect opinions about community needs and aspirations. Urban Studies and Design students from CUHK then integrated these views into their projects, which were presented at street exhibitions and District Council Election Forums. The idea for Magic Lanes resulted from the feedback collected during these activities. The Magic Lanes URF project proposal included a community studio, engagement activities, and a pilot ‘public space’ renovation project on a privately owned (by the Incorporated Owners of the two adjacent residential towers) alley stair in Sai Ying Pun, Sheung Fung Lane. With residents, the team developed an integrated socio-spatial approach with the following foci: ‘social
158 Melissa Cate Christ and Hendrik Tieben Figure 6.5 Co-design workshop at Magic Lanes with residents and students of Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 2018
Source: Hendrik Tieben
inclusion, biodiversity, heritage and culture, [and] intergenerational play and fun’ (URF, 2017-2018: 23). To that end, nearly one third of the HK$5.9 million budget was allocated for construction-related costs and the employment of an architectural consultant (technically an ‘authorized person’ [AP]), while the remaining amount was used for the rent of a community studio along the Lane, activities, and the salaries of two young placemakers with backgrounds in social policy and design. Following the Magic Carpet approach, MidAutumn Festival celebrations were organized with the help of residents and students. These placemaking events included games and traditional food, attracting the larger community, and included the temporary testing of new spatial arrangements as tactical urbanism interventions. In the meantime, a group of residents and store owners formed the group ‘Friends of Sheung Fung Lane’ which self-organized ceramic and planting workshops and installed planters along the Lane. The Caritas team also expanded collaborations with academics and students from other schools and universities to generate and share co-design ideas (Figure 6.5), all held in the Lane, studio, or adjacent spaces such as CACHe. The design ideas were consolidated by the Magic
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Lanes team, the advisory board, and the AP, and presented at the Incorporated Owner (IO) meetings of the adjacent buildings. Unfortunately, due to the lack of funding for the maintenance of the planned public space project (as URF covers only capital costs), the design did not receive the final approval from the IOs as residents feared the additional management costs or the end of the current arrangement, under which the government maintains the existing, bare-bones, lane space, despite technically not being responsible for it. The response of the Caritas team was to pare back the physical redesign of the lane, focusing only on urgent repairs of the ground surface and drainage, as well as on smaller improvements such as panels hiding air conditioning units, planter boxes, and temporary seating. The team still reapplied to the URF to continue the work with the community through the studio and to pursue more permanent improvements to the Lane despite this condition. When the community studio had to be closed at the beginning of the pandemic due to COVID-19-related restrictions, the team continued its work using the network established during the project’s process. Activities shifted from community-driven placemaking efforts to making masks for low-income neighbours who could not afford surgical items during the pandemic (Interview Benjamin Sin, Caritas-Hong Kong, 2020).
Comparison and Discussion The Relationship between the State and Civil Society in URF Projects Citizen-driven placemaking and tactical urbanism can play key roles in raising awareness, generating and solidifying social networks, and preserving and enriching the meaning of places for communities affected by urban renewal. Building (or rebuilding) a community requires long-term collaboration and commitment by government departments, relevant urban renewal organizations, and civil society. However, in neighbourhoods where urban renewal is imminent or already in progress, the social networks built up by URF projects, such as TOKA, are in danger of evaporating when residents are displaced by the very redevelopment the URF aims to ameliorate. This can lead to the impression that the URF is just an arm of the larger URA, acting to soften the blow of the overall renewal process. A clearer coordination between the URF and the URA could address this issue. Furthermore, the potential success or failure of the URF projects attempting to improve physical spaces relies heavily on who owns and manages the land. The To Kwa Wan Community Dining Room developed a range of improvements for
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public spaces, for which, however, approvals by the local District Council and government departments are needed. Schemes co-developed by the team and residents then faced the opposition of the District Council (Kowloon City District Council, 2018). Since then, these projects have remained on hold, despite attempts by the URF to negotiate with the District Council. In contrast, Magic Lanes aimed at spatial improvements in a privately owned public space. It was thought that this would circumvent the difficulties associated with the approval processes by the District Council and government departments, by channelling public resources to a communal space owned by private bodies (URF, 2017-2018: 23). However, eventually the responsible IO associations, the body corporate which has the legal status to represent all owners in managing the common parts of a building as required by Hong Kong’s Building Management Ordinance, did not approve the scheme, for fear of the long-term maintenance costs. They also questioned why they, instead of the government, should shoulder these costs, since the spaces would be used by the general public. To address their concerns, the Magic Lanes team significantly scaled down the planned improvement works to reduce the need for additional maintenance work and thus regain the support of the IO associations. Due to the COVID-19 restrictions implemented in 2020, the IO associations could not gather as planned, keeping the project in limbo. Moreover, the government’s COVID-19 restrictions also enforced the temporary closure of the Magic Lanes community studio. While its staff and the Friends of Sheung Fung Lane still continued to provide support for the local community, the URF decided against an extension of the project funding, therefore officially ending the project in October 2020. Paradoxically, the end arrived at a time in which many other cities have started to support tactical urbanism projects to expand the provision of public spaces for social distancing, relaxation, and physical activities at the neighbourhood level. It can be assumed that the costs for the maintenance of the relatively small public space of Sheung Fung Lane in close vicinity to other government-maintained open spaces would have been far lower than the provision and maintenance of new public spaces in the same area. Despite explicit HKSAR targets to increase and improve public space in urban areas, no additional support was given by other government departments to support the URF projects discussed above. Learning Process The projects discussed in this chapter highlight the contradictions and lack of coordination between different government programmes and
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departments. Considering the URF scheme’s role in facilitating NGO-led or citizen-initiated placemaking in Hong Kong, some positive steps were made from one funding round to the other. For example, the first URF project in To Kwa Wan, TOKA, focused mainly on using social activities/placemaking for community building, while the Magic Lanes project expanded the scope and combined social activities with spatial improvements. This approach was then also used for the second project in To Kwa Wan, the Community Living Room. Both Magic Lanes and the Community Living Room set up a community studio in an old shop front as a base for community activities and co-design projects. In addition, the URF and its applicants have found that urban design, placemaking methods, and the inclusion of built environment professionals can be crucial tools for community building (Interview Joseph Wong, 2019). In the first six URF projects, only one involved professionals with such backgrounds, while four of the six projects included designers in the third funding round. This collaboration between social workers and built environment professionals could benefit both sides, adding spatial dimensions to the social workers’ suite of tools and engaging seasoned and junior built environment professionals, as well as students, in the realworld concerns of community building. There was also a wider diversity of organizations receiving URF funds as the programme matured: In the first funding round primarily traditional NGOs such as St. James Settlement and Caritas were selected, whereas the second and the third rounds also awarded funds to small cultural organizations, art centres, and schools. But in the context of the impact of the programme on Hong Kong’s ‘hegemonic-cum-alienated redevelopment’ and the socio-spatial displacement and alienation affecting residents’ sense of belonging, the effects of the positive steps mentioned above remain very limited. The Magic Lanes project started after the completion of two URA projects and the MTR line. It therefore focused on rebuilding a sense of community between the older residents who managed to stay in the area and the new residents, many of whom are Westerners or recent, well-off migrants from Mainland China. The lifestyles and buying power of these new residents has sparked the transformation of traditional and long-standing local stores and carmechanic workshops into Western-style coffee shops, restaurants, and bars, raising concerns that the traditional way of life could disappear, and is therefore an example of ‘hegemonic-cum-alienated redevelopment’. In To Kwa Wan, the context of the URF project was more charged, as the project developed in parallel to the URA redevelopment projects and the construction of a new MTR line in the same area, thus threatening the displacement of the same community which was nurtured by the URF
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project. While community building was attempted by the URA as a way to placate civil society, it remained unsuccessful due to the fundamentally different interests of the local grassroots population that were affected by the renewal scheme. The situation for the Community Dining Room and Magic Lanes projects was slightly different. Physical improvements to adjacent exterior spaces were part of the initial proposals, seeing design and spatial construction as methods for community empowerment and increasing civic urbanism (Interview Edmond Wong, 2018; and Ng Sze On, 2020). However, with the complex negotiations required and the limited funding duration of two to three years, the planned spatial improvements could not be realized. This result can be traced to issues common to the building of any open space in Hong Kong: complications with coordinating many disciplines; permitting and regulations of overlapping government departments; and a lack of political will and/or support (Jim and Chan, 2016). Furthermore, the projects have faced obstacles due to the recent political and health crises. Both project managers are pursuing long-term community resilience, claiming that the complications with implementing permanent physical improvements do not necessarily detract from the success that the placemaking projects have had in increasing social networking opportunities for residents through tactical urbanism events and initiatives, as well as allowing the charities to better serve their local communities. This then could be seen as steps towards more genuine community building processes, citizen-driven placemaking, and an increasing level of civic urbanism.
Conclusion and Future Outlook Overall, Hong Kong’s URF programme created new opportunities for civil society organizations to initiate projects and address three key concerns raised by the protest movements of the late 2000s and early 2010s: (1) the loss of local heritage and a sense of community; (2) the gap between public space design and the aspirations and needs of local communities; and (3) the lack of a meaningful public participation process. However, the most fundamental limitations are the mismatched values and aims between the small, community-oriented URF, and the large (re)development-oriented URA projects. While the URF scheme was ostensibly created to help people affected by urban renewal, the area where the URF project TOKA invested six years of community development was targeted by the URA for whole-sale redevelopment,
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likely displacing most of the more vulnerable residents. It therefore partly remains a panacea to quell dissatisfaction, instead of substantially addressing the needs of the community and safeguarding its continuity. To address these problems, the core business of the URA would need to be readjusted to make social inclusion, heritage preservation, a better environment, and community building its guiding principles. This would imply that residents would get a say not only in minor interventions, but also if and how large-scale projects move ahead. Such a change would need to address the long-standing hegemony of the government and land development practices and are therefore beyond the scope of a small grant programme, which thus may not provide much more than a band-aid to quell dissatisfaction. To address the initial question, whether the URF facilitates and supports CDP, it seems that it primarily enables agency- or citizen-inclusive placemaking. If citizen-driven placemaking does occur, it emerges in the URF-funded projects through the social, institutional, and cultural networks that are enabled by the collaborative partnerships set up by the social service agencies (SSA) who are the recipients of the funding. The SSA are held to account by their own internal processes and audits, as well as to the URF for what actions and services they provide through the budgeted amount. More recently, a range of other civil society initiatives, such as the not-for-profit Collaborate Hong Kong, a privately funded ‘independent platform advocating the innovative use of public spaces by local creative groups around the city’ (Very Hong Kong, 2018: 1) has started to create frameworks for public space and placemaking initiatives, offering advice and helping to facilitate application and implementation processes. Their aim is to multiply the impact of placemaking projects across wider parts of the territory. Whether this privately funded, foundation-based model (more common in the United States and the United Kingdom) will be more effective, timely, and citizen-driven remains to be seen, particularly in view of the new political realities regarding the election and role of District Councillors, and potential wider restrictions for the civil society sector. In any case, schemes such as the URF programme are an important beginning in the continuing development of civic urbanism in Hong Kong through a shift from agency-driven, to citizen-inclusive, and eventually to citizen-driven placemaking (Normoyle and Cotter, 2016). As more agencies and residents become involved in such initiatives, there is a rising awareness that citizen action can lead to greater community cohesiveness, as well as to actual improvements to public space. As mentioned
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above, the value of the URF programme, as an approach which supports civil society initiatives with a focus on socio-spatial improvements, can especially be seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the community studios had to be closed, teams still continued to support their neighbourhoods based on the social network of residents they established through the URF-funded projects. It remains to be seen whether these and future networks enabled by funded URF projects will continue to inspire, facilitate, and support future CDP, community building, and civic urbanism within Hong Kong.
Acknowledgements Special thanks to the secretary of the Urban Renewal Fund, the URF project teams, the Caritas HK managers, and the St. James’ Settlement project participants.
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Chen, Yun Chung and Mirana Szeto. 2017. ‘Reclaiming Public Space Movement in Hong Kong: From Occupy Queen’s Pier to the Umbrella Movement’. In City Unsilenced: Urban Resistance and Public Space in the Age of Shrinking Democracy, edited by Jeffrey Hou and Sabine Knierbein, 69–82. New York, NY: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781315647241. Cuthbert, Alexander and Keith McKinnell. 1997. ‘Ambiguous Space, Ambiguous Rights – Corporate Power and Social Control in Hong Kong’. Cities, 14(5): 295–311. doi: 10.1016/S0264-2751(97)00020-6. Development Bureau. 2010. Legislative Council Brief: People First: A District-Based and Public Participatory Approach to Urban Renewal: Urban Renewal Strategy Review. Available at: https://www.legco.gov.hk/yr10-11/english/panels/dev/ papers/dev1026-devbplcr115077-e.pdf [accessed 7 July 2020]. Douay, Nicolas. 2010. ‘The Emergence of a Collaborative Approach Challenges Hong Kong’s Planning Model’. China Perspectives, 2010 (2010/1): 97–109. doi: 10.4000/ chinaperspectives.5071. Fitzpatrick, Miriam. 2010. ‘Fieldwork in Public Space Assessment: William Holly Whyte and the Street Life Project, 1971-75’. In Architecture and Field/Work (Critiques: Critical Studies in Architectural Humanities), edited by Suzanne Ewing, Jeremie Michael McGowan, Chris Speed and Victoria Clare Bernie, 72–80. New York, NY: Routledge. HKCSS (The Hong Kong Council of Social Service). 2018. Social Development Index (2018). Available at: http://101.78.134.197/uploadFileMgnt/0_2018712103823.pdf [accessed 14 July 2020]. HKPSI (Hong Kong Public Space Initiative). 2018. Private Owned Public Space Audit Report. Available at: http://www.hkpsi.org/chi/projects/pops-audit/ [accessed 7 July 2020]. HKPSI (Hong Kong Public Space Initiative). 2020. Overview. Available at: http:// www.hkpsi.org/eng/aboutus/overview/ [accessed 8 July 2020]. HKSAR (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region). 2020. Poverty Situation. Available at: https://www.censtatd.gov.hk/hkstat/sub/so461.jsp [accessed 14 July 2020]. Jim, Chi Yung and Wing Ho Chan. 2016. ‘Urban Greenspace Delivery in Hong Kong: Spatial-institutional Limitations and Solutions’. Urban Forestry and Urban Greening, 18: 65–85. doi: 10.1016/j.ufug.2016.03.015. Kirby, Jan. 2020. ‘China’s New National Security Law and What It Means for Hong Kong’s Future, Explained’. Vox, 14 July 2020. Available at: https://www.vox. com/2020/7/2/21309902/china-national-security-law-hong-kong-protests-ussanctions [accessed 4 August 2021]. Kowloon City District Council. 2018. The Thirteenth Meeting’s Minutes of the Leisure and District Facilities Management Committee. Available at: https://www.
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districtcouncils.gov.hk/kc/doc/2016_2019/en/committee_meetings_minutes/ LDFMC/5LDFMC_13emin.pdf [accessed 1 June 2020]. Kowloon City DURF (District Urban Renewal Forum). 2014. Urban Renewal for Kowloon City. Available at: https://www.durf.org.hk/pdf/Urban%20Renewal%20 Plan_en.pdf [accessed 20 December 2021] Ku, Shuk Mei. 2012. ‘Remaking Places and Fashioning an Opposition Discourse: Struggle over the Star Ferry Pier and the Queen’s Pier in Hong Kong’. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30(1): 5–22. doi: 10.1068/d16409. Lai, Carine. 2017. Unopened Space 2017 Research Report. Available at: https:// civic-exchange.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/20170224POSreport_FINAL. pdf [accessed 8 April 2020]. Lam, Carrie. 2008. Welcome Message (Urban Renewal Strategy Review). Available at: https://www.ursreview.gov.hk/eng/home.html [accessed 8 July 2020]. Lee, Joanna Wai Ying and Wing-Shing Tang. 2017. ‘The Hegemony of the Real Estate Industry: Redevelopment of “Government/Institution or Community” (G/IC) Land in Hong Kong’. Urban Studies, 54(15): 3403–3422. doi: 10.1177/0042098016679607. Lui, Tai‐Lok. 2017. ‘Beneath the Appearance of Gentrification: Probing Local Complexities’. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 41(3): 478–486. doi: 10.1111/1468-2427.12497. Lydon, Mike and Anthony Garcia. 2015. Tactical Urbanism, Short-term Action for Longterm Change. Washington, DC: Island Press. doi: 10.5822/978-1-61091-567-0_5. Maloutas, Thomas. 2012. ‘Contextual Diversity in Gentrification Research’. Critical Sociology, 38(1): 33–48. doi: 10.1177/0896920510380950. MTR (Mass Transit Railway). 2020. Shatin to Central Link. [online] Available at: http://www.mtr.com.hk/sustainability/2019rpt/en/pdf/MTR_Shatin_to_Central_Link_Eng.pdf [accessed on 27 June 2020]. Ng, Mee Kam. 2008. ‘From Government to Governance? Politics of Planning in the First Decade of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’. Planning Theory & Practice, 9(2): 165–185. doi: 10.1080/14649350802041480. Ng, Mee Kam. 2017. ‘Enclosure and Recommoning in Wanchai, Hong Kong: The Struggle of Local Community Development in Asia’s World City’. Local Economy, 32(7): 640–655. doi: 10.1177/0269094217733683. Ng, Mee Kam. 2018. ‘Sustainable Community Building in the Face of State-led Gentrification: The Story of the Blue House Cluster in Hong Kong’. The Town Planning Review, 89(5): 495–512. doi: 10.3828/tpr.2018.32. Normoyle, Catherine and Christian Cotter. 2016. ‘A Catalyst for Change: Understanding Characteristics of Citizen-driven Placemaking Endeavors across Diverse Communities’. Design Principles and Practices, 10(1): 41–58. doi: 10.18848/1833-1874/CGP/v10i01/41-58.
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Pak, Yulia. 2018. ‘Creative Placemaking as a Policy and a Practice of Urban Regeneration in Singapore: Negotiating Power Relations and Forging Partnerships in Civic Society’, ARI Working Paper, No. 268: 3–21, https://ari.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/ uploads/2018/10/wps18_268.pdf [accessed 8 July 2020]. Project for Public Spaces. 2007. What Is Placemaking? Available at: https://www. pps.org/article/what-is-placemaking [accessed 6 April 2020]. Røe, Per Gunnar. 2014. ‘Place and Place-making in Suburban Oslo’. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 38: 498–515. doi: 10.1111/1468-2427.12113. Smart, Alan and Josephine Smart. 2017. ‘Ain’t Talkin’ ‘bout Gentrification: The Erasure of Alternative Idioms of Displacement Resulting from Anglo‐American Academic Hegemony’. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 41(3): 518–525. doi: 10.1111/1468-2427.12493. Sofield, Trevor, Jaume Guia and Jan Specht. 2017. ‘Organic “Folkloric” Community Driven Place-making and Tourism’. Tourism Management, 61: 1–22. doi: 10.1016/j. tourman.2017.01.002. St. James’ Settlement. 2006-2007. Community Development Services. Available at: https://www.sjs.org.hk/en/services/services.php?id=4 [accessed 2 June 2020]. St. James’ Settlement. 2015. About St. James’ Settlement. Available at: https://www. sjs.org.hk/en/about/about.php [accessed 2 June 2020]. Tang, Wing-Shing, Joanna Wai Ying Lee, and Mee Kam Ng. 2011. ‘Public Engagement as a Tool of Hegemony: The Case of Designing the New Central Harbourfront in Hong Kong’. Critical Sociology, 38(1): 89–106. doi: 10.1177/0896920511408363. Tang, Wing-Shing. 2016. ‘Creative Industries, Public Engagement and Urban Redevelopment in Hong Kong: Cultural Regeneration as Another Dose of Isotopia?’ Cities, 56: 156–164. doi: 10.1016/j.cities.2015.09.004 Tang, Wing-Shing. 2017. ‘Beyond Gentrification: Hegemonic Redevelopment in Hong Kong’. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 41(3): 487–499. doi: 10.1111/1468-2427.12496. Tieben, Hendrik, Pui Leng Woo, and Tsang Chi Yuet. 2008. ‘Development or Destruction? The Transformation of Sai Ying Pun’. In A Sense of Place: Hong Kong West of Pottinger Street, edited by Veronica Pearson and Tim-keung Ko, 168–183. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Company Limited. Tieben, Hendrik and Min-Jay Kang. 2017. Magic Carpet – Towards a Community Benefit Plans for Urban Regeneration in Taipei and Hong Kong. Taipei: Tonsan. URA (Urban Renewal Authority). 2020. Explore Our Projects. Available at: https:// www.ura.org.hk/en/project/redevelopment/kc-011t [accessed 8 August 2021]. URF (Urban Renewal Fund). 2017-2018. Annual Report. Available at: http://www. urfund.org.hk/files/Annual_Report_2017-18_English.pdf [accessed 27 April 2019]. URF (Urban Renewal Fund). 2020. Urban Renewal Fund. Available at: http://www. urfund.org.hk/en_about.html [accessed 8 August 2021].
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Very Hong Kong. 2018. Collaborate HK. New Approach to Community Initiatives. Hong Kong: Very Hong Kong. Available at: https://www.collaboratehk.org [accessed 8 August 2021]. Xia, Xunxiang (夏循祥). 2010. ‘Public Participation as a Citizen’s Education: A Case Study of the Community Participation of the Citizens of Lee Tung Street in Hong Kong (论公共参与作为一种公民教育——以香港利东街居民的社区参与运 动为例)’. Thinking (思想战线), 36(2): 50–54. [In Chinese] Xia, Xunxiang (夏循祥) and Kin-man Chan (陈健民). 2014. ‘On the Generation of Power of the Powerless: Taking a Social Movement in Hong Kong as a Case (论无权者之权力的生成以香港利东街居民运动为例)’. Society (社会), 34(1): 27–51. [In Chinese] Yeung, Chris. 2014. ‘Don’t Call Hong Kong’s Protests an “Umbrella Revolution”’. The Atlantic, 8 October 2014. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/ archive/2014/10/dont-call-hong-kongs-protests-an-umbrella-revolution/381231/ [accessed 8 August 2021].
About the Authors Melissa Cate Christ is a researcher at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Uppsala) and University of New South Wales, an instructor at University of Technology Sydney and University of New South Wales, a registered landscape architect (Ontario), and the founding director of transverse studio. She has a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Liberal Arts degree from St. John’s College. Hendrik Tieben is Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on public space, placemaking, and community empowerment, and was published in a range of international journals. Since 2013, he has developed the project series ‘Magic Carpet’, which engages residents in the co-creation of community spaces.
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Re-emerging Civic Urbanism The Evolving State–Civil Society Relations in Community Building in Seoul Blaž Križnik and Su Kim Abstract State and markets drove urban development in South Korea for decades, giving little voice to citizens. Recently, citizens have become increasingly engaged in shaping their living environment. While the enabling role of the state in expanding citizen participation is well acknowledged, the importance of community movements has been overlooked. The chapter explores community movements in Seoul and their relations with the state to better understand their contribution to the recent surge of civic urbanism in the city. Comparison of neighbourhood community building in Seoul shows that civic urbanism, while marginalized in the past, has re-emerged as an integral part of urban governance. The chapter also suggests that the growing institutionalization of civic urbanism can weaken its transformative potential to build inclusive and resilient neighbourhoods and cities. Keywords: Citizen participation, civic urbanism, community building, community movements, state involvement
Introduction State and markets drove urban development in South Korea (hereafter Korea) for decades, giving little voice to the citizens. Recently, citizens have become increasingly engaged in shaping their living environment. Growing citizen participation could be attributed to evolving state–civil society relations, which have gradually shifted from conflictive and excluding towards more inclusive. On the one hand, ‘[a]voiding violence and engaging the state is
Cho, Im Sik, Blaž Križnik and Jeffrey Hou (eds), Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia. Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei beyond Developmental Urbanization. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463728546_ch07
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becoming a new rule’ for the civil society in Korea (Kim, 2011: 154). On the other hand, the state is trying to build a partnership with the civil society and expand citizen participation to address diverse social, economic, environmental, and political challenges in Korean cities (Cho and Križnik, 2017). Examples of citizen participation in shaping the living environment – which this volume and chapter recognize as civic urbanism – include environmental and heritage conservation, local cooperatives, collaborative placemaking, community building in neighbourhoods, village art, urban gardening, or temporary street markets and neighbourhood festivals (Cho, Križnik, and Hou, this volume). Civic urbanism arises from makeshift, as well as from organized grassroots collective action, which in Western cities dates to the nineteenth century (Castells, 1983). In contrast, comparable collective action in Korean cities emerged relatively late, mostly as a sporadic response to rapid urbanization and its adverse consequences on the living environment, and evolved under a long arm of the state, which used to hold a strong grip over the grassroots (Kim, 2017b; Kim and Cho, 2019; Križnik, 2021). After the 1980s, however, civil society demanded a greater say in urban development and advocated to expand citizen participation in neighbourhoods and cities. Understanding state–civil society relations is, hence, the key to explore the recent surge of civic urbanism in Korea and its transformative potential, given that citizen participation is widely considered an integral part of the localized sustainability agenda to build inclusive and resilient neighbourhoods and cities (Manzi, Lucas, Jones, and Allen, 2010; Ho, 2019). The chapter focuses on Seoul and takes community building in neighbourhoods as a case of civic urbanism in the city. Since 2012, the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) has made continual efforts to expand citizen participation to build a socially inclusive city (Park, 2014; SMG, 2015; Ahn, Wi, and You, 2019). The state played the key role in enabling community building in neighbourhoods as one of ‘the most impactful platforms with which to involve communities in shaping their built environments’ (CLC and SI, 2017: 87). While the role of the state in expanding citizen participation is important, focusing on the state-enabled or state-led community building overlooks the contribution of community movements to civic urbanism (Jeong, 2012; Lee, 2017). The chapter explores community movements in Seoul and their relation with the state to better understand them as historical actors of civic urbanism. Four community movements are compared in the chapter. When large variations among the cases are expected, Walliman (2006: 45) suggests that electing ‘several very different ones, for example, those showing extreme characteristics, those at each end of the spectrum and perhaps one that is somewhere in the middle’ can be a productive comparative method. Songhak
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Figure 7.1 Selected community movements and neighbourhoods in comparison
Source: Jeffrey Hou. Drawing by Hoilok Heather Lam. Map data 2020 © Google, 2021 © National Geographic Information Institute (1998 map)
Maeul (송학마을), Seongmisan Maeul (성미산마을) and Seowon Maeul (서원마 을) are selected as ‘extreme cases’ of community movements in Seoul and are compared with a recent case in Samdeok Maeul (삼덕마을) (Figure 7.1).1 These cases are extreme to the extent that they represent the most differing 1 The authors prefer using Korean maeul to the English town or neighbourhood, a term which does not fully grasp the historical, social, and symbolic specificity of communal life in Korean cities. Moreover, maeul carries a ‘transformative connotation’ (Lee, 2017: 219) with regard to community movements that can be easily overlooked when the English translation is used.
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historical relations between the state and civil society in community building in Seoul. They are analysed in terms of aims, collective action, state involvement, and consequences on the living environment. Since 2016, the authors conducted a series of in-depth interviews and contextualized them with fieldwork and participant observation in selected neighbourhoods, as well as with the review of community-movements-related secondary resources, including governmental documents, research reports, and mass media (Križnik, Cho, and Kim, 2019; Križnik, 2021). The chapter is organized into six sections. After the introduction, a literature review sets up a theoretical framework for understanding community movements as historical actors of urban change and details state–civil society relations in community building. The following sections provide an overview of community movements in Korean cities and explore four cases of community building in Seoul. In the next section, these cases are compared in terms of the scope and focus of collective action, state–civil society relations, role of intermediary organizations, and their transformative potential. The concluding section discusses main findings regarding the transformative potential of civic urbanism.
Community Building in Neighbourhoods and the State Community building in neighbourhoods is an example of civic urbanism. It aims to bring about urban change by improving individual and shared resources in neighbourhoods and beyond, social relationship networks among the citizens, and their organizational capacity (Gilchrist and Taylor, 2016). Community building is expected to empower the citizens to shape the living environment on their terms by engaging ‘with structures and processes of social, political and economic power […] to confront the disadvantage, exclusion and oppression that they experience’ (Butcher, Banks, Henderson, and Robertson, 2007: 21). The transformative potential of community building, however, can be weakened if a community becomes considered ‘a homogeneous unity in which values of mutuality and reciprocity are seen as natural’ (Ledwith, 2011: xi). In contrast, community building requires communicative action where individuals reflexively situate themselves in a community and engage for common goals, constituting a community of dissent rather than one of moral unity or political consensus (Lash, 1994). Community building as a grassroots collective action leads to the formation of community movements as historical actors of urban change (Castells, 1983). Community movements are overwhelmingly local in their formation
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and in contrast to neighbourhood organizations or voluntary associations ‘tend to operate outside conventional party politics; with a low degree of hierarchy and formal organization; they encourage a good deal of direct participation, and engage in forms of direct action and protest’ (Day, 2006: 141). Their success relies on available resources, organizational capacity, leadership, and solidarity among the membership. At the same time, local and national historical, cultural, and institutional contexts can constrain or encourage community. In this regard, the relation between the state and community movements seems to be of particular importance (Robson, 2000). The state can ignore or by-pass community movements by establishing state-led neighbourhood organizations; oppress community movements that oppose it; or instrumentalize community movements by ‘co-opting them to governmental agendas’ (Somerville, 2016: 97). The state, nevertheless, can also recognize community movements as partners and collaborate with them towards common goals. Partnerships between the state and community movements became recognized over the past decade as the key to build inclusive neighbourhoods and cities (Cho and Križnik, 2017; Ho, 2019). As ‘knowable spaces, within which individuals remained familiar with many of those around them, aware of the available facilities and the functions they performed and felt competent to act’ (Day, 2006: 140), neighbourhoods are the home ground of community movements. At the same time, neighbourhoods are sites of state intervention such as public service provision, planning and managing of urban areas, and implementation of responsive urban governance (Manzi, Lucas, Jones, and Allen, 2010). Partnerships with community movements allow the state to control them (Robson, 2000). As seemingly democratic and consensual but in reality, depoliticizing practice, community building can become the foundation of the neoliberal governmentality, which tries to institutionalize communities as ‘collectively governable subjects’ (Somerville, 2016: 92). Despite ‘a strong rhetoric of partnership or empowerment’ the state often ‘exhibits little understanding or regard for localized processes and traditions, and it assumes that all communities have both the capacity and the will to follow policy decided from the center’ (DeFilippis, Fisher, and Shragge, 2010: 91). As a result, the institutionalization of community movements can increase their dependency on state support and reduce their organizational capacity, self-reliance, and transformative potential to challenge institutionalized urban meaning. Community building in neighbourhoods can be in the end limited to ‘sharing responsibility for maintaining existing structures and services’ or ‘rebalancing the system to be fairer and more democratic’ rather than to empower citizens in
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‘fundamentally transforming the way society operates’ (Gilchrist and Taylor, 2016: 17). If community movements are to realize their transformative potential, they ‘must be organizationally and ideologically autonomous’ of any political agendas (Castells, 1983: 322). Community building in neighbourhoods can be an instrument of empowerment or political containment at once, depending on the ‘dynamic, unpredictable and extremely varied’ relations between the state and community movements (Somerville, 2016: 91). On the one hand, community movements comply with the state, while on the other hand, they oppose and struggle against the state. Community movements in Korea historically evolved in strong opposition and conflict with the state (Jeong, 2012). Over time, however, these relations shifted from conflictive and excluding towards more inclusive, although the state reportedly continues to hold a strong grip over community movements (Kim, 2017b; Kim and Cho, 2019; Križnik, Cho, and Kim, 2019). The following section takes a closer look at community movements, as historical actors of civic urbanism in Korean cities.
Community Movements in Korean Cities The recent surge of civic urbanism in Seoul is often attributed to the apparently successful state involvement in expanding citizen participation in the city (Ahn, Wi, and You, 2019). The history of citizen participation in shaping the living environment in Korean cities, however, dates back to the early twentieth century (Shin, 1999). Although it is not easy to trace continuity between the anti-colonial, urban poor, anti-eviction, or present-day community movements, all represent diverse historical manifestations of grassroots collective ‘actions voluntarily practiced at the neighbourhood or community level and aimed at improving the community’s physical, relational or sociological aspects’ (Kim, 2017b: 3808). In this regard, the present-day community movements could be considered a part of historical struggles over the institutionalized urban meaning and as a particular grassroots response to the shifting social and political contexts in Korea. Civic urbanism in Seoul, hence, needs to be observed from a broader historical perspective of the evolving state–civil society relations in Korea (Kim and Jeong, 2017). Korea experienced a rapid economic and urban development under the authoritarian rule of president Park Chung-hee during the 1960s. Exportoriented industrialization stood at the core of his nationalistic political agenda, which not only aimed at what he called the ‘modernisation of the fatherland’ but also at legitimizing his political power (Shin, 2006: 104). For
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Park, the state and society were one. Autonomous collective action was considered a threat, which the state had to oppress (Katsiaficas, 2012). Rapid economic and urban development contributed to a dramatic increase of urban population with many migrants having no choice but to live in vast and extremely poor shantytowns.2 In response, the state tried to provide new housing by demolishing the shanties and displacing their residents (Mobrand, 2008; Shin and Kim, 2016). In the 1970s, civil society groups started to organize self-help, study rooms, childcare, reading clubs, and evening schools to alleviate the harsh living conditions of the urban poor. Although community building was not their main aim, emerging urban poor movements (도시 빈민 운동) often improved shared resources, organizational capacity, and self-reliance of poor urban communities (Shin, 1999; Jeong, 2012). The rapid economic growth came to a halt in the 1980s, which challenged the legitimacy of the president, Chun Doo Hwan. Another challenge came from increasingly powerful corporations, as well as from growing popular demands for democratization. Chun responded with brutal oppression of civil society. State violence, however, did not stop the democratization movement, which finally brought down the military regime in 1987 (Katsiaficas, 2012). At that time, large corporations became involved in speculative urban redevelopment, particularly in the construction of apartment complexes for the growing middle-class, which resulted in a massive displacement of the urban poor (Ha, 2001). As a grassroots response against forced evictions, anti-eviction movements (퇴거 반대 운동) struggled with the demolition squads and police, while engaging in community building in neighbourhoods to empower the residents to protect their housing rights (Shin, 2018). After Kim Young-sam was elected as the first civilian president in 1993, the state began to recognize civil society as an autonomous sphere of collective action. New civil movements mushroomed, resulting in a dramatic expansion of civil society throughout the 1990s (Kim, 2011). The expansion and diversification of civil society affected the state–civil society relations, which became more inclusive and cooperative. The politicization of civil society expanded further under liberal presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun (Kim and Jeong, 2017). At that time, the civil society sought to transform everyday life, with neighbourhoods becoming the home ground of new community movements (지역 사회 운동, 마을만들기 운동, 마을공동체 운 2 Less than 20% of Koreans lived in urban areas in 1950. The urban population increased to 28% in 1960 and reached 41% in 1970. By 1977, every second Korean lived in urban areas (Cho and Križnik, 2017). In the 1970s, about one third of the urban population in Korea lived in mostly illegal shantytowns (Mobrand, 2008).
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with the living environment in Korean cities, including environmental degradation, lack of public service provision, education, growing safety concerns, and limited local autonomy (Jeong, 1999).3 In contrast to the earlier periods, community building became a major focus of grassroots collective action. Amid growing social and economic polarization in the aftermath of the 1997 IMF crisis, a part of civil society began to see community restoration as an alternative to growing individualism and economic uncertainties in society (Katsiaficas, 2012). Communities, however, were rapidly disappearing from Korean cities due to speculative urban redevelopment, where entire neighbourhoods with well-established social relationship networks were destroyed en masse throughout the 1990s and 2000s (Shin and Kim, 2016). As a result, advocacy groups, promoting community building in neighbourhoods, continuously expanded their activities at the time. These were often linked to anti-eviction and community movements and advocated for stronger state involvement in community building. The state eventually recognized the importance of community movements for improving the living environment and local autonomy in Korean cities, which led to the gradual expansion of citizen participation and community building in neighbourhoods during the 2000s (Kim, 2017b). Over the past decade, community movements remained overwhelmingly local in their aims. In contrast to earlier periods, however, they became more involved in building local, national, and transnational coalitions, which has affected their organizational capacity and broadened their impact. At the same time, community movements started to collaborate with the state, which has improved their resources but also increased their dependency on state support. Meanwhile, state involvement has shifted from state-enabled to state-led community building, which has contributed to the co-optation and institutionalization of community movements (Wi, 2018; Kim and Cho, 2019; Križnik, Cho, and Kim, 2019). The following section compares community building in Seoul against the backdrop of evolving state–civil society relations.
Cases: Community Building in Seoul The social and political context of community building in Seoul has undergone a significant shift after 2011 when a human rights lawyer and civic 3 Jeong (1999) identified more than one hundred cases of community movements, active in Korean cities during the 1990s.
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activist was elected as the mayor of Seoul. The late Mayor Park Won-soon (2014: 443) placed community building at the centre of his political agenda, arguing that ‘restoring a sense of community is essential in creating a more humane society’. Less than a year after his election, SMG introduced two important policies, supporting and expanding community building in neighbourhoods. Residential Environment Management Project (주거환경관리 사업, REMP) aimed to restore communities through housing improvement and provision of social amenities in deprived residential areas (Kim, 2018). The Seoul Neighbourhood Community Support Project (서울마을공동체지원사 업, SNCSP), to the contrary, provides citywide support for diverse initiatives that aim to strengthen social relationship networks in neighbourhoods (SMG, 2015). These two policies have been credited for expanding community building in Seoul by successfully improving residents’ organizational capacity and local autonomy in the city (CLC and SI, 2017; Ahn, Wi, and You, 2019). While the enabling role of SMG in community building is difficult to overlook, Kim (2017b: 3822) argues that successful state involvement would not be possible, had ‘the explosive upsurge of community movements in the late 1990s [not] provided critical momentum to generate a “community discourse” in civil society’. In other words, the recent surge of civic engagement in shaping the living environment in the city is not only a result of state involvement but is also related to community movements as historical actors of civic urbanism in Seoul. Comparison of community movements in Songhak Maeul, Seongmisan Maeul, Seowon Maeul, and Samdeok Maeul is aimed at better understanding their contribution to civic urbanism in the city. Songhak Maeul Songhak Maeul was a temporary housing complex in Haengdang-dong, central Seoul. It was built in 1995 for 378 evicted tenants, affected by the Geumho–Haengdang–Hawangsimni urban redevelopment. The area used to be one of the largest and poorest shantytowns in Seoul with about 76,000 residents in 1990 (Križnik, 2021). Community movement in Songhak Maeul dates to the late 1980s, when several community organizers settled in Haengdang-dong. With the help of civil society groups, they organized various communal activities, which not only alleviated poverty but also strengthened social relationship networks in the area (Cho, 1998). The urban poor movement made an important shift after a massive urban redevelopment of the area started in 1993. Community organizers and members of about 350 remaining households formed the Tenants Countermeasure
178 Bl až Križnik and Su Kim Figure 7.2 Anti-eviction and housing rights struggle in Haengdang-dong, 1994
Source: Seongdong Residents Association (성동주민회)
Committee (세입자대책위원회), which successfully struggled against forced evictions, carried out by redevelopment associations and the state (Figure 7.2). 4 Between 1993 and 1995, the anti-eviction movement resisted displacement of the tenants and managed to protect their housing rights, paving the way for the construction of a temporary housing complex for the evictees (Kim, 2017a). These struggles strengthened solidarity among the tenants and improved their organizational capacity (Wi, 2015). As a result, the Geumho–Haengdang–Hawangsimni Planning Group (금호·행당·하왕지역 기획단) was established in 1995 to manage communal activities in six newly built temporary housing complexes. Among them, Songhak Maeul was the biggest and most active. Its residents held regular community meetings, workshops, and festivals, managed communal childcare, after-school and evening education, and established various producer and consumer cooperatives, including Nongol Credit Union (interview 2 July 2020). Community organizers also built coalitions with other community movements and civil society organizations from all over the country and abroad. These were instrumental in 4 The banners say – ‘[Seongdong-gu] district office, ignoring the Tenants Countermeasure Committee, has to wake up!’ and ‘Let the right housing policy come true!’
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strengthening the self-reliance of the community movement in Songhak Maeul, which Cho (1998: 99) recognized as an outstanding case of ‘progressive community movement’ in Korea. At that time, the state was largely seen as an adversary for supporting speculative urban redevelopment rather than tenants’ housing rights (interview 27 December 2018). In 1999, Songhak Maeul was demolished, and the residents moved to public rental housing in the newly built apartment complex. Conflicts between them and community organizers along with the social and economic gap between the tenants and new middle-class house owners in the apartment complex contributed to a sharp decline in communal activities during the early 2000s (Wi, 2015). In 2008, former Songhak Maeul community organizers launched the Seongdong Residents Association (성동주민회) to revive the community movement in the area (Kim, 2017a). The new neighbourhood organizations have focused on expanding consumer cooperatives and the local autonomy by collaborating with similar community organizations and the local government in the Seongdong-gu district. Continuity of communal activities was largely possible due to the financial and organizational support of the Nongol Credit Union which remains instrumental in sustaining community building in the former Geumho–Haengdang–Hawangsimni area (Križnik, 2021). Seongmisan Maeul Seongmisan Maeul refers to a social relationship network in a well-off residential area of north-western Seoul, stretching across Seongsan-dong, Mangwon-dong, Hapjeong-dong, and Seogyo-dong with Seongmisan Mountain as its symbolic centre. Communal activities in Seongmisan Maeul date back to the early 1990s, when young families started to settle in the area. They were unable to find suitable day care for their children, which led about twenty families to establish Our Kindergarten (우리어린이집) in 1994, the first co-parenting cooperative in the city (Ho, 2019). Other co-parenting, after-school, and consumer cooperatives (울림두레생협) soon followed suit. In 2004, the parents established Seongmisan School (성미산학교) to provide alternative education for the children and keep young families in the area. Elementary school was later complemented with middle and high school to provide a full twelve-year alternative education (Wi, Gu, Mun, Shin, Kim, Lee, and Heo, 2012). Co-parenting and the alternative school allowed parents to share the burden of education, while strengthening relations and shared identity among them, and improved their organizational capacity. The residents
180 Bl až Križnik and Su Kim Figure 7.3 Seongmisan Maeul Festival, 2007
Source: Seongmisan Maeul Community Centre (성미산마을회관)
began to hold regular community events and festivals and managed various neighbourhood organizations, including Seongmisan Maeul Theatre (성미 산마을극장) and Neighbourhood Kitchen (동네부엌) (Figure 7.3). As a result, a rather loose but strong social relationship network has evolved, which has sustained community building in Seongmisan Maeul for more than two decades (interview 21 February 2018). Furthermore, the residents became engaged in struggles against the redevelopment of Seongmisan Mountain from 2001–2003 and 2008–2010. While the first struggle successfully prevented the construction of a water reservoir, the second struggle failed to stop the construction of a private school at the foot of the mountain. Both struggles, nevertheless, became strongly ‘woven in the fabric of local identity’ in Seongmisan Maeul (Ho, 2019: 82). For its involvement in what they saw as the destruction of Seongmisan Mountain, the residents considered the state an adversary and have not relied on state support in the past (interview 21 February 2018). In the 2010s, however, Seongmisan Maeul became widely known for its successful community building, which attracted considerable attention from the mass media and local governments and the residents started to collaborate with the state and other neighbourhood organizations in Mapo-gu district (Cho and Križnik, 2017). Seongmisan Maeul community organizers came to play a prominent role in SMG and have signif icantly
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contributed to the expansion and institutionalization of community building in the city over the past decade (Ahn, Wi, and You, 2019). Despite its particular history and strong self-reliance, the community movement in Seongmisan Maeul was considered a role model of state-enabled community building in Seoul. Seowon Maeul Seowon Maeul is a tiny neighbourhood on the south-eastern outskirts of Seoul. In 2009, it had 365 residents most of whom have lived there since the early 1980s (Cho and Križnik, 2020). The residents reportedly had good relations, helping each other and holding regular community meetings (interview 13 March 2018). Although Seowon Maeul was not a seriously deprived residential area, strict building regulations, its peripheral location and the construction of nearby Amsa Bridge contributed to the deterioration of the living environment in the past. In 2005, a group of residents launched the Maeul Development Committee (마을발전위원회) to improve the neighbourhood. In 2008, the SMG selected Seowon Maeul for the Livable Maeul-making Pilot Project (살기좋은 마을만들기 시범사업, LMPP) (SMG, 2010), which became one of the first attempts to improve a deprived residential area in Seoul through citizen participation (Yu, 2018). The LMPP aimed to improve existing and provide new social amenities, encourage residents to renovate their houses, and strengthen social relationship networks in the neighbourhood (SMG, 2010). The LMPP planning process started in 2009. The experts organized seminars, surveys and interviews with the residents, public presentations, and community workshops (Figure 7.4), which turned out to be instrumental for successful planning, as well as for building trust among the stakeholders and confidence in public institutions. Many residents initially opposed urban regeneration, worrying that LMPP would result in additional building regulations and a decrease in property values. Their involvement in the planning process and collaboration with experts and public officials, nonetheless, helped the residents to recognize the importance of improving the living environment and social relationship networks. In the 2010 referendum, they overwhelmingly voted in favour of stricter rather than more flexible building regulations to preserve the quality of living environment in the neighbourhood (Yu, 2018). By 2012, a new community centre and park were constructed, streets were remodelled, and new parking and children’s playground were built. Along with the provision of social amenities, the LMPP also aimed to improve the
182 Bl až Križnik and Su Kim Figure 7.4 Community workshop in Seowon Maeul, 2009
Source: Place Making Associates
organizational capacity of the residents to manage communal activities in the neighbourhood. As a result, the residents were required to establish Residents Community Steering Committee (주민공동체 운영위원회, RCSC) that played a key role in community building, mediating between the residents and the state. The committee also successfully engaged residents in the voluntary improvement of their houses and gardens (CLC and SI, 2017). With the state support, the RCSC continues to manage the community centre and organizes communal activities in Seowon Maeul, which became widely recognized for a successful partnership between the residents and the state in community building in Seoul (Yu, 2018). Consequently, Seowon Maeul influenced community building in other neighbourhoods in the city, including Samdeok Maeul, discussed below (interview 1 February 2019). Samdeok Maeul Samdeok Maeul is a quiet neighbourhood in Jeongneung-dong, northern Seoul. In 2014, it had 466 residents, living in well-maintained single and multi-family houses (Seongbuk-gu, 2015). Many of these families have lived in the neighbourhood for several decades. Samdeok Maeul was designated for urban redevelopment in the past, although the latter never took place due
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to strict building regulations, and the residents had to find an alternative way to improve the declining living environment. In 2013, they applied for REMP, which was to improve existing and provide new social amenities and support the renovation of individual houses in the neighbourhood. As a comprehensive urban-regeneration approach, REMP in Samdeok Maeul also aimed to restore eroded social relationship networks (Kim, 2018). Although Samdeok Maeul was a small and not a seriously deprived residential area, the residents did not have close relations in the past (interview 18 March 2017). The state considered ‘residents community revitalization’ key to improving the living environment in Samdeok Maeul (Maeng, 2016: 6). The residents were required to elect representatives and establish Samdeok Maeul RCSC (삼덕마을 주민공동체 운영위원회), which was to steer the planning and implementation of REMP. Between 2014 and 2107, RCSC members attended more than seventy different meetings with experts, community organizers, and public officials. Surveys, nine community workshops, and public presentations were also organized to engage the residents in REMP. Citizen participation was mostly focused on the planning and management of the new community centre, which the state considered essential for effective community building in the neighbourhood (Seongbuk-gu, 2015). The planning process finished in 2015 and the REMP was completed after the opening of the new Samdeok Maeul Community Centre in late 2017 (Križnik, Cho, and Kim, 2019). Yet, citizen participation in Samdeok Maeul was not limited to REMP. In 2014, the residents organized a street festival, which attracted about two hundred visitors and became a turning point in community building (Križnik, 2018). Encouraged by its success, the residents became involved in other communal activities, including dining and food sharing, DIY workshops, and events for the children and the elderly (interview 18 May 2017). In sustaining community building, the role of two intermediary organizations – Sharing for Future (나눔과미래), an NGO with a lot of experience in community organizing, and Jeongneung Social Welfare Centre – became crucial (Sharing for Future, 2016). Throughout this process, the ‘identity of the village changed from geographical and physical boundaries to the space of collective activities and mutual exchange of opinions through the community activities’ (Lee, 2016: 225). Although communal activities have gradually declined over time, RCSC continues to manage the community centre with support of the local government and social welfare centre (Figure 7.5) (Kim, 2018). For collaboration with the state in sustaining community building in the neighbourhood, Samdeok Maeul has been considered a successful case of REMP (Cho and Križnik, 2020).
184 Bl až Križnik and Su Kim Figure 7.5 Samdeok Maeul RCSC annual meeting, 2018
Source: Blaž Križnik
Evolving State–Civil Society Relations in Community Building Community movements are grassroots collective actions that are embedded in particular historical, social, cultural, and institutional contexts (Castells, 1983). For being ‘overwhelmingly local in their formation’ (Day, 2006: 141), they cannot be easily compared and the community movements in Songhak Maeul, Seongmisan Maeul, Seowon Maeul, and Samdeok Maeul are no exception in this regard. Moreover, the limitations of a book chapter make an in-depth comparison particularly challenging. The chapter, nonetheless, reveals that community building has significantly shaped the living environment in each neighbourhood by improving individual and shared resources (e.g., community centres, day care and educational facilities, neighbourhood organizations, etc.), social relationship networks, and residents’ organizational capacity. It also shows that the state played an important role in the community movement formation, although state involvement varied considerably across the cases, reflecting state–civil society relations of a particular time and place (Table 7.1).5 Over time, 5 Using the comparative method requires abstraction and generalization across the cases to highlight their similarities and differences, which suggests a discontinuity among them. Historically, however, community movements in Korea did not evolve in disconnection but rather ‘in succession and overlapping’ (Jeong, 2012: 23).
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these have shifted from conf lictive and excluding relations towards more inclusive ones, while the state involvement in community building has evolved from what Somerville (2016) recognized as ignorance and oppression of community movements towards their co-optation and institutionalization. Table 7.1 Comparison of community building in Seoul Songhak Maeul
Seongmisan Maeul
Seowon Maeul
Samdeok Maeul
Beginning
1987
1994
2005
2013
Leading actors
Intermediaries, residents
Residents
Residents, state
State, intermediaries
Focus
Poverty, housing, education, living environment, local autonomy
Education, living environ- Living environment, Living ment, local autonomy local autonomy environment
Scope
Society
Beyond neighbourhood
State involvement
Oppression of community Ignorance of community movement movement
Representative Tenants Countermeasure neighbourhood Committee, Geumho– organizations Haengdang–Hawangsimni Planning Group, Nongol Credit Union, Seongdong Residents Association
Our Kindergarten, Ullim Dure Cooperative, Seongmisan School, Seongmisan Maeul Theatre, Neighbourhood
Neighbourhood
Neighbourhood
Co-optation of com- Institutionalizamunity movement tion of community movement Maeul Development Samdeok Maeul Committee, Seowon RCSC Maeul RCSC
Kitchen
The community movement in Songhak Maeul is the oldest among the cases. Unlike the others, it started as an urban poor movement and anti-eviction movement, and experienced ignorance by and strong state oppression in its formative period. The tenants perceived the state as ‘the bad guys to fight with’ for its support of speculative urban redevelopment rather than tenants’ housing rights (interview 27 December 2018). In response, the tenants resisted forced evictions not simply to demand as much compensation for eviction as possible, but to have their basic human rights recognized (Cho, 1998). After the successful struggle, the tenants moved to the temporary housing complex and later to the public rental housing, which shifted the focus of collective action from poverty, housing rights, and education towards the improvement of the living environment and expansion of local autonomy. This has signif icantly improved collaboration between the state and neighbourhood organizations.
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Struggles against urban redevelopment also affected community movement formation in Seongmisan Maeul, although it evolved in a rather different social and cultural context than Songhak Maeul. For its ignorance and oppression, similarly the residents considered the state as an adversary, which should be kept away from the community. When talking about alternative education, a community organizer from Seongmisan Maeul emphasized that ‘it is fine if [the state] does not support us, so they need not bother us’ (interview 21 February 2018). Over time, however, the community movement recognized the importance of building coalitions with other neighbourhood organizations and began collaborating with the state to improve the living environment in the neighbourhood. Yet, despite such collaboration, community movements in Seongmisan Maeul and Songhak Maeul sustained community building for more than two decades without having to rely on the state for support. In contrast to Songhak Maeul and Seongmisan Maeul, community movements in Seowon Maeul and Samdeok Maeul emerged later and have largely evolved under the long arm of the state, which enabled and led community building through the LMPP and REMP. In Seowon Maeul, the residents had good relations and organized communal activities before the urban regeneration took place (interview 28 June 2017). Existing social relationship networks helped them to engage in LMPP and collaborate with the state. In an interview dated 12 March 2018, a Seowon Maeul RCSC member described their relation with the state as a ‘give-and-take relationship’, where public officials ‘had to accomplish the projects to show their achievements, while Seowon Maeul residents cooperated to get what they needed’. As a result, the state-enabled community building improved the residents’ capacity to ‘work with a network of acquainted public officials’ and improve the living environment in the neighbourhood. In Samdeok Maeul, the residents did not have close relations in the past. A Samdeok Maeul RCSC member emphasized that ‘there was no interaction between the residents before the REMP’ (interview 11 September 2017). The lack of social relationship networks seems to have constrained residents’ capacity to take part in state-led community building (interview 18 May 2017). Although urban regeneration in Samdeok Maeul eventually improved social relationship networks and residents’ organizational capacity, a public official remained sceptical about the purpose and effectiveness of state-led community building, if community movement is established as a policy requirement rather than to empower the citizens. In the interviewee’s opinion, ‘the administrative agencies took advantage of communities to meet their policy objectives. […] The community led by the residents can
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survive, but one led by public officials or community organizers remains hollow’ (interview 21 September 2017). Despite strong state involvement, urban regeneration in Samdeok Maeul eventually expanded citizen participation beyond policy requirements and encouraged the residents to organize and manage communal activities on their own (Križnik, Cho, and Kim, 2019). Community building in Samdeok Maeul, however, would not have succeeded without community organizers from the Sharing for Future and Jeongneung Social Welfare Centre that played an important intermediary role by facilitating citizen participation and mediating between the residents and the state (interviews 18 August and 11 September 2017). The intermediary role of community organizers in Samdeok Maeul was somewhat similar to Songhak Maeul, where they also led communal activities and struggles against forced evictions, and mediated between the tenants, other communities, civil society organizations, and the state from the very beginning (interview 2 July 2020). In contrast, community movements in Seongmisan Maeul and Seowon Maeul have mostly evolved without involvement of external intermediaries (interviews 21 February 2018 and 1 February 2019). Lastly, the comparison of Songhak Maeul, Seongmisan Maeul, Seowon Maeul, and Samdeok Maeul reveals that community movements not only shape their living environment but can also contribute to urban change beyond the neighbourhood, although a significant difference exists across the cases. The state-enabled and state-led community building in Seowon Maeul and Samdeok Maeul was limited to the neighbourhood and largely focused on community centre management, which the two RCSCs were expected to operate without challenging its normative framework (interview 31 October 2017). A public official confirmed in an interview (21 September 2017) that ‘the local government has already set up a roadmap […] without paying attention to whether communities are actually activated’. DeFilippis, Fisher, and Shragge (2010) warn that this kind of co-optation can reduce organizational capacity and self-reliance of community movements, and lead to the decline of communal activities. Unsurprisingly, the residents of Samdeok Maeul perceived the state-led community building as a ‘burden’, ‘difficult to attend’ and ‘not in their interest’ (interviews 18 August and 11 September 2018). In contrast, the residents of Songhak Maeul and Seongmisan Maeul successfully managed neighbourhood organizations without relying on state support. Both community movements have built coalitions with other community movements and civil society organizations, which strengthened their self-reliance and expanded grassroots collective action beyond the
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neighbourhood (Table 7.1). On the one hand, the community movement in Songhak Maeul became involved in educating community organizers and in nationwide housing rights struggles, which are believed to have significantly contributed to the passing of the national housing rights legislation in 2015 (Shin, 2018; Križnik, 2021). Community organizers from Seongmisan Maeul, on the other hand, actively contributed to the expansion of community building and SNCSP in Seoul since 2011 (Ahn, Wi, and You, 2019; Ho, 2019). In this way, community movements in Songhak Maeul and Seongmisan Maeul seem to have realized their transformative potential, by evolving from what Ledwith (2011: 11) describes as a ‘good practice’ of community building towards a ‘radical, anti-discriminatory practice that is capable of transformative change’.
Conclusion Civic urbanisms sometimes arise out of the blue, yet they can have a lasting impact on the living environment in neighbourhoods and cities. Community building in Seoul, however, shows that community movements in neighbourhoods with a long history of grassroots collective action have a larger impact on the living environment, by improving individual and shared resources, social relationship networks, and residents’ organizational capacity. In contrast to the state-enabled and state-led community building, community movements with prior experiences of collective action were able to build local, national, and transnational coalitions with other community movements and civil society organizations, which not only expanded their engagement beyond a particular neighbourhood, but also sustained community building and improved their self-reliance over time. Furthermore, the chapter shows that community movements need to collaborate with the state to meet their long-term aims. This collaboration largely depends on the state–civil society relations, which in Korea historically evolved from excluding towards more inclusive relations. As a result, community movements have become partners that work with the state to improve the living environment and expand local autonomy in neighbourhoods and the city. This shows that civic urbanism, while marginalized in the past, has re-emerged as an integral part of urban governance in Seoul. At the same time, the chapter reveals that the growing state involvement in community building can lead to co-optation and institutionalization of community movements, which can weaken their transformative potential. In the case of state-enabled and state-led community building, the citizens
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struggled to sustain community movement without state support, which has compelled them to follow governmental agendas rather than challenge them. Co-optation and institutionalization of community movements seems to have restricted their impact and transformative potential. In contrast, community movements in neighbourhoods with prior experience of grassroots collective action had higher autonomy and were able to collaborate with the state on an equal footing. This suggests that improving the self-reliance and organizational capacity of community movements, including their ability to collaborate with other communities, civil society organizations and the state, can be instrumental in empowering citizens to shape the living environment on their terms and challenge the institutionalized urban meaning. In this way, community building in Seoul not only shows how to build inclusive and resilient neighbourhoods but also suggests a path towards civic urbanism capable of broader transformative change.
Acknowledgements The chapter draws from ongoing research on community building in Seoul that was in part supported by the Research Grants for Asian Studies funded by Seoul National University Asia Center (SNUAC), and by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2017S1A5A8021252). An early draft was presented at the 2018 GASS/PRCDN/SFI conference at the National University of Singapore. The authors wish to thank the interviewees for sharing their time, insights, and expertise, and Yoon Keumhee, Lee Bokyung, Lee Yujeong, and Kim Gyuri for helping prepare the chapter.
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Manzi, Tony, Karen Lucas, Tony Lloyd Jones, and Judith Allen. 2010. Social Sustainability in Urban Areas: Communities, Connectivity, and the Urban Fabric. London: Earthscan. Mobrand, Erik. 2008. ‘Struggles Over Unlicensed Housing in Seoul, 1960–80’. Urban Studies, 45(2): 367–389. doi: 10.1177/0042098007085968. Park, Won-soon. 2014. ‘In Seoul, the Citizens are the Mayor’. Public Administration Review, 74(4): 442–443. doi: 10.1111/puar.12243. Robson, Terry. 2000. The State and Community Action. London: Pluto. Seongbuk-gu Office. 2015. Designation and Planning Decision of Samdeok Maeul, Jeongneung-dong, Seongbuk-gu as REMP (성북구 정릉동 삼덕마을 주거환경관리구 역 지정 및 계획 결정). Seoul: Seongbuk-gu Office. [In Korean] Sharing for Future. 2016. Maeul Regeneration Story of the 2016 Seoul REMP, Look How Warm-Hearted is Samdeok Maeul (2016년 서울시 주거환경관리사업 마을재생 이야기, 삼덕마을에 넘치는 인정 좀 보소). Seoul: Seoul Metropolitan Government. [In Korean] SMG (Seoul Metropolitan Government). 2010. Type 1 District Unit Plan for Seoul Human Town Seowon Maeul (서울휴먼타운 서원마을 제1종지구단위계획). Seoul: SMG. [In Korean] SMG (Seoul Metropolitan Government). 2015. White Paper on Neighborhood Communities of Seoul: Seoul, Life and People. Seoul: SMG. Shin, Gi-Wook. 2006. Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Shin, Hyun Bang. 2018. ‘Urban Movements and the Genealogy of Urban Rights Discourses: The Case of Urban Protesters against Redevelopment and Displacement in Seoul, South Korea’. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 108(2): 356–369. doi: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1392844. Shin, Hyun Bang and Soo-Hyun Kim. 2016. ‘The Developmental State, Speculative Urbanisation and the Politics of Displacement in Gentrifying Seoul’. Urban Studies, 53(3): 540–559. doi: 10.1177/0042098014565745. Shin, Myung Ho. 1999. ‘History of Local Resident Movements in Korea (1) (한국 지 역주민운동의 역사 (1))’. Urbanity and Poverty, 38: 62–73. [In Korean] Somerville, Peter. 2016. Understanding Community: Politics, Policy and Practice, Second edition. Bristol: Policy Press. Walliman, Nicholas. 2006. Social Research Methods. Sage: London. Wi, Sung-Nam. 2015. ‘A Case Study of the Resident Movement in Geumho, Haengdang and Hawang Area (금호·행당·하왕지역의 주민운동 사례 분석)’. In New Resident Organizations’ Methodology, Cases, and Analysis (새로운 주민조직 방법론, 사례와 분석), edited by Korea Democracy Foundation, 47–69. Seoul: Korea Democracy Foundation. [In Korean]
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Wi, Sung-Nam. 2018. It is the First Time in Maeul: Principles and Experiences of Seongmisan Maeul (마을은 처음이라서: 성미산마을이 생겨난 원리와 경험). Seoul: Chaeksup. [In Korean] Wi, Sung-Nam, Gyoseon Gu, Chiung Mun, Seungcheol Shin, Minsu Kim, Gyuwon Lee, and Seonhui Heo. 2012. Making a Maeul, History and Ideas Behind Seongmisan Maeul (마을하기, 성미산마을의 역사와 생각). Anyang: Korean Research Institute for Human Settlements. [In Korean] Yu, Na Kyung. 2018. ‘From Seoul Human Town (Seowon Maeul) to Urban Regeneration (서울휴먼타운(서원마을)에서 도시재생까지)’. In Seoul Urban Regeneration Policy Brief (서울특별시 도시재생 정책브리프), edited by Seoul Metropolitan Government, Urban Regeneration Support Center, 22–26. Seoul: Seoul Metropolitan Government. [In Korean]
About the Authors Blaž Križnik is Associate Professor of urban sociology at the Graduate School of Urban Studies, Hanyang University in Seoul. He is the co-founder and researcher at the Institute for Spatial Policies in Ljubljana. His research is focused on comparative urban studies, urban social movements, and Korean studies. Su Kim holds a Master of Urban and Regional Planning degree from the Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Seoul National University. Her research interests include urban studies, community development, and civic engagement in urban planning. She is currently involved in the 2040 Seoul Plan research team at the Seoul Institute.
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A Shifting Paradigm of Urban Regeneration in Seoul? A Case Study of Citizen Participation in Haebangchon Urban Regeneration Project Taehee Lee and Sukyoung Han
Abstract The Urban Regeneration Project (URP) in South Korea was off icially introduced in 2013 with a formal statement of an urban policy paradigm shift. According to the central government, the URP differs fundamentally from the comprehensive urban redevelopment method or governmentled planning in that it is oriented towards an inclusive and participatory approach in decision-making. Several novel organizations such as the Residents’ Committee were introduced as a part of this approach. Seoul in particular, has promoted the URP most proactively at the city level. In this chapter, the authors investigate whether the newly introduced inclusive and participatory approach was implemented as it was designed. Subsequently, the authors evaluate whether the URP could be assessed as a ‘paradigm shift’. Keywords: Citizen participation, participatory governance, intermediary organization, neighbourhood, urban regeneration
Introduction The Urban Regeneration Project (도시재생사업, URP) in South Korea (hereafter Korea) officially begun in 2013 with the enactment of the Special Act on Urban Regeneration in 2013.1 The central government proclaimed that 1 URP is an urban regeneration programme that is based on the Special Act on Promotion of and Support for Urban Regeneration. There have been many other programmes for urban
Cho, Im Sik, Blaž Križnik and Jeffrey Hou (eds), Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia. Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei beyond Developmental Urbanization. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463728546_ch08
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the URP demonstrates a shifting paradigm of urban policy (MOLIT, 2013; URIS, 2015). The previous ‘paradigm of urban policy’ mainly referred to the market-led comprehensive redevelopment approach in improving derelict areas, as well as the government-led top-down planning process prevalent in the overall policy process (MOLIT, 2013; Park and Kim, 2014). In the marketled comprehensive redevelopment project which had been the mainstream method for neighbourhood improvement since the 1980s, decision-making has been highly dominated by property owners but excluded the tenants (Shin and Kim, 2015). Despite its contribution to the dramatic improvement of the physical environment, strong criticisms have been presented to the exclusive nature of the approach for tenants in both process and outcome, which in the end resulted in large-scale displacements and destructions of existing communities (Ha, 2004; Byeon, 2012). Against this background, calls for a more inclusive and incremental approach of urban regeneration have increased (Jeong, 1999; Ha, 2001; Byeon, 2012; Park, 2015). Moreover, this change needs to be understood within the context of the political change at the macro-level. The demise of an authoritarian and the rise of a democratic state have caused a fundamental change in the relation between the state and civil society in the overall policy process, and the emergence of the URP was not free from this change at the macro-level. Within this background, the National Basic Plan on Urban Regeneration (MOLIT, 2013: 4), which is the highest-level plan that provides a vision, objectives, and overall directions of the URP, states that the URP ‘pursues urban regeneration [so] that all Korean people, without anyone excluded, can be happy’. Also, the URP aims to build the capacity of community members who have the potential to solve problems in their living environment through active community participation (Ibid: 5). To realize the vision and objectives, a series of institutionalization processes followed. Policy statements, guidelines, and ordinances have been established. Several novel organizations such as the Urban Regeneration Support Center and the Residents’ Committee were introduced to promote and support the participatory and inclusive urban regeneration process. Through various government-funded publications and media, the government advertised that the inclusive and participatory style of urban regeneration is being
regeneration before the URP, but it was the f irst programme that includes the term ‘urban regeneration’ in the name. Furthermore, compared with other government-funded urban regeneration programmes, the URP is larger in terms of the financial scale and administrative support.
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well implemented (inter alia, see MOLIT and LH, 2020). However, unlike the institutional building and publications, there have been strong criticisms suggesting that community participation remains tokenistic, and the policy process is highly dominated by the central and local government (inter alia, see Kim, 2015; CCEJ, 2017). In this situation, the authors investigate whether the newly introduced inclusive and participatory approach was implemented as it was designed and proclaimed. Subsequently, the authors evaluate whether the URP could be assessed as a paradigm shift. Before the investigation, the chapter starts with a brief review of the background of the introduction of the URP in Korea and how the scheme is different from the previous methods of urban regeneration. Amongst various types of URP, this chapter specifically focuses on the URP in residential areas.2 The investigation is undertaken through an in-depth qualitative case study, with a particular focus on power relations among main actors and formal institutions such as acts and government guidelines, which can be categorized as ‘rules-in-form’ (Lowndes, Pratchett, and Stoker, 2006). Haebangchon (해방촌) URP in Seoul is selected as a case study area, mainly because it was one of the only two areas that received central government URP funding at the time of the research. This was important because it is the most common way of f inancing the URP in Korea. Therefore, selecting Haebangchon has the advantage of generalizing research f indings, although this was not the main motivation for the case study selection. Document analysis and semi-structured interviews were mainly used as research methods. Fieldwork was undertaken between December 2016 and February 2019. In total, twelve interviews were conducted, which can be divided into five main groups: Residents’ Committee, Urban Regeneration Support Center, a planning consultancy company, Seoul Metropolitan Government (서울특별시, SMG), and Yongsan-gu Off ice (용산구청, YGO).3
2 The URP focuses on various types of derelict, underused, or underperforming areas. Depending on the characteristics of areas and time, the URP has been sub-divided into three to five types, which includes the regeneration of large-scale derelict urban infrastructure (e.g. port), city centres, or residential areas. 3 Yongsan-gu is one of the twenty-five municipal districts that make up the SMG. Each district, as well as the SMG, is democratically represented by an elected mayor and councillors. The districts are a primary-level local government that handles autonomous affairs and delegated affairs from the SMG and the central government.
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Emergence of the URP within the Korean Political and Planning Backgrounds The introduction of the URP needs to be understood within a broad sociopolitical change and critique of the market-led approach for derelict neighbourhood improvement. The change in the sociopolitical environment has fundamentally affected the overall decision-making environment in Korea. During the period of a developmental state, the policy process was dominated by the state – mainly the executive – whereas citizen participation was highly restricted (Chung, 1986, 1989; Kim, 1999; Lee, 2005). The democratic transition in 1987 and the subsequent institutional reform were milestones of the changing relationship between the state and the civil society. Starting with the amendment of the constitution, which introduced direct election of the president in 1987 and the head of local governments in 1995, there have been a series of reforms to expand room for participation of non-governmental actors including civic groups, professionals, and private companies (Im, 2009; Jeong and Oh, 2010; Jung, 2010). This was particularly visible since the late 1990s, when a relatively progressive Democratic Party ruled the country for ten years (Lee, Lim, and Park, 2007). As a result, participatory governance – at least tokenistic in some cases – became a preferred form of decision-making. This shift was particularly visible at the sub-national scale. At both metropolitan and municipal scales, encouraging participation of lay people was particularly visible. Many local governments competitively introduced and institutionalized participatory urban planning and participatory budgeting since the early 2000s, appealing to citizens (voters) for a democratic style of governing. The URP which focuses on the neighbourhood scale was strongly influenced by this trend. Therefore, a conventional official- and professionalled planning which was still prevalent in Korea was discouraged, while the participation of local lay people was strongly encouraged. The URP was also directly affected by the critique and negative externalities of the market-led comprehensive redevelopment approach. The comprehensive redevelopment approach used to be the mainstream method in improving derelict neighbourhoods and while effective, is still undertaken in many areas across the nation. Comprehensive redevelopment projects started in earnest in 1983 with the introduction of the Joint Redevelopment Project. Since then, the backbone of the method remained although there have been minor changes over time. 4 In this method, property owners 4 In general, there are four main actors: property owners (pre-redevelopment), buyers (newly built properties), local government and construction companies. Property owners
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dominate decision-making, while there is no room for tenants, although some of them who meet certain conditions are subjected to compensation at the end of the project. In order to maximize the owners’ interest, newly built properties for sale are designed to maximize profits. Accordingly, most of them are high-quality apartments targeting the middle class or above, while they are unaffordable for most of the tenants who used to live there. This mechanism inevitably raises issues of gentrification, displacement, and ‘development for whom’. Although the physical conditions of the derelict areas have improved dramatically, strong criticism has been focused on the exclusion of tenants in the process and outcomes (Ha, 2004; Byeon, 2012). Against this background, voices calling for a more inclusive and incremental approach to urban regeneration have increased (Jeong, 1999; Ha, 2001; Byeon, 2012; Park, 2015). These calls for a more inclusive and incremental approach did not emerge out of the blue but were related to a long history of social struggles for housing rights among different social groups. The earliest strand stemmed from the anti-eviction and urban poor movement in the 1960s (see Kim, 1993). Another strand came from the maeulmandeulgi movement (마을만들기 운 동) that emerged in the 1980s and advocated for grassroots democracy and community building (Shin, 2008; Križnik and Kim, this volume). Another strand was from urban design and the architectural profession (see Seo and Lim, 2009). All of them opposed the comprehensive redevelopment approach and instead advocated for an incremental and participatory approach to improve the living environment. Many of these ideas were formally accepted in the Liveable City-making Pilot Project in 2007 which was the first nation-wide official initiative of that kind. Around the same time, the SMG also introduced alternative pilot participatory initiatives with a similar background. The ideas from the aforementioned strands were used in SMG’s rationales for promoting resident’s participation, which is clearly visible in a participatory urban regeneration manual published by the SMG (2013). Despite various pilot initiatives, it was not until 2013 when the URP was introduced that a series of alternative approaches became form a redevelopment association and become the developer of the project. They provide land for the project and cover most of the expenses by selling new properties after redevelopment. Since the redevelopment association lacks money and expertise to proceed with the project, they make a contract with a construction company to borrow money and receive professional support. Local government plays the role of a plan maker and development supervisor. In short, the redevelopment project is realized based upon the combination of land (existing property owners), money (new property buyers), lenders and constructor (construction company), and the authorization body (local government).
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institutionalized as the main method in urban regeneration of derelict residential areas with a robust statutory basis. Since 2013, both the comprehensive redevelopment and the URP method co-existed and became two main methods for dealing with derelict residential areas. It depends on city governments which method they implement in a particular area. Yet, in Seoul under the former Mayor Park Won-soon5, a strong advocate of inclusive community participation and incremental style of area improvement, it was clear that the main method shifted from comprehensive redevelopment to the URP. Between 2012 and 2019, among 683 designated zones for a comprehensive development project in Seoul, which were designated before (the former) Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon was elected, 394 were released. At the same time, only 83 zones were newly designated, among which most were apartment reconstruction projects while only eight were comprehensive redevelopment projects of derelict areas (Lee, 2020). In contrast, since 2014 the SMG has allocated significant resources to URP and other relevant projects with alternative methods on top of the central government’s programmes.
Institutionalization of the Urban Regeneration Project With the democratization of Korean society and calls for a more inclusive and incremental approach in neighbourhood regeneration, with the enactment of the Special Act, the URP formally commenced. The central government prepared the URP grants and recipient areas were chosen through competitions. It is important to note that in parallel with the national programme, metropolitan and city governments are also able to set up grants and select areas for the URPs with their budgets. However, due to their limited financial capacity, as well as the limited enthusiasm of mayors, it was only the SMG and the Gyeonggi Provincial Government that have been running their own URPs. Yet, the Gyeonggi Provincial Government chose only two areas in 2017 as pilot projects. In contrast, the SMG has allocated a large budget and has chosen more than forty areas since 2014. Moreover, various levels of formal institutions – ‘rules-in-form’ – were newly established to realize the inclusive and participatory urban regeneration approach. Clearly, the first and the most important step was the establishment of the Special Act and other lower-level regulations to provide the overall framework of the URP and statutory basis for various types of 5
Park Won-soon was the mayor of Seoul between 2011 and 2020.
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support. Most of the details are stated in formal guidelines such as the funding application, setting up of plans and implementation. Within the formal institutions, three novel and important organizations were introduced to realize the inclusive approach: the Urban Regeneration Support Center (hereafter Support Center, 도시재생지원센터), the Residents’ Committee (주민 협의체), and the Council for Project Implementation (사업추진협의회). According to the national guidelines, all city governments implementing URPs are required to establish at least one Support Center for each URP site (MOLIT, 2016, 2018). Although there are several types that can be created depending on the funding source and staff ing method (Park and Lim, 2014), Support Centers are basically designed as quasi-public, arm’s length bodies of a city government. They are established to support the overall process of the URP at the forefront of the programme, including planning and project implementation, capacity building of residents, and facilitating collaboration and coordination of different opinions among stakeholders (MOLIT, 2016: 12–14). Throughout the URP, they are required to work between the government and residents and bridge the gap between them. Therefore, they are categorized as intermediary organizations (Park and Lim, 2014; MOLIT, 2016, 2018). Their organizational structure is quite flexible and does not have a fixed form to respond to different local needs and contexts. Although there was no specific form suggested by the central government, there are three main types according to the organization’s legal status, from which local governments may choose (Park and Lim, 2014): a not-for-profit public foundation founded by local government, a private corporate body that outsourced the Support Center’s role by local government, or a temporary organization directly under the local government. In terms of the organization, the composition of members and their authorities, most of the Support Centers, which is also the case in Haebangchon, includes a General Coordinator – who holds the concurrent position of organization head – and staff with expertise in the field of the URP. To encourage inter-sectoral collaboration and enhance the quality of the regeneration plan, the guidelines state that the General Coordinator ought to be granted authority equal to the deputy mayor (MOLIT, 2016: 14–15). It is also stated that they should be given authority to organize the Support Center and hire staff. Yet, in most cases their authority is limited, and it is highly affected by the organization’s legal status. This is discussed further in the next section. The URP introduces two more novel organizations to support the residents’ involvement in decision-making: the Residents’ Committee and the Council for Project Implementation. According to the guidelines, the main role of the
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Figure 8.1 Process of the URP Site Selection Period
Urban Regeneration Project (URP) Period 1 year
Post-URP Period
4 years
Site selection stage
Planning stage
Implementation stage
Succession stage
Preparation for competition (URP grant)
Establishing Urban Regeneration Revitalisation Plan
Implementation of specific projects based on the Urban Regeneration Revitalisation Plan
Sustaining regeneration led by community
Source: Taehee Lee and Sukyoung Han
Residents’ Committee is collecting residents’ opinions and mediating different views and conflicts (MOLIT, 2016: 22–24). Members of the Residents’ Committee are asked to voluntarily participate in the planning and implementation process. However, the Residents’ Committee lacks formally devolved power, as it is not given any actual authority. If we adopt Arnstein’s (1969) framework of citizen participation, the Residents’ Committee only has a consultative role. The Council for Project Implementation was introduced in the national guideline (MOLIT, 2016: 26) as a formal participatory decision-making body of each project.6 The organization is designed to incorporate representatives of main stakeholders in relation to the project. It adopts a co-chair system: the deputy mayor of a city government and the General Coordinator. However, it is worth noting that although the guideline recommends that the Council for Project Implementation should make all important decisions, there is no penalty provision if a city government does not follow the guidelines. The process of the URP is divided into three stages: site selection, URP, and post-URP (Figure 8.1). The URP stages can be subdivided into two stages: planning stage (establishing a regeneration plan; the first year of the URP) and implementation stage (implementation of the plan; subsequent four years). After selecting the site, city governments in most cases make a contract with a planning consultancy company to establish a bidding application. If the bidding is successful, city governments establish a Support Center and a Residents’ Committee to make a regeneration plan. When the central government approves the plan, the implementation stage starts. After four years of implementation, the URP formally ends and moves on to the succession stage. This chapter specifically focuses on the first two stages. Throughout the stages, guidelines recommend that all stakeholders should closely cooperate, while residents’ opinions and needs should be respected and reflected in the plan (MOLIT, 2015, 2016, 2018). The next section focuses 6 Each URP consists of several projects.
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Figure 8.2 Distribution of buildings in Haebangchon (using registered building data until 2016)
Source: Taehee Lee and Sukyoung Han
on the Haebangchon Urban Regeneration Project to investigate how the new approach is implemented in practice.
Case study: Haebangchon Urban Regeneration Project Site Selection Stage Haebangchon is located in Yongsan-gu in central Seoul. The URP site is 332,000m2, with a total population of 13,106 (SMG, 2017). The site is below the Namsan Mountain and is mostly very hilly. Haebangchon was established as an informal settlement for North Korean refugees and returning citizens after the liberation of Korea in 1945. At the time, the area was a shanty town filled with low-quality houses and insufficient urban infrastructure (SMG and YGO, 2015). Despite the gradual improvement of the physical environment, many low-quality houses still remain, and the area lacks urban infrastructure such as parking and open spaces (Figure 8.2 and Figure 8.3).
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Figure 8.3 The appearance of buildings in Haebangchon in 2017
Source: Taehee Lee
To tackle these problems, the SMG selected Haebangchon for the URP in 2014 and the central government selected it in 2016. With KRW 10 billion in support, the project was finished in 2020. To look at the relationship between the state, residents, and the community, a good starting point is to look at the process of site selection and its consequences. While the SMG was designing the Seoul-type URP in 2014, they sent a request letter of recommendation for the Seoul-type URP to each of twenty-five district offices in the city. Haebangchon was one of the areas that were recommended by the YGO. The SMG recognized the problems related to the deteriorated physical environment, as well as the potential of Haebangchon for a successful URP: the unique demographic composition with many artists and foreigners, the specific location of the area, and the existence of a strong and unique sense of community among the residents. As a result, Haebangchon was selected as one of eight regeneration areas for the first round Seoul-type URP in 2014. It is important to stress that the site selection process was done in a highly top-down manner. The application process was mainly led by the SMG and there was little room, if any, for the community to be involved. The majority of the residents had no knowledge about the URP at the beginning;
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Figure 8.4 The overall governance structure initially designed by the SMG Collaboration Process Public Private Partnership
City / Gu Urban Regeneration Organization
Urban Regeneration Support Center
City / Gu Co-working Operational System Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) (support budget, labour, and cooperative work)
Yongsan-gu Office (YGO) (implement and execute the regeneration project)
Director: General Coordinator Support Overall management of the URP
∙ Facilitate communication between residents and city/gu government ∙ Provide consultation and support in establishing regeneration plans
Council for Project Implementation
Provide general information of the regeneration project and the community
Residents’ committee / Residents Community Sub-group
Project Housing Sub-group participation, resident-driven Local Economy Sub-group project proposals, propose opinions
∙ Collect feedback from stakeholders ∙ Resolve disputes and disagreements
Source: SMG (2017: 118), modified by the authors
therefore, there was a significant lack of shared understanding and motivation about the URP. Several interviewees claimed that at the beginning, some residents complained and could not understand why Haebangchon needed a regeneration project and why the SMG bothered them, despite the provision of KRW 10 billion. The SMG also exerted stronger influence over Haebangchon and two other areas than over the other neighbourhood type URP areas in the city. In contrast to those areas, Haebangchon and two other areas were under the direct management of the SMG with the cooperation of the Gu offices. This strongly affected governance and power relations in the overall process of project management, which is discussed below. Planning Stage Soon after Haebangchon was selected in December 2014, the process of establishing a regeneration plan started. The SMG contracted with a planning consultant company to support the process. Until February 2015, several meetings took place among existing community groups, planning consultants, the SMG, and the YGO to collect different opinions about the URP. This was followed by a public presentation to the residents in March 2015. Around the same time, two main organizations for the participatory regeneration project – Support Center and Residents’ Committee – were formed and the planning process was started in earnest. They were designed to work closely with the SMG and the YGO (Figure 8.4). The structure of the Support Center changed over time following changing needs and roles in practice, but it has retained its overall structure
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Figure 8.5 The organization structure of Haebangchon Urban Regeneration Support Center (in March 2017) General Coordinator (Part-time)
Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG)
One official in charge of the Haebangchon URP
Yongsan-gu Office (YGO)
One official in charge of the Haebangchon URP
General Secretary (Full-time)
Coordinator Administrative support
Promotion & Event Planning
(Full-time)
(Full-time)
(1 person)
(1 person)
Village Facilitator (1 person)
(Full-time)
Community Coordinator (1 person)
(Part-time)
Local Economy Coordinator (1 person)
(Part-time)
Urban & Architectural Coordinator (1 person)
(Part-time)
New Deal Job for Young People (3~5 person)
Source: SMG (2017: 126), modified by the authors
(Figure 8.5). The Support Center is composed of 11–13 employees: a General Coordinator (the head of the organization), a general secretary, and other lower-level supporting staff. The General Coordinator is a university professor and was appointed by the SMG at the beginning. Yet, he could work for the Support Center for only two hours a week, or one and a half days. For this reason, the SMG hired another full-time general secretary who played the role of the deputy head and substituted General Coordinator. Two things are worth noting at this point. Firstly, in practice, the part-time position of the General Coordinator undermined his authority because one-anda-half days’ work a week was not sufficient for him to deal with all major issues regarding the organization and the Haebangchon URP. Secondly, all members of the Support Center except the General Coordinator were hired by the SMG on a year’s contract or shorter contract-based positions. In practice, this has strongly affected power relations, as discussed in the next sub-section. In March 2015, the Residents’ Committee was launched with 337 members, which increased to 585 by October 2016 (SMG, YGO, and Haebangchon Urban Regeneration Support Center, 2016: 20). At the outset, there were three thematic groups in the Residents’ Committee: community, economy, and housing. A chairman and three thematic group leaders were elected through an election at a general meeting, and altogether 52 members were co-opted as the steering group. Subsequently, several meetings were conducted between the planning consultants, SMG and YGO officials, the steering group members of the Residents’ Committee,
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and other members of existing community groups in order to listen to and exchange stakeholders’ opinions. In addition, two surveys were also conducted between April and June 2015. As a result, the first draft of the urban regeneration plan was announced in June 2015. This was followed by sixteen meetings between the thematic group members of the Residents’ Committee and planning consultants between August and October 2015. During the thematic group meetings, residents’ needs and opinions were additionally reflected and a revised version of the regeneration plan was presented in a general steering group meeting in November. Afterwards, the final draft plan was presented at a general meeting in December 2015 to all residents of Haebangchon. Although it was clearly visible that space was created for the participation of the residents in policy decision-making regardless of ownership, as Cornwall (2008: 275) pointed out, this cannot be a sufficient condition for effective participation. Much depends not only ‘on how people take up and make use of what is on offer, as well as on supportive processes that can help build capacity, nurture voices and enable people to empower themselves’, but also on ‘who participates’, when and on what issues. Therefore, it is necessary to look at the ‘quality’ of the process critically. Unfortunately, in the case of the Haebangchon URP, there were several limitations. Very early in the planning stage when the Residents’ Committee was not yet firmly established, most of the invited members were the existing community group leaders such as the Tong7 leaders and members of the Residents Autonomy Council. The Tong leaders continued to play a pivotal role in conducting surveys. The f irst survey was conducted in May 2015 by the Tong leaders with f ive residents in each Tong (in total n=95) without an appropriate sampling method (SMG, YGO, and Haebangchon Urban Regeneration Support Center, 2016: 23), which made its validity questionable. The second survey, conducted a month later, also had a validity problem as only thirty residents participated without any sampling method (Ibid: 24). According to interviews, most residents did not know about the surveys, as well as the process of the regeneration plan, until the first draft was announced. Although the surveys lack validity, they were used as important references in the subsequent process to justify the initial plan. In the later part of the planning stage, only minor amendments were available for other residents because the initial plan
7 Tong is a subdivision of Dong, which is the smallest administrative unit in Korean cities. The Tong leader is a resident and plays the bridging role between the Dong office and the residents.
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was based on surveys that allegedly reflected the general population of the Haebangchon, as can be seen from an interview with a member of the Residents’ Committee: When I started to participate, it was already in the middle of the planning process. Officials, consultants, and other participants who participated from the earlier stage said that the plan was established based on surveys, which I haven’t heard of. I guess not many people heard about the survey at the time. Yet, because they said the plan was based on surveys, it was difficult to change it significantly later. (Interview with a member of the Residents’ Committee, 1 September 2017)
Despite the limited open participation and invalid surveys at the early stage, at the time with the final urban regeneration plan most interviewees from the Residents’ Committee and the Support Center expressed satisfaction in general with the supportive and collaborative attitude of the SMG official. However, the plan could not get a final approval and move on to the implementation stage until 2017, because the SMG and YGO decided to make an additional bid to secure the central government regeneration fund. This decision started from the SMG’s suggestion in early 2015 and the YGO agreed as they thought securing additional funds on top of the current one would be possible. For this decision, there was no sufficient consultation with the Residents’ Committee. Members of the Residents’ Committee were not informed about the reasons for and potential consequences of the bidding, but the process was mainly led by the SMG and the YGO. The SMG eventually applied for the bidding in April 2015 and successfully received the funding in early 2016. This success, however, caused a considerable delay in the project. The final draft of the regeneration plan was ready in December 2015 and residents were waiting for its implementation. However, major projects, except for some small-scale community development programmes, had to wait until May 2017 when the plan received the final approval by the central government. This delay would not have happened if Haebangchon had not applied for the central government fund. Moreover, unlike what was expected when the SMG and YGO officials prepared for the central government funding, despite the success in bidding, the allocation of any additional budget to the Haebangchon URP was refused by the SMG. Consequently, there were no benefits from the bidding delay but only significant negative side effects. This is discussed in the next sub-section.
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Implementation Stage In the previous stages, issues were relatively focused and events happened relatively linearly. In contrast, several specific projects were carried out at the same time during the implementation stage. As such, issues were more dispersed and events happened sporadically. Rather than examining specific projects in a chronological order, two key issues that show the relationships among the sector are reviewed in detail in this subsection. • How have participatory organizations operated in practice? An examination of their membership, authorities, and impact on power relations. Before investigating specif ic events in the implementation stage, it is important to review the actual operation of the three core participatory organizations (Support Center, Residents’ Committee, and Council for Project Implementation) in the implementation stage. The Support Center was introduced as an arm’s length intermediary organization to bridge the gap between the government and the residents. Yet, it is questionable whether the Haebangchon Support Center has played the role at the intermediary level with a certain amount of autonomy from both sides. It is important to understand the funding, personnel system, and legal status of the organization. The organization was established by the SMG as a temporary organization directly under their authority. All management costs were provided by the SMG. No budget and expenses were allowed to be used autonomously. As a temporary organization without a corporate status, the Support Center could not produce any official documents either. These could only be executed through the hands of an SMG official through a formal administrative process. Moreover, although the Support Centers were to play supporting roles in the entire URP process, no document states their authority with compelling power. For example, unlike what is written in the central government’s guidelines which state that the General Coordinator shall be given authority over the composition of the organization and human resources and as much authority as the deputy mayor (MOLIT, 2016: 14-15), in practice, the authority was not devolved to the General Coordinator but remained in the hands of SMG officials. Furthermore, the insecure positions of the staff and the frequent absence of the General Coordinator additionally undermined the Support Center’s autonomy. As a result, the overall operation has been under the SMG’s
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control and the Support Center operated like its branch office rather than as an intermediary. What can we do? [sigh] […] Everything is in the hands of the SMG official. If OOO does not want to do anything, then it’s over. The first time, residents came to the Support Center and made demands. But now, they know we have no power, so they demand directly from the SMG official. (Interview with a coordinator of the Support Center, date omitted intentionally)
Similarly, the Residents’ Committee had no actual authority in decisionmaking either, despite the official guidelines requiring the opposite. During the planning stage, it functioned generally well following the guidelines. However, after the completion of the final draft, most of the specific projects could not be implemented but had to wait until the plan was approved by the central government which took more than a year. The members did not expect this considerable delay, and they gradually became frustrated and lost their interest in the URP. Furthermore, notwithstanding the SMG’s ostensible promotion of residents’ participation, the rationale of which were primarily derived from normative ideas of active citizenship and the necessity of rebuilding broken communities (see SMG, 2013: 17), residents became tired of spending energy and time in the committee with no economic rewards or other types of tangible benefits. Furthermore, after the plan obtained the approval and moved to the implementation stage, there was little for the residents to contribute, unless they had expertise related to the implementation of specific projects. Moreover, based on the job rotation system of the Korean public administration, in the middle of the URP a new SMG official who was not fond of the idea of community participation and the role of intermediary organizations took charge of the project. Thereafter, conflicts rose much more frequently between the official and other participants, and this further discouraged residents from participating in the committee. In such a situation, after the planning stage, the momentum of community participation was reduced significantly. Although the total number of the members increased from 337 to 612 between 2015 and 2018, the actual participation rate decreased dramatically. This can be seen from the reduction of turnout for the election of the Residents’ Committee board members. In the first election held in March 2015, the turnout rate was 62% (209 of 337), but in the second election held in April 2016, it decreased to 42% (232 of 559) (SMG, 2017: 6). In the third election held in March 2018, the turnout rate plummeted to just 14% (86 of 612) (Haebangchon Urban Regeneration Support Center,
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2018). Only a handful of members attended meetings regularly (interviews with Residents’ Committee members). This low participation of committee members raised the issue of representativeness, and this again resulted in withering the organization’s influence. This will be discussed in more detail in the following sub-section. Moreover, in the Haebangchon URP, the Council for Project Implementation did not operate in accordance with the officially approved regeneration plan. According to government guidelines, a Council for Project Implementation dealing with specific projects had to be established as a decision-making body for each project. Each one had to be composed of various relevant stakeholders (MOLIT, 2016: 25–27). Yet, in Haebangchon none was established until 2019, which was a year before the end of the Haebangchon URP. The f irst and the last Council for Project Implementation dealing with the renovation of the Shin-Heung Market, a traditional market located at the centre of Haebangchon, was formed with fifteen members from various sectors. Importantly, the purpose of establishing the organization was not to make decisions regarding the project, but to listen to the opinions of various stakeholders, requesting for cooperation, and mediating conflicts (SMG, 2019). In total, four meetings were held, and no authority was devolved to its non-public members. Moreover, apart from this project no other Council for Project Implementation was established, which makes the Haebangchon URP not much different from other conventional public projects in terms of project implementation. Projects such as ‘Making the Haebangchon Street’ were conducted like other public projects and it was difficult to find much difference. The construction work for physical improvement begins after holding a public hearing once or twice and noting additional opinions from the Residents’ Committee board members. After that we (Residents’ Committee) were not well informed about the progress of the project and there were not many chances to discuss the project. (Interview with a member of the Support Center on 1 January 2019)
• How was the cooperation in the partnership? An examination of the relationship between the SMG and residents. Since the Haebangchon URP was mainly funded and managed by the SMG without devolving its authority to the partnership, the overall working partnership was highly inf luenced by the SMG. In practice, the working partnership was signif icantly affected by working-level
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SMG off icials in charge of the project who had a fairly large amount of discretion throughout the process. In fact, all interviewees from the Support Center and the Residents’ Committee remarked that the values, personality, and working style of the SMG off icial impacted the functioning of the public-private partnership most signif icantly. Under the job rotation system in the Korean public administration, as of February 2019 four SMG off icials – one in each term – had taken the seat. During the Haebangchon URP, although there were off icials who were, overall, keen on the participatory process and thus were supportive, there were also off icials who were not. When the latter type was in the seat, frictions tended to occur more often. According to interviews with members of the Support Center and Residents’ Committee, they were not satisf ied with the attitude of the SMG off icial overall due to the official’s dominance in decision-making and the official’s not respecting their opinion. Amongst the unsupportive off icials, interviewees from the Support Center and Residents’ Committee pointed to a specific one whose attitude was particularly un-cooperative and authoritarian. It seemed that the reason for the official’s uncooperative attitude was mainly based on their different view on community participation and bottom-up decision-making, as well as the official’s personal characteristics. In an interview with the official, they criticized the low level of participation and the active participation of a few people in the Residents’ Committee which raised an issue of representativeness. Based on this ‘unrepresentative’ participation of residents, the off icial questioned the legitimacy of the activity. The official also questioned the effectiveness of the community participation due to the lack of professional knowledge of residents, which they thought is necessary for the residents to be an effective partner in public projects. Lastly, the official also raised the issue of responsibility to the outcome of the decision, by saying ‘if any problems would have happened when the URP followed their [the Support Center and the Residents’ Committee] opinion, would they take responsibility? No, it is us who should take it, not them.’ (Interview with a SMG official who was in charge of Haebangchon URP, dates omitted intentionally) Based on the ‘problems’ of community participation in practice, the official argued that the conventional top-down planning process where plans are made first by officials and professionals and then a public hearing can take place is the ‘right way’ to prevent public projects from being biased by a few people. The official was also critical of the governance structure
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of the URP and remarked that the Support Center should not be an arm’s length intermediary organization working between the government and residents but support the SMG’s administration work. In my experience, it [public hearing] is the right method to hear residents’ opinions. Public officials and professionals make plans or alternatives first, and after that residents express their opinions. You see that the Residents’ Committee lacks representativeness. Only a few people act actively, but most residents neither are interested in nor support the Residents’ Committee. How can we treat them as representatives of the community? […] If most of the residents accept the government’s plan through a public hearing, we should accept it. I think this is the right method of resident participation. (Interview with a SMG official in charge of Haebangchon URP)
A similar type of conflict occurred later with another SMG official when the partnership tried to decide the post-URP operation plan of a common building which was built for the accommodation of community activities. In dealing with the issue, an open discussion group called ‘Space Planning Group’ (공간기획단) was formed in the Residents’ Committee based on an agreement in the partnership. Although it was an open group, again there were also only a handful of active participants, and what was more, most of whom overlapped with the active participants of the Residents’ Committee in general. Throughout regular meetings, they developed the operation plan of the space. Yet, although the establishment of the group and the process of making the operation plan were based upon the agreement among partners including the SMG, in the end the then SMG official refused to accept the final draft made by the group. The reasons for the refusal were, again, the very low level of participation of residents and ‘unrepresentative’ membership of the group. However, it is important to note that although the level of participation was indeed very low throughout the implementation stage, interviewees from the Residents’ Committee claimed that a large portion of the reason for it derived from the SMG. They argued that the strong domination of the SMG in overall decision-making, and the unsupportive attitude of some officials strongly discouraged the participation of residents, as they felt frustrated and found that their time had been wasted. Although there were many other reasons causing the low level of residents’ participation and the domination of the SMG, it was clear that they reinforced each other and created a vicious circle.
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Discussion and Conclusion Through examination of the backgrounds of and formal institutions related to the URP in Seoul and its implementation in Haebangchon, this chapter investigated whether the central government and mayor’s proclaimed intentions regarding citizen participation in urban regeneration are being carried out accordingly in practice. The URP was introduced as an alternative approach to the comprehensive redevelopment for derelict area improvement, which had been criticised for its exclusive nature in process and outcome. Since the democratic transition, the Korean political and policy environment has been fond of, at least ostensibly, to increase space for citizen participation in decision-making processes, and the introduction of the URP was an extension of this change. Acts and government guidelines established for the URP certainly promote an inclusive, participatory, and incremental approach to urban regeneration. Based on the regulatory basis, three organizations – the Urban Regeneration Support Center, the Residents’ Committee, and the Council for Project Implementation – were newly introduced as a means of realizing the approach. However, as Lowndes, Pratchett, and Stoker (2006) warned, being written in formal institutions and their actual operation is not necessarily the same, and thus a critical review is needed. In the case of the Haebangchon URP, the participation of local stakeholders regardless of their ownership status has been promoted from the planning stage. At this stage, participants were generally satisfied with the process and the outcomes although there were some limitations in collecting public opinion with valid methods. The then SMG official and planning consultants were quite supportive throughout the process of plan-making and many people participated actively through the Residents’ Committee. The overall process at the planning stage demonstrates a significant shift from a topdown approach towards a more inclusive and participatory neighbourhood regeneration one. Unlike in the past, the residents were not merely spectators or policy consumers, but were involved as ‘prosumers’. This was particularly meaningful for tenants who used to be excluded from the comprehensive redevelopment approach. Although opening up is not a sufficient condition to demonstrate the transformative potential of policymaking (Cornwall, 2008), this was by all means an important step towards greater citizen participation. Despite inherent limitations, citizen participation in the planning stage clearly encouraged civic urbanism in the city. Whether this can be evaluated as a paradigm shift remains open. The case of the Haebangchon URP shows that despite expanded citizen participation,
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the SMG continued to dominate decision-making and led the overall URP process in practice. Even though new organizations were introduced to support participation, they did not work as intended. The domination of the SMG had different forms. Sometimes it was hidden as ‘non-decision-making’ (Bachrach and Baratz, 1970) or insufficient provision of information, other times it was exercised by neglecting suggestions, requests or recommendations from the Residents’ Committee or the Support Center. The former two were visible in the process of site selection and bidding for the central government funding respectively, while the latter was frequently visible at the implementation stage. Although it was stated in various guidelines and formal documents that decisions should be made in close cooperation between the residents and local government, the latter did not work well due to the power gap between the two and due to the low level of resident participation in the implementation stage. This power gap and low level of participation were closely interrelated and often reinforced each other. The chapter reveals reasons for the state domination and the limited citizen participation despite a series of new institutional arrangements. First, the huge power imbalance derived in part from the formal institutions. If we assume that the central government genuinely wanted to change the neighbourhood improvement paradigm from market or government-led towards inclusive community participation and public-private partnership, then the newly established organizations should have had greater autonomy and authority. Moreover, there should have been articles of penalty or punishment if public officials do not follow the guidelines. In the absence of any penalty or punishment for not following the guidelines, the partnership was strongly influenced by the SMG, especially the working-level SMG officials in charge of the Haebangchon URP. Second, the current URP environment fails to provide sufficient motivation for most residents to participate, especially after the planning stage. Although participants are required to spend a large amount of time and energy, they were asked to participate based on a normative basis without sufficient tangible benefits. This is particularly the case after the planning stage when a plan for the allocation of budget is completed. Moreover, during the implementation stage, there is little for residents to contribute unless they have expertise related to the specific projects being implemented. On top of this, there is not much to do for residents due to the state domination, limited devolution of authority, as well as the unsupportive attitude of some officials. Under these circumstances, the number of participants decreased sharply after the planning stage, and only a handful of them remained and participated regularly in the implementation stage. If the SMG was
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concerned about the number of participants and representativeness, which were important for the SMG to construct legitimacy of citizen participation, further efforts should have been made to motivate residents to participate actively after the planning stage. The state domination and limited citizen participation stemmed to a certain degree from the legacy of the developmental state that promoted state-led top-down decision-making with little participation of citizens. In the case of the Haebangchon URP, under the new regulations, there was no way for public officials to follow the procedures stated in the regulations. However, it seems that the ‘rules-in-form’ could not change the administrative culture and values of public officials. Although the URP followed the participatory approach throughout the process at least formally, there was also non-decision-making at the site selection stage. Even during the planning stage, when the partnership was the most cooperative, the process of deciding on bidding for the central government funding cannot be evaluated as a cooperation. The de facto state-led decision-making was particularly visible during the implementation stage when the level of resident participation decreased substantially. Voices from the Residents’ Committee were often neglected or bypassed. Councils for Project Implementation, which should be a participatory decision-making body involving the main stakeholders, were not established and did not operate as recommended. Instead, they were established to listen to opinions of various stakeholders, requesting their cooperation, and mediating conflicts. This suggests that the discrepancy between ‘rules-in-form’ and ‘rules-in-use’ can obstruct the expansion of civic urbanism in Korean cities. Consequently, although several meaningful changes were achieved, the conventional ‘path’ of the state-led approach was visible throughout the project. The state continues to lead the urban regeneration process, and citizen participation remains largely a tokenism. The space for citizen participation has certainly been expanded, but in practice authorities have not been devolved as proclaimed by the state or stated in the newly introduced institutions. It is too hasty to talk about the URP as a paradigm shift of neighbourhood improvement policy in Korea.
Acknowledgements This chapter draws from research that was in part supported by the Research Grants for Asian Studies funded by Seoul National University Asia Center (SNUAC).
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성화계획 수립 및 사업시행 가이드라인). Sejong: Ministry of Land, Infrastructure,
and Transport. [In Korean] MOLIT (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport) and LH (Korea Land and Housing Corporation). 2020. 30 Good Practice of Urban Regeneration Projects – Live Well Altogether, ‘the Value of Togetherness’, Urban Regeneration New Deal (2020 도시재생사업 30選 – 다함께 잘사는 ‘같이의 가치’ 도시재생뉴딜). Sejong and Jinju: Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport and Korea Land and Housing Corporation. [In Korean] Park, Hak-Young. 2015. ‘Key Issues and Tasks of Community Carpenter in Jangsu Village, Seoul (장수마을 재생과정에서 동네목수의 역할과 과제)’. Review of Architecture and Building Science, 59(6): 46–50. [In Korean] Park, Se Hoon and Sangyon Lim. 2014. Rebuilding Intermediary Organizations for Urban Regeneration in Korea: A Government-Civil Society Relation Perspective (도시재생 중간지원조직 연구: 정부-시민사회 관계의 관점에서). Anyang: Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements. [In Korean] Park, Seung Ki and Tae Hyung Kim. 2014. ‘The Background of Establishment of National Basic Plan on Urban Regeneration and Highlights (국가도시재생기본방 침 수립의 배경과 주요 내용)’. Planning and Policy, 2014(4): 6–15. Available at http:// library.krihs.re.kr/dl_image2/IMG/05/000000021268/SERVICE/000000021268_01. PDF [accessed 10 September 2020]. [In Korean] Seo, Soo Jeong and Yoo Kyoung Lim. 2009. Diversification of Housing Renewal Method for Preservation of Existing Tissue (기성주거지 공간관리수요변화에 대응하는 정비방 식 다양화 방안). Anyang: Architecture & Urban Research Institute. [In Korean] Shin, Aiba. 2008. ‘A History and Characteristics of Community Building in Korea, Taiwan, and Japan (한국, 대만, 일본의 마을만들기 개념 형성과정과 특성)’. Walkable City, 6: 8–18. [In Korean] Shin, Hyun Bang and Soo-Hyun Kim. 2015. ‘The Developmental State, Speculative Urbanisation and the Politics of Displacement in Gentrifying Seoul’. Urban Studies, 53(3): 540–559. doi: 10.1177/0042098014565745. SMG (Seoul Metropolitan Government). 2013. Seoul Participatory Urban Regeneration Project Manual (서울시 주민참여형 재생사업 매뉴얼). Seoul: SMG. [In Korean] SMG (Seoul Metropolitan Government). 2017. Haebangchon Urban Regeneration Revitalization Plan (해방촌 도시재생활성화계획). Seoul: Seoul Metropolitan Government. [In Korean] SMG (Seoul Metropolitan Government). 2019. Plan for Establishment and Operation of Haebangchon Council for Project Implementation (해방촌 신흥시장 환경개선사업 추진을 위한 사업추진협의회 구성·운영계획). Seoul: Seoul Metropolitan Government. [In Korean] SMG (Seoul Metropolitan Government) and YGO (Yongsan-gu Office). 2015. Basic Information Prepared for Establishing the Haebangchon Urban Regeneration
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Revitalization Plan (해방촌 도시재생 활성화계획 수립을 위한 기초조사 현황자료). Seoul: SMG. [In Korean] SMG (Seoul Metropolitan Government), YGO (Yongsan-gu Office) and Haebangchon Urban Regeneration Support Center. 2016. Public Hearing Handouts for Haebangchon Urban Regeneration Revitalisation Plan. (해방촌 도시재생 활성화계 획(안) – 주민공청회). Seoul: Seoul Metropolitan Government, Yongsan-gu Office and Haebangchon Urban Regeneration Support Center. [In Korean] URIS (Urban Regeneration Information System). 2015. Shifting Paradigm of Urban Regeneration. Available at www.city.go.kr/portal/info/policy/3/link.do [accessed 30 June 2015]. [ In Korean]
About the Authors Taehee Lee is Associate Research Fellow at the Construction and Economy Research Institute of Korea. He received his PhD in Town and Regional Planning from the University of Sheffield. His research is focused on economic, physical, and political aspects of urban regeneration, including property development, multisectoral partnership, and community involvement. Sukyoung Han is Associate Research Fellow at the Architecture & Urban Research Institute in Korea. She received her PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from the Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Seoul National University. Her research is focused on various issues of urban space, including shrinking cities, vacant properties, and pedestrian environments.
9
Building Communitiesthrough Neighbourhood-based Participatory Planning in Singapore Jan H. M. Lim, Larry Yeung, and Pieter Van den Broeck
Abstract This chapter reflects on the community-building potential of neighbourhood-based participatory planning processes, based on a non-profit organization’s experiences in Singapore’s Neighbourhood Renewal Programmes (NRPs). The NRP is a key government framework for resident participation in the revival of middle-aged public housing estates. Using a strategic-relational institutionalist approach, this chapter highlights how the capacity of the NRP to build relationships, and thereby enable local residents to take collective action and influence decision-making, is shaped by the dialectical interactions between various actors and institutions. It concludes that these actor-institution dynamics, as seen in four instances of the NRP, privilege the fostering of social cohesion and the observance of rules and procedures, over the empowerment of residents. Keywords: Participatory planning, community building, Neighbourhood Renewal Programme, Singapore, public housing
Introduction This chapter presents a practitioner’s perspective on neighbourhood-based participatory planning – as a form of civic urbanism – and its communitybuilding potential. Community building is broadly understood as the building of relationships within and beyond the community, for the purpose of effecting change and solving community-defined problems. It often involves the development of different types of social capital, the mobilization of
Cho, Im Sik, Blaž Križnik and Jeffrey Hou (eds), Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia. Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei beyond Developmental Urbanization. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463728546_ch09
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existing assets, the grooming of local leaders, the participation and voluntary actions of local residents, and the building of consensus (Hess, 1999; McNeely, 1999; Saegert, 2006). Participation is variously seen as a basis, part, or instrument of community building (De Souza Briggs, 1998; English, Peretz, and Manderschied, 2004; Foster-Fishman, Cantillon, Pierce, and Van Egeren, 2007; Ledwidth, 2011; Cho and Ho, 2020). Critical perspectives of both participatory planning and community building often point to the need to understand the interplay between, on the one hand, contextual factors, larger agendas, politics, and urban processes at wider city, regional, and global scales, and on the other hand, actions and outcomes at the local neighbourhood level (see e.g., Fraser, Lepofsky, Kick, and Williams, 2003; Foster-Fishman, Cantillon, Pierce, and Van Egeren, 2007; Moulaert, Swyngedouw, Martinelli, and González, 2010; Van den Broeck, 2019). Spaces for civic urbanism may be fraught with power relations particularly where they involve, or lead to, partnerships with government actors (see Cho, Križnik, and Hou, Chapter 1, this volume). To gain insight into when and how participatory approaches to neighbourhood planning can be a vehicle for community building, it is important to view these approaches not only in procedural or methodological terms, but also as a multi-scalar, socio-spatial and sociopolitical practice; the opportunities and limitations for neighbourhood-based participatory planning processes to build communities need to be seen in relation to broader structural dynamics within and beyond the neighbourhood level. The city-state of Singapore, where government and semi-government institutions have played dominant roles in structuring citizen involvement in both national and neighbourhood issues respectively (Soh and Yuen, 2006; Cho and Križnik, 2017; CLC, 2018) provides an interesting context for exploring these questions. A former British colony, Singapore’s explosive growth since gaining independence in 1965, has often been heralded as an economic miracle. While public participation in planning and policy decision-making had been largely set aside in the pursuit of this growth in earlier decades, more consultative processes were introduced from the 1980s, in response to global shifts towards New Public Management and ‘good governance’, as well as greater demands for a less heavy-handed government from an increasingly sophisticated and politically aware electorate. Public engagement and urban governance models have since evolved, with more opportunities for collaboration between civil society and the government today. Within this landscape, participatory frameworks for neighbourhood planning and design have been introduced. The Neighbourhood Renewal Programme (NRP) represents one key framework, in which residents are
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engaged in the revival of middle-aged public housing estates. Four projects under this programme – involving two of the authors, who are part of Participate in Design (P!D), a non-profit organization that was appointed to lead the participatory design processes in these projects – serve as the basis for this reflection.1 This chapter thus presents a real-life account that offers intimate perspectives of the interactions and dynamics within the programme. To frame the case study analysis, the following section outlines various theoretical debates on participation in planning theory and the literature on governance. Section 3 introduces the strategic-relational institutionalist (SRI) approach and illustrates how this can provide a useful lens to examine the dynamics between the actors and social groups involved in participatory planning, and the institutional frames in which these actors are embedded. Section 4 then revisits the authors’ experiences in the four NRP projects using the SRI approach, tracing the actor-institution dynamics and their effects on the residents’ involvement. The final section concludes that these dynamics privilege the fostering of social cohesion and the observance of rules and procedures, over the empowerment of residents, and suggests a way forward that leverages the Singapore model of governance in advancing civic urbanism.
The Socio-politics of Participation: Towards a Governance Perspective The role of participation in planning can be situated within the history of planning theory. While earlier traditions in the rational-comprehensive paradigm saw planning as a technical, value-neutral, and apolitical activity, with little scope for public participation, the democratization movement of the 1960s and 1970s fed into new planning theories such as transactive planning, advocacy planning, equity planning, Marxist interpretations of planning, and so on (Friedman, 1987; Allmendinger, 2002; Lane, 2005). These emphasized the political nature of planning and the pluralistic nature of society, and the role of planners in transforming social relations and giving voice 1 P!D was founded in 2013 to advocate greater public participation in urban design and planning processes, on the basis that people have the right to influence decisions that affect them. It sustains its activities and operations primarily by providing participatory design and consultancy services, as well as training programmes, to public, private, and civil society organizations in Singapore.
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to underrepresented groups. Participation was reconceived as a fundamental aspect of planning, as well as an end in itself. In the communicative and collaborative planning approaches that followed, participation was viewed as a deliberative process where authentic dialogue led to more democratic decision-making (Forester, 1989, 1993, 2000; Healey, 1997, 1999, 2003; Innes, 2004). Critics, however, contended that these approaches were subsumed under the dominant neoliberal ideology (Oosterlynck and Swyngedouw, 2010; Allmendinger and Haughton, 2012), and that their focus on consensus failed to account for the effect of power asymmetries on planning (Hillier, 2003; Hillier and Gunder, 2003; Yilmaz, 2003). Instead, they argued that a more agonistic perspective was needed, where conflict and dissensus was seen as a necessary part of democratic practices. These debates in planning theory offer starting points for examining participatory practices, in terms of their community-building potential. They highlight the idea that, if participation is to bring about changes in social relations and empower local actors to create change collectively, it needs to provide spaces for not only consensus but also confrontations with dominant powers to play out, and be critical of the inclusion and exclusion of different actors. The critique on communicative and collaborative planning is also echoed in how community-building approaches may be used as a neoliberal strategy to shift the responsibility of solving the social problems of neighbourhoods to local residents, without granting them full access to the processes and resources needed to enable socio-spatial change (Fraser, Lepofsky, Kick, and Williams, 2003). The potentialities and limitations of participatory planning practices to build communities thus need to be understood in relation to wider structural inequalities, power differentials, and extra-neighbourhood public and private institutions (De Souza Briggs, 1998; Saegert, 2006). On their own, however, the discussions in planning theory do not provide adequate tools for understanding how participatory practices operate in the Singapore context. As noted by Cho, Križnik, and Hou (in Chapter 1, this volume), most existing frameworks do not adequately account for how the changing relationship between the government and civil society impacts urbanization in cities like Singapore. Communicative planning theory, for example, has been accused of neglecting context (Calderon and Westin, 2019), while the critiques on neoliberal consensus and community building also do not fully consider the dominant role of the Singapore government in public governance (Cheung, 2012), planning (Shatkin, 2014), and neighbourhoodlevel civic activities (Ooi, 2009). These considerations suggest the need for a broader theoretical perspective to complement planning theories, to better
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account for the specificities of the local governance context, and provide a more sociopolitically attuned reading of participation and its capacity for community building. In this regard, critical institutionalist perspectives in the literature on governance are particularly relevant, such as the work of Swyngedouw (2005), Jessop (2001, 2008), Moulaert (Moulaert and Nussbaumer, 2005; Moulaert and Cabaret, 2006; Moulaert and Mehmood, 2009), and García (2006; Pradel, García, and Eizaguirre, 2013). Unlike the normative ‘good governance’ approach, institutionalist perspectives use governance as an analytical tool to examine modes of collective action and decisionmaking, critiquing the former approach for its post-political nature – that is, foreclosing spaces for fundamental political differences, and reducing participation to technocratic-managerial procedures (Swyngedouw, 2005, 2009; Metzger, Allmendinger, and Oosterlynck, 2015). Instead, institutionalist perspectives define governance as the continuing coordination, negotiation, and contestation of social relations characterized by complex, reciprocal interdependence (Swyngedouw and Jessop, 2006, Manganelli and Moulaert, 2018), involving a hybrid of mechanisms and practices such as the anarchy of market exchange, the hierarchy of coordination in organizations such as the state, the heterarchy of self-organization in networks, and the unconditional commitment associated with love, loyalty, and solidarity (González and Healey, 2005; Swyngedouw and Jessop, 2006; Manganelli, Van den Broeck, and Moulaert, 2019). An analysis of participation from this broader governance perspective draws attention to the configurations of actors involved in collective decision-making, processes of inclusion and exclusion, power relations and structures, hegemony and counterhegemony, multi-scalar dynamics, and opportunities for changes in social relations and the empowerment of local community actors.
A Strategic-Relational Institutionalist Approach to Participatory Planning To draw together the critical views of participation in planning theory and the governance perspective above, this chapter now turns to a strategicrelational and critical institutionalist (SRI) approach. This approach has been elaborated in detail in other publications (see e.g., Van den Broeck, 2010, 2011; Servillo and Van den Broeck, 2012; Van den Broeck, Abdelwahab, Miciukiewicz, and Hillier, 2013; De Blust and Van den Broeck, 2019). It builds on the institutionalist planning theory of Mandelbaum (1985), Fainstein
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(2000), Gualini (2001), Hajer (2003), Healey (1997, 1999, 2005), Innes (1995), Moulaert (2005), and Verma (2007) – which centres on the role of institutions in and of planning, both formal (organizations, legal rules, and procedures) and informal (values, conventions, and codes of conduct), in shaping agency – and the ‘agency-structure-institutions-discourse’ approach of Moulaert, Jessop, and Mehmood (2016). Using the SRI approach, participation can be seen as embedded in an ‘institutional field’ comprising actors and institutions that are expressed in terms of each other, that is, institutions in terms of action, and action in terms of institutions. At any given time, institutions selectively structure the behaviour of actors in a participatory process, and actors vary in their capacities to act strategically with respect to institutions, while also reproducing or reorganizing them. Groups of interrelated institutions form an ‘institutional frame’ that privileges certain actors, strategies, and outcomes over others. These institutional frames can be examined in terms of their various dimensions, including but not limited to sociopolitical, socio-economic, sociocultural, technical, cognitive, and discursive ones, each of which mediates the others. At the same time, individual and collective actors, who may or may not share the same interests and intentions, form different ‘relevant social groups’ or temporary coalitions that support or sustain specific institutional frames. Following this perspective, for instance, a particular combination of participatory planning programmes, methods, and tools can thus be said to constitute the technical dimension of an institutional frame, mediated by other dimensions such as specific models of local governance, decisionmaking systems in neighbourhood planning, discourses on the importance of community engagement, and so on. This institutional frame is produced and maintained by the particular combination of public servants, design and planning consultants, grassroots representatives, and residents that make up its relevant social group, while at the same time influencing the ways in which they act, behave, strategize, and conceive their own interests. The dialectical interactions between institutional frames and their relevant social groups thus structure the institutional field in which participatory planning is situated. This analytical framework allows participation to be evaluated in terms of the different capacities of actors to (re)produce or transform the institutional frames of a participatory practice, as well as the ways in which different institutional frames include or enable certain actors, collective actions, and types of social relations, while excluding or constraining others. It can be used to situate the neighbourhood-based
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participatory practices of Singapore within the specif icities of its sociopolitical context. As the following sections will illustrate, using the SRI approach to review the authors’ experiences in the NRP projects helps in understanding how the community-building potential of the NRP is shaped by the dynamics between different institutional frames and their relevant social groups.
Four Instances of the Neighbourhood Renewal Programme and their Actor-Institution Dynamics This discussion of the NRP centres on four projects under the programme, in which two of the authors were involved to varying extents through their work at P!D.2 P!D was appointed as the participatory design consultant in all four projects. The study mainly utilizes participant observations based on: attending meetings, facilitating workshops, making site visits and walks around the neighbourhoods, and engaging in formal interviews and informal conversations. These were supplemented by post-project interviews and feedback sessions with key actors and residents, as well as a document analysis of minutes of meetings and project reports. As the intention is to distil general dynamics rather than conduct a comparative analysis, this section weaves key observations on all four projects into a single narrative and discusses the projects collectively using the SRI approach. Overview of the NRP and the Four Cases Over 80% of the population of Singapore reside in public housing estates that are built by the Housing and Development Board (HDB), the national public housing authority of Singapore. While residents’ satisfaction levels towards these estates have generally remained high, significant gaps began to emerge between older and newer estates over time, and various estate renewal and upgrading programmes have been introduced since 1989, to rejuvenate the older estates. The NRP constitutes one of these programmes. Launched in 2007, the NRP focuses on precinct- and block-level improvements in middle-aged estates. HDB apartment blocks are selected for the programme based on certain eligibility criteria, with the renewal works
2 Yeung was the project lead of these projects, while Lim was not directly involved but served on the advisory board of P!D.
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fully funded by the government.3 While the NRP is overseen by the HDB, its implementation is led by the local Town Council, the autonomous legal entity responsible for the day-to-day management of common property in each estate. Each Town Council is chaired by the Member of Parliament (MP) for the estate and consists of appointed members (of which at least two-thirds must be residents of the estate) who serve in a voluntary capacity to direct the Council’s policies, with the actual operations of town management undertaken by professional managing agents (CLC and SI, 2017). Compared to earlier upgrading programmes, the NRP gives residents a larger role in the design and planning of their neighbourhoods. The local Town Council leads the public consultation process, which consists of two key phases: Public Consultation and Consensus Gathering. In the Public Consultation phase, residents are typically invited to give feedback on preliminary design proposals, through town hall meetings, surveys, mini-exhibitions, and other methods. This feedback is then incorporated in the final design proposals where feasible. In the Consensus Gathering phase, the finalized proposals are presented to the residents, and a polling exercise is conducted. The Town Council will proceed with the proposals if at least 75% of eligible flat owners indicate their support for them (HDB, 2017). Since the launch of the NRP, the average level of support has stood at 85% (HDB, 2018). Resident participation in the NRP and other upgrading programmes is seen by political actors as an instrument to bring residents closer together to realise common wants and needs, and build social capital, neighbourliness, community spirit, and ownership (Singapore Parliament, 2008, 2015). Community building can thus be understood as an implicit objective of the programme. Despite these intentions, residents’ involvement had been largely passive and limited (Cho and Križnik, 2017). This led the HDB to explore deeper and more extensive forms of resident engagement through the Building Our Neighbourhood Dreams pilot programme, which was implemented as part of the NRP in two estates, one of which involved P!D. These pilot projects, involving new methods of engagement, generated awareness among the Town Councils in other estates of alternative ways to implement the NRP. In 2017 and 2019, two other Town Councils appointed P!D to lead the resident engagement processes in four NRPs. Two of these projects were located in Tampines North, while the other two were in Woodgrove and Limbang (see Figure 9.1). These four projects are selected as case studies 3 Eligible blocks must be built before January 1996 and not have benef itted from other upgrading programmes (CLC and SI, 2017).
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Figure 9.1 Sites of the four NRP projects
Source: Jeffrey Hou. Drawing by Hoilok Heather Lam. Map data 2020 © Google
as they collectively represent P!D’s latest involvement in the NRP. They involved similar participatory processes, outputs, and compositions of actors (see Figure 9.2). For each NRP, the resident engagement process, integrated with the architects’ design development process, lasted over a year, after which the Town Council would proceed to tender out the construction of the renewal works. The latter part of the process typically lasts for another three to four years, with P!D no longer involved. At the time of writing, the four NRPs are in various stages of completion, with the resident engagement process either entirely or mostly executed. An SRI reading of the participatory processes in these four NRPs will now be discussed in greater detail.
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Figure 9.2 An overview of the four NRP projects and P!D’s involvement
Source: Jan H. M. Lim, Larry Yeung, and Pieter Van den Broeck
The Role of Grassroots Organizations in ‘Community bonding’ One key group of actors was the NRP Working Committee that was formed at the beginning of each project. Each committee was chaired by the Adviser to the Grassroots Organizations or an appointed representative, and comprised representatives from the Town Council, grassroots leaders from the Citizens’ Consultative Committee (CCC) and Residents’ Committees (RCs), professional consultants, including architects who were appointed by the Town Council, and public off icers from relevant departments within the HDB. Altogether, the various members of the Working Committee in each NRP worked to develop and review the design proposals, gather residents’ feedback on and support for these proposals, and explain the benef its of the NRP. In all four NRPs, the Grassroots Advisers were also the MPs for the electoral constituencies in which the estates were situated. This is typically, albeit not always, the case in Singapore, where elected MPs serve both legislative and community-based roles. Grassroots organizations such as the CCCs and RCs function as semigovernment, para-political entities established by the state to further community development and nation-building objectives, facilitating the ruling government’s control over civic activities at the neighbourhood level, as well as people’s participation in the government (Ooi, 2009; CLC, 2018). They are part of the People’s Association (PA), the statutory board that oversees
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all grassroots organizations in Singapore. The PA was formed in 1960, as a key strategy for the ruling government to manage and foster national unity in a largely migrant population that had been divided along ethnic and religious lines during colonial rule, later evolving into an extensive network of grassroots organizations linking the government with citizens (Ooi, 2009; Tan and Teng, 2020). The roles of the CCCs and RCs include: communicating government policies to residents and relaying their feedback on these policies to the government; organizing community activities and programmes to promote racial harmony, social cohesion, and good neighbourly relations; and providing inputs on the provision of community facilities and amenities. In the context of the HDB estates, they can be seen as part of a relevant social group that supports and reproduces a ‘community bonding’ institutional frame, alongside the Grassroots Advisers and the HDB. Members of the CCCs and RCs serve in a voluntary capacity, with the CCC operating at the scale of the constituency and the RC at the scale of a residential zone, each of which comprises about seven to eight apartment blocks. RCs, in particular, are seen as the grassroots organizations that are closest to the ground, as only residents of each residential zone may become members of the RC representing that zone. In the four NRPs, the RCs were instrumental in mobilizing other residents to take part in the participatory activities, although this also depended on how active each RC was. Constraints on ‘Community Advocacy’ P!D was brought in as a consultant to the local Town Councils, which effectively subcontracted the work of engaging the residents out to the non-profit organization. For each NRP, P!D designed and facilitated an engagement process involving residents and other stakeholders based on its participatory design methodology. The methods used included one-to-one interviews, workshops, walking tours of the neighbourhood, and pop-up activities and events (see Figure 9.3a and 9.3b). Collating the community’s inputs through these exercises and translating them into design recommendations, P!D produced a report that was then used by the Working Committee to guide the development of the design scheme. In the rest of the Public Consultation phase and subsequent Consensus Gathering phase, where the architects’ schematic and final plans were respectively exhibited for residents’ feedback, P!D was less intensively involved but continued to assist the Town Council in soliciting residents’ views on these plans.
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Figure 9.3a and 9.3b A pop-up engagement activity and workshop with residents
Source: Participate in Design
The participatory design methodology, tools, reports, and expertise that P!D provided could be viewed as part of the technical and cognitive dimensions of a ‘community advocacy’ institutional frame. P!D used these devices to support and justify its role in bringing residents’ voices to the table
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and ensuring that these voices were heard. This resulted in, for instance, the redrawing of the site boundaries in one NRP, so as to include a particular neighbourhood park that was important to the residents. In another example, P!D successfully championed for certain construction costs and budget details to be shared with residents at a workshop so that they could have more informed discussions, leading the Town Council to reallocate the budget to areas that the residents prioritized. However, P!D’s client-consultant relationship with the Town Councils (and by extension, the rest of the Working Committees) structured its capacity to sustain the ‘community advocacy’ frame. Because P!D’s clients were not the residents themselves, residents could not hold the organization accountable; the reports that P!D produced were only released for internal circulation within the Working Committees and not to the majority of residents. It was only invited by the Town Council to attend selected committee meetings and, on the whole, it had relatively limited influence on the design development stages. While Grassroots Advisers and Town Council representatives were observed to fall back on P!D’s reports in reviewing the architect’s design proposals, not all committee members valued the residents’ input to the same extent. Some RC members, for instance, openly challenged P!D’s findings when these contradicted the RC’s own requests for spaces to host community activities, and other amenities that they could rent out to raise additional funds for sustaining their programmes. From P!D’s perspective, however, these RC members were not acting on behalf of residents’ voices and interests in the NRP, but rather looking to carry out their own organizational roles and functions as grassroots leaders tasked with community development objectives. In this way, the ‘community bonding’ institutional frame appeared to compete with the ‘community advocacy’ one, even though both institutional frames were interlinked. ‘Urban Design and Planning’ and the Architects One other institutional frame that could be identified in the NRPs was the ‘urban design and planning’ frame, mainly reproduced by the architecture consultants through design plans, concepts, strategies, and knowledge. In one of the projects, the architect chose to pursue his own design ideas without much consideration for the residents’ input and was later urged by the Town Council to revise his proposal. Another architect had wanted to remove a particular playground on the basis that it would improve the circulation of the space, even though the playground was found to be well-used and cherished by the residents due to its strategic location. Most of the time,
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however, the architects viewed P!D’s reports as more robust design briefs that helped them to perform their roles and justify their design strategies and ideas. Thus ‘community advocacy’ was not necessarily incompatible with ‘urban design and planning’, although this depended on the architects’ attitudes towards resident engagement. ‘Programme and Project Management’ as a Dominant Institutional Frame The architects were also part of another relevant social group with the Town Councils and the HDB that supported a ‘programme and project management’ institutional frame. This emphasized efficiency, consensus, and ‘getting things done’, and consisted of the HDB’s rules, requirements and technical guidelines for the NRP, the Town Councils’ project schedules, and decision-making mechanisms that were centred around the Working Committees. This institutional frame had several implications for the local community’s involvement as well as P!D’s role in ‘community advocacy’. For example, as the NRP is designed to strictly benefit those who owned flats within the selected HDB blocks, only the homeowners’ input in the polling exercises counted towards the 75% minimum level of support required for the proposed design and plans to proceed. A small percentage of residents who rented their flats, as well as local shop owners (whose needs were served by a separate upgrading scheme), were not able to influence the poll, even though they would also have had interests and stakes in the neighbourhood. The rule regarding the 75% minimum level of support also became a target to reach, rather than a way to ascertain if the proposed plans reflected residents’ interests and needs. In all four NRPs, the Town Councils started garnering residents’ support for the project before the f inal design proposals were released. This involved making door-to-door visits and pitching the NRP as a beneficial programme that would enhance residents’ living environment while being fully funded by the government. Most residents thus had little cause for objection, even though they might not have fully understood the changes that were to be proposed for their neighbourhoods. In this way, the 75% rule became something to be managed. The tight project timelines also meant that the architects’ design development process often proceeded concurrently with P!D’s resident engagement, before the latter had made its findings and recommendations known, although this was partly ameliorated by having the architects attend the participatory activities as observers. Furthermore, the use of a
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Working Committee as a project management device limited most residents’ capacity to directly impact planning and design decision-making, other than indicating whether they supported the NRP during the polling exercises, and channelling their views through P!D and the RCs. Design and planning decisions were observed to be made among committee members during closed-door meetings, and in general the opinions of the RC chairpersons and the Grassroots Advisers appeared to carry more weight. It should also be noted that the decision-making process did not end with the Working Committees, but with the HDB, whose responsibilities included reviewing the design proposals according to its design and technical guidelines. ‘Programme and project management’ thus emerged as one of the more dominant institutional frames in the NRPs. Residents’ Capacity for Strategic Actions As seen above, various institutional frames structured the residents’ involvement and their collective capacity to steer plans for their neighbourhoods. At the same time, the residents were not entirely passive but varied in their capacities to act strategically while considering windows of opportunity and structural constraints. Some residents chose to participate actively and continuously in the process. In doing so, they reflexively reproduced not only ‘community advocacy’, but also ‘community bonding’ (common feedback was that the workshops gave them a chance to meet others in the same neighbourhood and learn about their views) as well as ‘urban design and planning’ (they often desired a unique design). Other residents chose to disengage completely, either because they assumed that most decisions had already been made and saw the consultation process as a tokenistic gesture, or because of conflicts and micropolitics at the neighbourhood level. One community gardening interest group, for instance, declined to participate due to existing tensions with the local RC. Besides active involvement and complete disengagement, another type of response from a smaller group of residents involved domination. These residents, identified by the Town Council as ‘complainers’, were invited to one of the workshops, where they ended up dominating the discussion at their table and shutting down the opinions’ of other residents. In this way, they could be seen as appropriating the ‘community advocacy’ institutional frame to amplify their voices, while undermining the ‘community bonding’ one. Thus, as residents became embedded in and shaped by various institutional frames (see Figure 9.4), they also consciously or unconsciously reproduced and resisted these frames to different extents.
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Figure 9.4 Actor-institution dynamics in the four NRP projects
Source: Jan H. M. Lim, Larry Yeung, and Pieter Van den Broeck
Conclusions on the Community-building Potential of the NRP This chapter addresses the question on how actor-institution dynamics shape the opportunities and limitations for the NRP to contribute to community building, understood as the building of relationships within and beyond the community for the purpose of effecting change and bringing about collective action on local issues. Two relevant social groups and their institutional frames – ‘community bonding’ and ‘community advocacy’ – had the greatest potential to create opportunities towards this. While these frames appeared complementary at first glance, in reality they did not work together perfectly or lead from one to another. The state-endorsed ‘community bonding’ frame privileged the fostering of neighbourly ties, social cohesion, and national identity, over other outcomes such as the empowerment of residents. As noted above, the behaviour of certain RC members demonstrated how, in being structured by this frame, they reflexively reproduced it by prioritizing the needs and interests of the RC over those of the residents whom they were meant to represent. P!D, on the other hand, focused more on enabling residents to impact the planning of their neighbourhoods, but in working to represent the residents’ voices, it generated more opportunities for the residents to interact with itself rather than with other residents. It was thus less successful in building relationships among them, with the exception
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of the workshops which brought residents together. At the same time, P!D’s capacity to sustain the ‘community advocacy’ frame was limited by its position as a consultant to the Town Councils, who were operating within a dominant ‘programme and project management’ frame that emphasized efficiency, consensus, and the meeting of targets. Under this, participation was seen in terms of procedures and rules to be managed, rather than an instrument to transform social relations. The SRI perspective on the NRPs thus reveals how the complex interactions between relevant social groups and institutional frames – both of which make up the institutional field in which participation is embedded – affect the community-building potential of neighbourhood-based participatory planning practices. To evaluate this potential, a critical understanding of what exactly it means to ‘build community’ is needed, that is, what types of social relations are formed or transformed; who are empowered to act and create change collectively; and what and whose objectives, interests, and agendas are served in the end. Continued theoretical development of the SRI approach, based on a deeper integration with the community building literature, will be required to further unpack this social construction of community building. At a broader level, the SRI approach lends itself readily to the study of civic urbanisms in Singapore as well as other East Asian contexts, by laying bare the intricacies of urban governance configurations where the distinction between the ‘state’ and ‘non-state’ is often nebulous and evolving. Finally, the more nuanced view of actor-institution dynamics presented above is useful for re-strategizing participatory planning, community building, and civic urbanism in general, to attain more emancipatory objectives. Bearing in mind the selectively structured agency that residents do have in responding to the wider institutional context, the constraints posed by governmentsupported frames on community building do not necessarily mean that there is no room for reorganizing or subverting these frames from within. In fact, Singapore’s particular hybridity of various governance mechanisms – as seen in the grassroots organizations and Town Councils, in which the government and residents are intricately linked and mutually embedded in each other – could prove advantageous to civic actions in shaping the development of neighbourhoods and cities. Although often critically viewed as a form of co-optation and control, this hybrid governance model also provides residents who are able and willing to join these organizations with a direct link to the MPs and other government representatives, a less adversarial environment to operate within, and access to state resources for enabling concrete outcomes. In these ways, the Singapore model of hybrid governance could be used to create leverage for civil society to tactically and subtly inject alternative visions of
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community building into prevailing approaches, and realign these approaches towards community empowerment. For this to happen, civil society actors would first need to be cognizant of how their roles, identities, interests, and behaviour are structured by dominant sociopolitical institutions, discourses, and practices; use this understanding to inform their courses of action and identify windows of opportunities; and build the capacity of others to do the same, especially those who may be more disenfranchised in terms of decision-making. Taking these steps may be necessary to fully unleash the transformative potential of civic urbanisms, creating more lasting changes in social relations at the level of the neighbourhood and the city.
Note Parts of the second and third sections in this chapter have been excerpted and translated from Van den Broeck (2019), Mythes over participatie in wijkontwikkeling: Het Antwerpse Schipperskwartier als case.
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About the Authors Jan H M. Lim is Co-founder and Director of Research and Strategy at Participate in Design (P!D), a Singapore-based non-profit organization that champions citizen involvement in design and planning processes. She is a doctoral researcher at the Department of Architecture (Planning & Development research unit) at KU Leuven, Belgium. Larry Yeung is currently Executive Director of Participate in Design (P!D). Since his Master’s of Architecture degree at the National University of Singapore, Larry’s portfolio of participatory-based works has expanded to include neighbourhood planning, public space design, and community art installations, working in partnership with grassroots organizations, civic groups, and government agencies.
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Pieter Van den Broeck is Associate Professor of Spatial Planning and Sustainable Development in the Department of Architecture at KU Leuven, where he leads the Planning & Development (P&D) research unit. His research includes planning instruments, social innovation, and territorial development, governance of socioecological systems, and land policies and commons.
10 Beyond the Sunday Spectacle Foreign Domestic Workers and Emergent Civic Urbanisms in Hong Kong Cecilia L. Chu and Marta Catalán Eraso Abstract This chapter explores practices of civic urbanisms in East Asia by examining the self-organized collective activities of foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong. Our investigation focuses on the ‘beauty-styling’ events that enlist the participation of a large number of Filipino and Indonesian women on Sundays and public holidays. By analysing the operation of these events and motivations of their organizers and participants, we offer a critical interpretation of the ideas of ‘urban commoning’ and ‘bottom-up urbanism’ and consider how such activities have contributed to the shaping of individual and collective aspirations of marginalized diasporic communities. Keywords: Urban commoning, bottom-up urbanism, foreign domestic workers, community empowerment, beauty styling, Hong Kong
Communal organization and collective use of resources have long been an integral part of the economic life of cities. In recent years, these practices have been increasingly associated with the notions of the commons and ‘commoning’, which refer to an alternative self-governing order that contrasts with the profit-driven development model of a capitalist system (CasasCortes et al., 2014; Dellenbaugh, 2015; Hou, 2017). The conception builds on earlier works that examine everyday practices of social reproduction and the ways in which community groups resist dominant market relations by taking control over the management of resources (Hardin, 1968; Ostrom, 1990). In more recent writings, scholars have sought to develop the concept of ‘urban commoning’ by highlighting the potentials for creating new values through
Cho, Im Sik, Blaž Križnik and Jeffrey Hou (eds), Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia. Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei beyond Developmental Urbanization. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463728546_ch10
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co-presence and the shared use of space and resources in urban contexts (Borch and Kornberger, 2015; Stavrides, 2016; Ferguson, 2014; Dellenbaugh et al., 2015). The idea has often been linked to the notion of ‘bottom-up urbanism’, underpinned by emergent struggles against the accelerating privatization of public assets and services amongst grassroots communities (Harvey, 2012; Casas-Cortes et al., 2014; Kickert and Arefi, 2019). This chapter engages with the idea of ‘urban commoning’ by examining the collective activities of Hong Kong’s foreign domestic workers that have allowed them to build up a set of resource networks with significant impacts on their daily lives and prospects in the future. In particular, we focus on the organization of events relating to beauty styling that enlist the participation of a large number of Filipino and Indonesian female workers. These activities were first initiated by local unions as a means to raise political awareness and recruit new members amongst migrant communities. Over time, some participants sought to develop their own events whose orientations both overlap with and diverge from those of the official institutions. While many of these self-managed practices are closely tied to an informal economy, they have also attracted interests from corporate businesses which are eager to offer sponsorship to them in order to market their products and services to the expanding migrant worker population. By exploring the operations of varied styling activities and motivations of their organizers and participants, this chapter raises several broader issues concerning civic urbanisms in Hong Kong and beyond. First, we conceive the weekly events of the city’s foreign domestic workers as vivid examples of civic engagement in which members of marginalized groups seek to enrich their collective social life on their own terms. Second, because many of the organized activities are connected to and supported by an entangled web of institutional and commercial resource networks, they complicate the assumed understanding of ‘commoning’ and ‘bottom-up urbanism’ as alternative self-governing practices that operate outside the immediate interest of the state and the market. Finally, by bringing into view the motivations of those participating in talent competitions, our study shows how these activities have become important sources for domestic workers’ social empowerment and the shaping of their individual and collective aspirations. The chapter proceeds by f irst reviewing the existing scholarship on Hong Kong’s foreign domestic workers and the significance of the ‘Sunday spectacles’. It then moves on to discuss a range of collective activities associated with fashion and beauty styling. The next section illustrates some of the lasting impacts of these practices by telling the stories of three
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domestic workers. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the nature of civic engagement in Hong Kong and the potential and limits of the conceptions of ‘commoning’ and ‘bottom-up urbanism’. Research sources include personal interviews, site visits, and a review of news articles and postings on social media platforms over the course of nine months. The interviews were carried out mostly on Sundays in places suggested by the interviewees through snowball sampling. The arguments presented in the chapter build on the authors’ ongoing research on Hong Kong urbanism in relation to the city’s social and cultural histories and the ongoing reshaping of its public realm.
Hong Kong’s Foreign Domestic Workers and the ‘Sunday Spectacles’ There are currently over 400,000 foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong, with the vast majority being women from the Philippines and Indonesia. All domestic workers are recruited under a standard two-year contract which requires them to live at their employer’s residence. Although the law guarantees basic labour protection for all workers under the Employment Ordinance, illegal employment practices, such as underpayment of salary, premature termination of contracts, and refusal of mandatory days off are not uncommon (Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants, 2016). To secure their jobs, domestic workers need to pay a costly fee to recruitment agencies and, unlike other foreigners holding work visas, they are not considered to have ‘ordinary residence’ in Hong Kong and therefore have no access to the right of abode under the Basic Law (Article 24, HKSAR Government). In her seminal book on the lives of Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong, anthropologist Nicole Constable (1997) explains that despite being subjected to stringent work rules in a system that favours the rights of employers, foreign domestic workers are not powerless passive subjects. Utilizing a Foucauldian analytical lens, Constable illustrates how domestic workers have responded to the imposed disciplines via various ‘resistant acts’, which may take the form of overt protests on workers’ rights or less confrontational ones such as jokes and pranks (12-13). She notes, however, that domestic workers also play a part in reinforcing the existing system of power by willingly disciplining themselves out of fear of losing their jobs. This complex relationship between resistance and docility suggests that domestic workers could not be simply characterized as either empowered or oppressed. Furthermore, although commonly being referred to as the
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migrant community, domestic workers are not a homogenous entity but are comprised of different ethnic groups with varied cultural and religious backgrounds. What they tend to share is that the majority are not from the most deprived or least educated sectors of their own societies. Although they might feel disempowered in their work situations, most strongly aspire to improve their livelihoods and future prospects and insist that coming to Hong Kong to earn money is their individual life choice. Constable’s ethnographical accounts and those of other anthropology scholars highlight the individual motivations and collective aspirations shared by foreign domestic workers. An integral part of these analyses is the workers’ activities that take place in the city’s public spaces on Sundays and public holidays, when they temporarily discard their role as maids and articulate other facets of their identity (Constable, 1997; Chen, 2015). As pointed out by Lisa Law (2002), the Sunday gatherings of Filipino domestic workers in the Central district – commonly known as ‘Little Manila’– have produced a cosmopolitan cultural landscape in which migrant workers feel a positive sense of community. Despite their temporal nature, these weekly appropriations of the city’s financial district have constituted an alternative public sphere of civic engagement, allowing domestic workers not only to socialize with their friends, but also to organize cultural events, establish new resource networks and practice entrepreneurship. In her documentation of the spatial transformations of Central, Daisy Tam (2016) notes the ingenious ways in which different environments have been adapted to serve the purposes of the Other on Sundays, where ‘public spaces become meeting venues for interest groups, glass walls serve as dance studios, and park benches set the stage for choir practices’ (126). In another study, Evelyn Kwok (2019) shows how these transitory spaces have helped to facilitate an informal economy that ranged from hawking to beauty services to the supply of materials for workers’ makeshift shelters. In short, these writings suggest that the making of Little Manila has produced lasting trajectories in the city and impacts on the lives of migrant workers that go beyond the Sunday occupations. Since the publication of Constable’s authoritative book in 1997, the demographics of Hong Kong’s foreign domestic workers have shifted considerably. The most significant is the rapid increase of Indonesian workers, whose number is fast catching up with that of their Filipino counterparts as the largest migrant groups in the territory.1 The continual growth of 1 As of 2020, 55% of foreign domestic workers are from the Philippines and 42% are from Indonesia (HKSAR Government, 2021).
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foreign domestic workers’ populations has led to the emergence of other spaces of occupation outside the Central district on Sundays. These include, most notably, Victoria Park in Causeway Bay, which has become the main gathering ground for Indonesian domestic workers. Like Chater Road in Central, Victoria Park on Sundays is a magnet of activities with frequent demonstrations and public events organized by local NGOs and other groups. However, with the gradual expansion of new commercial networks and services catering for domestic workers in the last few years, some events have begun to shift to other neighbourhoods where alternative venues for gatherings could be found. As informed by one domestic worker, while Central and Causeway Bay remain the key sites for staging the Sunday spectacles, she and her friends no longer spend their entire day off there but only visit when there are special events they like to attend (personal interview, 15 January 2020). She also points out that with the increased number of social activities taking place in different parts of the city, she needs to plan out her holiday schedule ahead to ensure achieving a balance between catching up with friends and engaging with specific things to do according to her interest. These more fluid itineraries and spatial dispersion of activities are made possible by the widening usage of social media, which has been a crucial means for event organizers, union activists, and informal businesses to attract participants and customers. As noted by the Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (2016), much of the advocacy work of unions relies on the use of WhatsApp, the free internet messaging application, for promoting different programmes to interested participants. At the same time, social media, especially Facebook, also serves as a communicative platform for domestic workers to establish their own social networks and share different types of resources, and even start their own online businesses targeting members of their communities. The expanding resource networks and practices point to a need for more updated investigation on the lives of domestic workers in Hong Kong: How do these ‘bottom-up’ networks operate and how are they different from those of the mainstream economy? How do various agents, including unions, NGOs, businesses, and individual entrepreneurs promote their activities for specific purposes? What new opportunities have these developments opened up for domestic workers and what new knowledge has been produced in the process? And to what extent have these dynamics impacted their daily lives, outlooks for the future, and relations with Hong Kong and their home nation? Although academic research has yet to catch on with these emerging social and economic practices, they are not lost amongst the domestic
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workers themselves. A quick examination of the Filipino and Indonesian language online and print media reveals many pieces that discuss the collective activities and lives of migrant communities in the city (Wahyudi and Allmark, 2018). These include regular contributions by union activists and NGO representatives who focus on promoting labour rights and social empowerment. They also include many articles penned by domestic workers that focus on ‘lifestyle’ topics such as fashion, cosmetics, and other cultural activities. The popularity of these topics finds a parallel in the public events on Sundays, where performances, talent competitions, and training workshops surrounding these themes are organized by a variety of agencies. In the next section, we explore the signif icance of these performative events and how they have become important sources for domestic workers to enrich their lives and reshape their future trajectories.
Performances, Talent Training, and Community Empowerment The organization of collective cultural events has long been an important means for Hong Kong’s migrant labour unions to encourage political activism amongst foreign domestic workers. As Ming-yan Lai’s research (2010) shows, the effectiveness of these events lies not so much in delivering outright political messages to their participants but first and foremost bringing different groups together on a public stage to enjoy a range of carnivalesque activities. As vehicles of entertainment and self-expression, these performances allow domestic workers to gain a degree of visibility in public and enact a ‘ludic subjectivity’ that defies the conditions of their everyday subjection. Their participation in these group events thus helps to affirm their agency as individuals whilst cultivating a positive sense of collective identity and solidarity that is conducive to political activism (Lai, 2010: 506). However, some union activists acknowledge that there remain substantial challenges in fostering wider activist engagement across the migrant worker constituency. This is because many domestic workers fear that becoming active in union activities will put their jobs at risk. It has been noted that such political apathy is particularly pervasive amongst Indonesian workers, who tend to see that joining a union is necessary only when they encounter problems in their work. Such widespread disinterest in political activism, however, has not diminished the popularity of the cultural performances organized by migrant workers’ unions. This is particularly the case for performances
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associated with major festivals and national days that draw a large number of participants and onlookers to Chater Road and Victoria Park. While participants in these activities emphasize that they come ‘for fun’, many admit that they are also motivated by a desire to compete in the various talent contests that are usually included as highlights of such events. As explained by a spokesperson of the Indonesian Migrant Workers Union (IMWU), a main goal of the contests is to allow foreign domestic workers to showcase their skills acquired from the various training courses offered by the unions, in particular those related to beauty styling and fashion design (personal interview, 8 March 2020). These courses, which are taught by fellow domestic workers for free, are very popular because many participants want to build on the training to develop their own beauty-styling businesses after they return to their home countries. From the point of view of union organizers, the contests serve to combine the offering of a rewarding experience for participants and a good opportunity to recruit new union members (Lai, 2010: 504). Crucially, they provide a space for different unions with divergent agendas to come together to promote their shared mission of social empowerment across the wider migrant workers’ constituency (Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants, 2016). While the unions initiated the early talent shows, the sustained interest in participating in these events has prompted other agencies to become involved with their organization. These include major telecommunication companies that are eager to expand their service provisions to the growing population of foreign domestic workers. Amongst these is SmarTone, which has been sponsoring some of the largest beauty pageants catered for Filipino and Indonesian communities over the past decade.2 These contests differ from those organized by the unions by offering awards with much higher monetary value to the winners. All participants also receive free training such as walking on the catwalk and other performing skills taught by former pageant winners. Despite their commercial nature, most participants do not seem to see a huge difference between these contests and other ones. As pointed out by a former contest winner, all of these shows provide a space for domestic workers to step out from their normative roles and showcase their talents in public space (personal interview, 1 March 2020). Meanwhile, the experience of preparing for the contests, which requires the support and volunteer work of many fellow domestic workers over several weeks, 2 Examples include ‘Ms. Barkadahan’ and ‘Ms. Sahabat Setia’ (translated as ‘Ms. Friendship’ and ‘Ms. Best Friend’), which are the annual beauty pageants organized for the Filipino and Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong.
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has helped to strengthen their friendship and empower the community as a whole (Chen, 2015). Indeed, the emphasis on community empowerment has been a consistent theme that underlies all the organized activities centring on beauty styling amongst domestic workers. Aside from the talent competitions and performances, many corporations and private businesses have been offering courses with a view to solicit future patrons. Some of these are offered through philanthropic programmes in which all the courses are taught by fellow domestic workers and are free of charge. An example is the Mandiri Bank’s Mandiri Sahabatku programme, which runs regular courses on hairstyling, make-up, sewing, and the design of fashion accessories in different public parks on Sundays3 (FIG. 10.1). The stated goal is to encourage Indonesian domestic workers to make use of their time on their days off to acquire useful skills that they could put to use in the future. According to an instructor who teaches hairstyling in the Knoll Hill Pavilion in Victoria Park, students and instructors are responsible for supplying their own equipment and other required materials for these courses (personal interview, 8 March 2020). But she insisted that such ‘self-help’ arrangements have not compromised the programme’s quality and professionalism, as all students are required to complete an examination before graduation. Thereafter, they would receive an award certificate and participate in a formal graduation ceremony. For several times a year, the bank also runs special workshops that train domestic workers in the skills for starting their own business in the future. Aside from the free programmes offered by the banks, many individuals and groups have also been offering courses on the same subjects along commercial lines with the aim to promote the interests of mostly Filipino and Indonesian-targeted businesses. The basic formats of these courses are not dissimilar to those of the Mandiri programme and all are also taking place in public spaces throughout the city on Sundays. However, participants are usually required to pay a substantial enrolment fee (for example, one programme costs HK$2,000 for twelve sessions over three months). Because many of those who operate these programmes are domestic workers themselves, the transactions are typically carried out without records. As noted by a recent graduate of one of the programmes, she is willing to use a significant portion of her salary to pay for the courses 3 The Mandiri Sahabatku programme also operates in Malaysia and Korea. It has received the Asia Responsible Enterprise Awards. For details, see https://www.facebook.com/ groups/255210701192596/
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Figure 10.1 Beauty-styling classes offered by Mandiri Bank at Knoll Hill Pavilion, Victoria Park, 2020
Source: Cecilia L. Chu
because they are of much higher quality than those provided by the banks and unions (personal interview, 25 April 2020). She explained that the fees also include special sessions with ‘master stylists’ invited from abroad to share their knowledge with students. In her opinion, enrolling in these
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privately run programmes is crucial for ambitious domestic workers like her to develop good networks in the salon business and build a solid foundation for their future career. She contended that the positive results from her training can already be seen in her winning several styling competitions and being invited as a model to promote the cosmetic products sold by those offering the programmes. Nowadays, she continues to participate in styling events organized by different organizations almost every other month, often accompanied by a close network of friends who form her support team. While more research is required to decipher the operations of these styling businesses, our initial study has provided some glimpses into their important role in shaping the future outlooks of many foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong. These practices also point to several aspects that demand further considerations: First, contrary to the common assumption that most domestic workers spend their rest days ‘doing nothing’, many are actively seeking to engage in activities to practise their talents and acquire new skills to develop future enterprises. Such activities are an integral part of an emergent civic urbanism in Hong Kong, where a large number of migrant workers reside. Second, although many of these activities are carried out through communal arrangements due to the limitation of resources, they lend support to an expanding ‘ethnic economy’ with a myriad network of formal and informal businesses. The phenomenon presents an interesting example of ‘commoning practices’ that differ from the normative understanding of the urban commons as an alternative development model that resists dominant capitalist relations. While these collaborative initiatives aim to help domestic workers to build social capital, their operations are prof it-driven and are built upon existing structures of production and consumption (Aschoff, 2015; Enright and Rossi, 2018). Finally, the strong association between activities that evolve around beauty styling and claims to social empowerment complicates the familiar feminist critique that deems women’s obsession with beauty and fashion as signs of excess and enslavement to a capitalist consumer culture (Dyhouse, 2011: 3). As Ju-chen Chen (2015) argues in her ethnographic study of beauty pageants in Hong Kong, the participation of domestic workers in styling contests and performances cannot be interpreted simply as attempts to escape their assigned roles as maids but also as a desire for self-transformation. Such ‘self-making’ processes point to a need for more critical investigation into the complex relationship between glamour and power and the construction of identity.
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Although it is beyond the scope of this chapter to engage with a deeper discussion of capitalism and gender construction, the following section illustrates some of the ways in which participation in beauty styling and fashion-related endeavours have reshaped the life trajectories of foreign domestic workers. These are articulated in the stories of three women who have participated in various talent contests and later became involved with the organization of related events for their communities. While their experiences do not represent that of all domestic workers, these accounts provide some insights into the linkage between individual aspirations, self-help practices, and collective empowerment for a migrant workers community.
Glamour and Power: Shaping Individual and Collective Aspirations The Styling Business of Shandra Love Although she is not the only ‘styling entrepreneur’ amongst Hong Kong’s foreign domestic workers, Shandra Love (who goes by the name Shandra) has gained the reputation as one of the most innovative organizers of fashion events in the city. She f irst became aware of the potential of fashion by entering a beauty contest hosted by a Filipino group several years ago (personal interview, 15 March 2020). Noticing that no such activities were available for her fellow Indonesians at the time, she decided to try her hand at organizing a similar one for them based on her earlier experience. The success of the show prompted her to continue to pursue her endeavour and experiment with different event themes that aim to attract workers from different backgrounds. Currently she organizes three to four events per year, with each comprising a distinct theme ranging from traditional ethnic costumes to less conventional dressing such as queer fashion and bikini wear. A majority of these cater to the Indonesian workers community. But she also at times collaborates with Filipino counterparts to bring different groups together on the same stage. Like those organized by the unions, some of her shows take place in public parks and community halls where rent is inexpensive. But in recent years she also turns to private venues, including shopping malls, hotel ballrooms and even cruise ships that offer more spectacular ‘party spaces’. Although hosting events in these exclusive venues is more expensive and requires participants to pay a higher fee (up to HK$500
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Figure 10.2 Poster of one of Shandra’s events, 2019
Source: Shandra Love
per person), they are highly popular and have often been able to attract a full house (FIG. 10.2). When asked to explain why she devotes her time to organize these events, Shandra emphasized that her prime motivation is not about fame or money but to provide fun and ‘feel-good’ experiences for her fellow domestic workers. At the same time, she is driven by a desire to demonstrate to the world that domestic workers are talented people who are capable of organizing and competing in high-quality fashion shows
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that are comparable to those of professional designers. She credited the success of her events to the ‘self-help spirit’ of the workers who are always ready to support each other. Indeed, these contests have constituted a springboard for participants to develop new resource networks around a range of activities, such as preparing costumes, hairstyles, and make-up and practising for catwalks, etc. Some domestic workers, including Shandra herself and her friends, also take the opportunity to develop subsidiary ‘businesses’, such as renting out costumes and fashion accessories to contest participants as well as offering private training on catwalks and make-up skills. All of these services are disseminated through social media, in particular Facebook and YouTube, where domestic workers are kept informed of the latest news and are able to quickly share them with their networks of friends. Perhaps due to the informal nature of such businesses, Shandra did not disclose too many details of her event budgets. She did note that she occasionally accepts sponsorship from private companies. But in most cases, her expenditure is covered by the entry fee for the shows, which may accommodate up to 150 people, including contest participants and guests. Besides the cost of venue rental and setup, she uses the revenue to purchase trophies and gifts which are sourced from Taobao. From time to time, she also invites celebrity designers from abroad as guests of honour. She does not spend much on promotion because she is able to design all the posters and advert materials herself by using a simple App on her phone. Despite having achieved considerable success, Shandra’s fashion shows are not without controversies, in particular those with unconventional themes that have provoked criticisms from the more conservative members of the Indonesian community. Nevertheless, she takes great pride in having pioneered these special shows for Hong Kong’s domestic workers and believes that they provide not only a common platform for them to perform and showcase their creativity, but also for promoting diversity and inclusiveness which are important aspects of civic engagement in an international city. The Upcycled Fashion of Elpie Malicsi At f irst glance, one might not be able to discern that Elpie Malicsi, a modestly dressed, soft-spoken Filipino domestic worker in her sixties, is a celebrated winner of multiple fashion design awards. Originally from
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Pinamalayan, the Philippines, Malicsi first developed her interest in fashion when she learned weaving and smocking during her first employment as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia (personal interview, 25 January 2020). She continued to develop her techniques after coming to Hong Kong and soon after began to offer informal weaving classes to fellow domestic workers in Central on Sundays. Her venture into the world of fashion design came accidentally in 2011, when she spotted a call for a competition on ‘upcycled fashion design’ on the television. She subsequently entered the contest and has since been participating in similar events every year. In 2013, she won a best designer award for a competition hosted by Classique Herbs, a Filipino-owned company specialized in wellness products, for a recycled costume made of coffee sachets and shoelaces. Another turning point came in 2017, when Malicsi met Dr Julie Ham, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Hong Kong in a workshop organized by HKU’s EmpowerU initiative. Afterward, Ham invited Malicsi to collaborate on a knowledge exchange project featuring her upcycled clothing designs. This project, which was entitled ‘Sustainable Sunday Couture’, comprised a public exhibition at the Philippine Consulate and a ‘mobile catwalk’ held in the public spaces of Central and Causeway Bay. Malicsi ended up supplying fifteen upcycled costumes for the event, which was launched in early 2018. As noted in the project statement, Malicsi’s work is unique in that it ‘speaks to the need for a more inclusive dialogue about sustainability, one that addresses the linkages between sustainability and labour rights, decent work and domestic workers’ creative contributions to Hong Kong culture’ (HKU Department of Sociology, 2018). The fact that her fashion is created out of various types of rubbish, such as coffee sachets, bubble wraps, plastic bags, and rice sacks, etc., allows the curator to narrate different stories of ‘stuff’ and connect them with domestic workers’ everyday chores of cleaning and recycling. By featuring these transformed materials in the form of glamorous fashion designed by Malicsi, the project also directs attention to the ingenuity and agency of domestic workers. This is most powerfully shown in the mobile catwalk in which four out of six models were also domestic workers. The event, which was organized with the help of volunteer make-up artists, photographers, and a beauty-pageant organizer, generated a spectacle in which the audience gazed in awe at the glamour and beauty of the models and their dresses on the city’s busy streets (FIG. 10.3). The positive response to the event can be seen in numerous reports in the media. These also include interviews with Malicsi by a Filipino television programme and the Chinese newspaper HK01 (2018), which later
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Figure 10.3 A model wearing one of Malicsi’s upcycled fashion designs, Central, Hong Kong, 2018
Source: Geoffrey Duran Cabato
invited her to run a workshop on recycled fashion design for the Chinese community. Reflecting on her achievements, Malicsi is modest. Contending that she had never dreamt of becoming a fashion designer, what happened in the past few years has not only opened up new opportunities for her to pursue her personal interests, but also made her become more committed to helping her fellow domestic workers to realize their dreams. To this end, she has continued to offer free lessons on Sundays on weaving and other creative skills in the Hong Kong Botanical Garden. She has concurrently started several philanthropic projects in the Philippines with the goal to improve the living conditions of local communities. These include an upcoming exhibition co-organized with the mayor of her hometown that generates money to purchase sewing machines for women, as well as a video-shooting project with the Filipino Vice President that aims to empower overseas workers and bring talents back home. Unlike Shandra, Malicsi does not engage in organizing large-scale fashion shows. But she does rent out her collection to those who are interested in wearing them in various performing events. She also runs a catering service for her friends that builds on her knowledge of creative food carving. She explains that all of these activities do not make money. Rather,
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they provide a means for her to contribute to the community as well as to practise running businesses she intends to establish after returning to the Philippines: a catering service and an upcycled gown rental service for photo shoots. Arie Sanjaya and Her Multiple Creative Endeavours We met Arie Sanjaya through a common friend, who urged us to meet her after hearing that our research touches on upcycled fashion. Still new to the subject and excited about our discovery of Malicsi’s works, we were taken by surprise to learn that upcycled fashion design has long been a popular competitive activity among Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong. And there is no better person to consult on this than Sanjaya, a winner of multiple contests on upcycled fashion and occasional organizer of beautystyling competitions herself. Sanjaya’s early life was similar to many foreign domestic workers. Born to a poor family in Indonesia, she f irst went to Singapore as a domestic worker and later came to Hong Kong (personal interview, 26 January 2020). She contended that although she has long been attracted to artistic pursuits, she did not have a chance to develop her skills until after arriving in Hong Kong, where she has been lucky to come across good employers who have allowed her to pursue her interests in her spare time. An outgoing, tomboyish character, Sanjaya quickly established an extended network of friends active in organizing various performing activities that range from singing and dancing to beauty styling. Her introduction to recycled fashion came a few years ago when she entered a design competition organized by Shandra and won the f irst prize with a piece made out of discarded newspapers (FIG. 10.4a). She went on to win two more competitions in the following years. In 2017, after being urged repeatedly by her friends, she took on the task of organizing a beauty-styling competition herself at a community town hall with great success. Unlike Shandra, Sanjaya did not follow up on her successful show and develop a ‘styling business’ out of it. She explained that this is because her involvement in such events has always been driven by a desire to have fun and not to make a name for herself. She also reveals that as the ‘designer’ behind the scenes and not the model herself, she is motivated primarily to create beautiful costumes for others, in particular her long-time partner, who has been the model for all of Sanjaya’s winning pieces and is herself a
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beauty pageant winner. Sanjaya admitted that her position has led her to turn down many invitations to host styling events, even though she loves the carnivalesque atmosphere of these activities and often shows up either as an MC, a judge, or a ‘technician’ to support her friends and to enjoy herself. Returning to the subject of upcycled fashion, Sanjaya conveyed to us that although she appreciates the ‘noble goal’ of promoting sustainability and labour that often is associated with upcycled fashion, she f inds it diff icult to relate to the ‘theoretical discussion’ around these topics. Rather, her interest in designing this clothing lies in the wide availability of waste and its limitless creative possibilities. She did acknowledge that because collecting ‘rubbish’ requires the volunteer support of many people over a period of time, these types of competitions become an important way to practise communal management of resources. Additionally, like all performance activities, the contests generate not only a fun experience amongst domestic workers but also a strong sense of pride in their accomplishments. Although Sanjaya’s perspective differs from those of union organizers and activists, she believes that the latter play an important role in serving the needs of Hong Kong’s domestic workers community. She explains that part of the reason for her feeling somewhat distant from labour activism is that she has never suffered from any form of exploitation in her jobs herself. Indeed, she contends that the years she spent working in Hong Kong have thus far constituted the best time of her life, whereas she is able to pursue her multifaceted interests, acquire new knowledge, and make many friends. She sees her frequent engagement with organizing different performing activities – all of them pro-bono – as a way to help enrich the lives of her fellow domestic workers and contribute to the migrant community at large. Whatever she does, she insists, is built upon a positive collective spirit and her goal is always to have fun and to make herself and others happy. While not all foreign domestic workers share Sanjaya’s good fortune in having good employers, her personal trajectories and candid reflection on her experiences nevertheless shed some light on the shaping of individual and collective aspirations which have been nurtured in the unique context of a diasporic migrant community. Like Shandra and Malicsi, Sanjaya places great emphasis on the value of ‘self-help’ and is committed to help improve the lives of her fellow domestic workers. And she achieves this by doing what she loves most: designing glamorous fashion that enables her friends to shine on the public stage.
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Figure 10.4a and 10.4b (Left) Arie Sanjaya’s winning upcycled fashion design, 2019; (right) ‘Daur Ulang’ upcycled fashion show in Victoria Park, organized by Shandra Love
Source: (10.4a) Arie Sanjaya, (10.4b) Shandra Love
Conclusion: Civic Urbanisms of the Other This chapter began by making references to the notions of ‘commoning’ and ‘bottom-up urbanism’, which have been frequently invoked to describe the self-governing practices that contrast with prof it-driven models of development. Our examination of the beauty-styling endeavours of Hong Kong’s foreign domestic workers suggests that although these self-organized activities in some ways fit with the idea of urban commoning in generating new values and relations through the shared use of space and resources, their operations are embedded within existing structures of production and consumption of a capitalist economy. This observation reminds us of Enright and Rossi’s (2018) caution against essentialist understandings of the commons, which should be seen as a ‘contested terrain within the intricate economies of exploitation and reinvention characterizing global capitalism in the neoliberal era’ (44). Some of the examples discussed here, such as the educational self-help programmes offered by the banks and private individuals and groups, made explicit the ambivalent nature of the ‘commoning discourse’: that on the one hand, they seek to nurture a collaborative ethos amongst the grassroots and help them acquire social capital, on the other, they encourage the deployment of disciplinary measures aimed at regulating their behaviour and moral integrity in support of the logic of accumulation. The phenomenon exemplifies what Hardt and Negri (2009) deem as the ongoing commodification of social relations and
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advent of neoliberal governmentality that characterizes contemporary urbanism. These critiques, which are posed in classic Marxist terms, highlight the need for more critical interrogations of the ‘commons-oriented’ practices that have proliferated in the past decade. Over the course of researching for this chapter, however, we have also become more aware of the intricate processes of community empowerment. In the cases examined, this entails the opening up of new opportunities for foreign domestic workers that exceed the intentions of those who initiated the beauty-styling events and training programmes. These activities have not only allowed workers to establish lasting resource networks that reshaped their future prospects in unexpected ways, but also to foster amongst them a greater sense of solidarity and commitment to help improve the lives of others on their own terms. Seen this way, the participation in the various collaborative endeavours becomes a crucial means to connect personal transformation with civic engagement in the public realm. These are reflected in the stories of Shandra, Malicsi, and Sanjaya, whose life trajectories have been shaped as much by their individual interests as by their desires to contribute to the welfare and social life of their communities. While the ‘success stories’ outlined above highlight the agency of domestic workers and their aspirations, it is important to contextualize these within the geopolitics of labour and migration that is always entwined with the construction of difference. As Chen (2015) has noted in her study of beauty pageants amongst Hong Kong’s foreign domestic workers, the latter’s ‘self-making’ process cannot be delinked from their diasporic experience – i.e., of leaving one’s homeland, discovering new communities, and finding ways to redefine their identities in a foreign nation where they have no chance of becoming citizens. In this context, their strong sense of solidarity and collaborative ethos are inevitably shaped by a heightened consciousness of their role as ‘maids’ and status as outsiders. At the same time, this status also compels them to focus on creating a better life for themselves after their return to their home countries. Indeed, the inherent irony of domestic workers’ migration is that, despite all the stringent rules imposed on their work situations, for many, Hong Kong still offers a sense of freedom and independence that does not exist back home. This experience also can make them more aware of the discrepancies between Hong Kong and their own country, in particular the shortcomings of their state governments in providing for their fellow citizens. Importantly, this realization often fuels a willingness to contribute more to their own communities, because they now see themselves as having an ability and awareness to shape their nation’s future.
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Although the social divide between foreign domestic workers and local citizens continues to exist, recent social movements centring on the defence for civil rights and liberty in Hong Kong have prompted new alignments between communities. As many domestic workers pointed out to us, they support the cause of these movements and see them representing a positive change. At the same time, local citizens, especially those of the younger generations, have become more eager to promote social equity, diversity, and inclusiveness. The call for accountable governments and the protection of civil liberties also strongly resonates with that of activists associated with migrant workers unions, who believe that a greater recognition of these universal values would not only help to eliminate discrimination against foreign domestic workers, but also foster a sense of ‘political awakening’ in these workers that would enable them to critique the role of their own states, engage in collective bargaining for their rights, and strengthen the transnational networks of activist organizations. All of these positive developments point to the need for a more critical understanding of the changing nature and scope of civic urbanisms and the evolving relationship between the state and civil society in Hong Kong and beyond. As the preceding discussion shows, such an understanding must take into consideration the agency and aspirations of different constituencies who play a part in the ongoing construction of the urban milieu. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank all their interviewees for their time and generosity in sharing their perspectives and experiences. They would also like to thank Dr Julie Ham for sharing her insights on the project ‘Sustainable Sunday Couture’.
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Law, Lisa. 2002. ‘Defying Disappearance: Cosmopolitan Public Spaces in Hong Kong’. Urban Studies, 39(9): 1625–1645. https://doi.org/10.1080/00420980220151691. McHugh, Fionnuala. 2018, March 10. ‘Hong Kong Domestic Helper’s Upcycled Fashion Collection combines Empowerment and Empathy’. South China Morning Post. Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Stavrides, Stavros. 2016. Common Space: The City as Commons. London: Zed Books. Tam, Daisy. 2016. ‘Little Manila: The Other Central of Hong Kong’. In Messy Urbanism: Understanding the ‘Other’ Cities of Asia, edited by Manish Chalana, and Jeffrey Hou, 119–135. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. HKSAR Government. The Basic Law of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. 2020, July. Article 24, Chapter III, 66–67. HKSAR Government. Statistics on the number of Foreign Domestic Helpers in Hong Kong. 2021, February. https://data.gov.hk/en-data/dataset/hk-immd-set4statistics-fdh, accessed on 23 February 2022. Wahyudi, Irfan and Panizza Allmark. 2018. ‘Print Media as Migrant Advocacy Tool: A Case of Indonesian Language Print Media in Hong Kong’. Masyarakat, Kebudayaan dan Politik, 31(3): 241–255. http://dx.doi.org/10.20473/mkp. V31I32018.241-255.
About the Authors Cecilia L. Chu is an urban historian and associate professor in the Division of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on the economic and cultural processes shaping the built environment. Her publications include Building Colonial Hong Kong: Speculative Development and Segregation in the City (2022). Marta Catalán Eraso is an architect and urban designer. Currently, she is an instructor at the Open University of Catalonia. She completed her PhD in the Division of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong, where she was a faculty member. Her research examines urban segregation and unequal living conditions.
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Holding Space, Making Place Nurturing Emergent Solidarities within New Food Systems in Singapore Huiying Ng, Monika Rut, Vivian Lee, Marcus Koe, Chingwei Chen Abstract Today, cities depend on global food systems that prioritize urban needs over that of other regions. These food systems are part of a model of urbanism that works towards increasing disconnection in the food ecosystem – ecologically and sociopolitically. By discussing our varied experiences with a community food initiative in Singapore, Foodscape Collective, we reflect on the collaborative aspect of making, and finding, our place – viewing placemaking as a process of civic sense-making and identity-formation. Through a collaboratively written set of perspectives, we suggest how civic urbanism through dialogical placemaking renews our relationships with food and agriculture, by weaving together imaginaries of a more inclusive and circular food system. Keywords: Place-making, pref iguration, network, community, food systems
Introduction Food has figured in Singapore’s post-war, postcolonial independence as a cultural anchor in times of disorientation. It has been part of the transformation of relationships between people, physical spaces, and with people’s relationships with food itself – as both commodity and wholefood. In this chapter, we look at the act of producing food in Singapore as a political act of civic urbanism. We argue that discussions about food practices are not only cultural or historical, but political in the context of neoliberalized
Cho, Im Sik, Blaž Križnik and Jeffrey Hou (eds), Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia. Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei beyond Developmental Urbanization. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463728546_ch11
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economies such as Singapore: encouraging individual and collective actions that prefigure a more dynamic culture of civic urbanism. Through this, we respond to Cho, Križnik, and Hou’s (this volume) provocation for more discussions on the role of citizens and civil society, given their discursive absence in studies of developmental states within the neoliberal restructuring of state–market relations. While Singapore’s central planning incorporates new ideas rapidly, this is premised on the continual repositioning of the state as provisioner of imaginaries, socialities, and possibility. We argue, alongside other chapters in this book, that an overt focus on the state’s role renders people’s work of imagining other forms of citizenship invisible. This chapter focuses on alternative practices of building collectivity: building the independence and capacity for people to contest undesirable futures emerging from centralized food production networks, while building collective capacity to surpass the individualizing frame of neoliberal self-help. To reflect how plural perspectives and actions may shape the way a network’s work emerges, we have chosen to write as a group. In the first part of this chapter, we outline the history of civic discussions around the ecology of farming in Singapore, and its relations to what counts as urban. We then touch on the methodology of the chapter, and turn to three anecdotal accounts of individual and collective actions that reflect a prefigurative politics around food. We discuss these actions in the context of what prefigurative and structural change entails, and conclude with their relationship to civic urbanism in Singapore.
A Note on Co-authorship These anecdotes are by individuals who hold a position in, or whose work is proximal to, Foodscape Collective’s areas of activity. As is described further in the anecdotes, Chingwei is a co-initiator of Project Black Gold; Marcus is interested in questions posed by Foodscape Collective’s members, and he has a garden plot that has been involved in the group’s programmes; Vivian is actively involved in coordinating efforts across Foodscape Collective, as well as in-depth work within certain projects. The conceptual framing and analysis of the anecdotes are co-written by Huiying and Monika: Huiying is an initiator of the Foodscape Collective. Monika participated in Foodscape Collective’s activities in Singapore in 2017, during her fieldwork on urban food sharing; they have since been working together on sustainable food transitions. Huiying and Monika laid out the conceptual foundations
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for the book chapter and work reflexively and iteratively with the other authors to develop a narrative that positions the voice of practitioners in the academic literature. Foodscape Collective was formed in 2015 by a group of acquaintances. It is a non-registered community initiative, with the mission to cultivate an ecosystem of people and businesses who work together for a fair and inclusive circular food system for all. Its loose and porous circle of members and friends have hosted activities, workshops, events, have given talks, and are beginning to aggregate efforts through longer-term programmes. Through anecdotes from practitioners working within Foodscape Collective, this chapter seeks to reflect a less-articulated perspective on the practice of securing development in Singapore. While the focus is Singapore, this chapter’s ability to articulate the boundaries, restrictions, and intentional breaking of limitations – imaginative, legal, or otherwise – arises from having connections in the region with whom to speak, to listen to, and to be understood. Here, as the editors of this volume point out in the concluding chapter, Chen’s (2010) notion of Asian inter-referencing as an open-ended method for self-knowledge is remarkably prescient. This raises three questions for action in our discussion of civic urbanism in contexts of authoritarian and developmental urbanism, which we will return to again in the conclusion: 1) How to collaborate without losing power?; 2) To what extent can small civic groups exercise what freedoms and abilities they have, to create a change in their societies?; 3) To understand the workings of power, what other perspectives are brought by a self-reflexive analysis of one’s actions within the system? These questions reflect an inherent challenge in Foodscape Collective’s work. Kim (2018) has discussed the limits negotiated by food sovereignty activism in Singapore, where ‘[p]rojects to reassert local or community control over basic aspects of life, such as food, face the difficult challenge of countering a pro-globalization state that normalizes efficiency’ (Kim, 2018: 104). Foodscape Collective’s focus areas seem to align relatively well with the state’s environmental agendas, but the process of securing recognition has gone hand in hand with discussions about how to seek recognition. Rather than compromise, we hope to show political power can be built through place-based, long-term, and semantic building of a common vocabulary and practices, with a view towards strengthening the mainstream public’s stomach to hear what more diverse groups – or ‘counterpublics’ (Warner 2014) – have to say. Critical collaboration works against the isolating quality of neoliberal developmentalist states, with their pressurized living environments, and towards inclusive decision-making about the priorities they set for development: on whose terms, and at whose expense.
270 Huiying Ng, Monik a Rut, Vivian Lee, Marcus Koe, Chingwei Chen Figure 11.1 Sites of Foodscape Collective, Habitat Collective, and Project Black Gold. Source: Huiying Ng, Monika Rut, Vivian Lee, Marcus Koe, Chingwei Chen
Drawing by Hoilok Heather Lam. Map data 2021© Google
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Our discussion of civil society’s role in contesting hegemonic discourses and practices of food production and consumption, reflects global calls for more research-informed gardening activism to steer public food and land agendas (Tornaghi and Van Dyck, 2015). It also contributes to discussions on food and nature in developmentalist economy-led East Asian states: in Hong Kong (e.g., Chan, 2016; Tian, Jim, and Tao, 2012; Ho and Lai, 2002) and Taiwan (Tsai, 2019). Unlike those places, Singapore’s near-total urban imaginary renders many forms of production that support urban food consumption ‘outside’ its civic discussions. For instance, while discussions of Singapore’s soil organic carbon in roadside soils and tropical forests exist (Ghosh, Scharenbroch, and Ow, 2016; Leitgeb, Ghosh, Dobbs, Englisch, and Michel, 2019; Fung, Richards, Leong, Ghosh, Tan, Drillet, Leong, and Edwards, 2021), deeper consideration of the effects of urban overspill on the entangled nature of social and ecological needs of the land, villagers’ rights, and indigenous knowledge (Jim, 1996), are absent in Singapore. Here, the rural imaginary has been discounted since the gradual phasing-out of farms initiated in 1975 by the then-economic minister, Dr Goh Keng Swee (Chou, 2014). Without the rural and agrarian imaginary, the overreach of state and private capital on urban space and people’s access to space – active in Singapore as much as in Hong Kong, and very much an expression of postmodern models of governance and capital (Cuthbert and McKinnell, 1997) – has received a limited range of critique. Academic discussions do exist, which concern the role of development in the recreation of memory and space (Chang and Huang, 2005), starting from early discussions about the way political imperatives shape environmental design (Savage and Kong, 1993), to the constructed, exclusionary sociality of community gardening (Neo and Chua, 2017), methods of city branding (Ooi, 2011; Gulsrud and Ooi, 2014), to proposals for ideal forms of green urbanism (Newman, 2010). However, despite civil society’s active role in biodiversity and nature conservation efforts (Neo, 2007), discussions of practices around agricultural land, such as the use and misuse of existing land zoned for growing edibles or for agriculture – for instance, by private construction companies – seldom takes place as a public discussion. Such discussions are increasingly important, as the state-led ‘30 by 30’ agricultural productivity plans unfold – a practical aim of producing 30% of Singapore’s nutritional needs by 2030 (Singapore Food Agency, 2021). State policies encourage new businesses to prototype solutions in anticipation of future food insecurity arising from shocks to the current food system. These new policies underestimate the effects of ongoing land intensification, which has led to the rapid degradation of natural habitat and biocultural
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heritage (Han, 2017). While this is changing, policies have tended towards a governance culture of limited public participation in food sustainability matters, such as food growing and surplus food management, which have been incorporated into the national policy on food security and waste-toenergy plants (Rut, Davies, and Ng, 2021). We consider Foodscape Collective’s work a form of activism or advocacy that asks how the imaginaries of individuals working within the grassroots (but not within the ‘grassroots’ of officialdom) disrupt the imaginary of the state as provisioner of food. Working through a definition of prefigurative change, we argue that many small-scale actions have impact on shifting food cultures and practices from the large scale of our current food system fostering the erosion of agrarian citizenship (Wittman, 2009) – to the small and decentralized local scale of a more connected food system, where place is meaningful. We show how attempts can craft an alternative narrative and imaginary of land as a reproductive space, despite the overwhelming representation of land as parcels in a productivist landscape. Before we proceed, we wish to highlight a few points. The term ‘community farming’ has entered the food security discourse in Singapore, as an addition to planned public housing built directly on what was once amongst the last primary rainforests in Singapore, Tengah forest. We take care to note that our stand on technology and progress is not a zero-sum perspective, and we see the importance of ensuring neighbourhoods have access to food-growing spaces and educational facilities near them, while keeping space and pathways for high-yield farming endeavours to take root. We emphasize that the capacity to speak up about how development (including agri-tech development) proceeds must be shared with people, not only with large or well-funded corporate entities, implicating knowledge-sharing, education, training, and access to resources, capital, and information. This contribution extends Wang’s (2021) thoughtful discussion of localism and ‘paternalist care’ in the state’s approach to food security and urban farming in Singapore as ‘grounded in control over humans and natures as well as a taken for granted attitude of technological prowess and intensification as best practice’. We will also address how Foodscape Collective’s (and indeed, other like-minded groups’1) approach to growing food in neighbourhoods comes from a different impression of what the garden city could be: one less focused on spectacle and beautification, which as Harms (2016) has pointed out, enforces a ‘mode of exclusion’ for people who are not able to 1 While we do not focus on other groups here, Foodscape Collective is not alone in an alternative vision of growing edibles in Singapore, and there is a fair amount of mobility across groups.
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secure such access to space, or who do not plant with an aesthetic or aim recognizable by the state.
Theoretical and Methodological Approach ‘Prefigurative politics’ is a term that has been used to describe the desired change that happens in the present, to create a new world. More recently, geographers Jeffrey and Dyson (2021) define prefiguration as ‘modelling the forms of action that are sought to be generalised in the future in circumstances characterised by power, hierarchy, and conflict’ (Jeffrey and Dyson, 2021: 5). Prefiguration is seen as a spatial and performative genre, a thread of inquiry that might ‘confound or short-circuit dominant emergency narratives’ (Jeffrey and Dyson, 2021: 3), by running parallel to the state’s anticipatory politics. This section localizes this theoretical frame in Singapore and shows how Foodscape Collective’s work has been influenced by a plurality of movements in both the global South and North, that is, food sovereignty movements, and food justice and climate action movements respectively. In this framework, anticipatory politics is presented as one that seeks to ‘preserve the present against the deprecations of hypothesised dangerous futures’ (Jeffrey and Dyson, 2021: 5) – for instance, by providing land, funds, and support for technologies and enterprises dedicated to building controlled agricultural environments that preserve specific visions of edible food for specific humans, in the face of climate collapse. In contrast, prefigurative politics seeks ways of changing the present, ‘not only to manage dangerous futures but also to address [the] existing crises’ that will affect marginalized and minoritized populations, and that are downplayed or not spotlighted as emergencies by dominant powers (Jeffrey and Dyson, 2021: 5). As such, prefigurative politics works to highlight the ‘selective and partisan nature of the anticipatory politics of dominant organisations’ (ibid.) – they highlight forms of exclusion which otherwise go unnoticed and draw out other perspectives on the discursive framing of apparent crises, including global food insecurity. Jeffrey and Dyson’s interdisciplinary view of pref iguration provides the capacity to theorize how the relocalization of influential imaginaries (including global eco-villages, intentional communities, Transition Towns, Australian permaculture, and La Via Campesina’s approach to horizontalism) feature in Foodscape Collecitve’s work in Singapore with its residents, with the attempt to work across citizenships as best as possible. Their framework
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allows us to draw a link to an emergent civic urbanism, one that is not dictated but arises through the practices of a collective or network. First, they propose that pref iguration is improvisational: ‘typically proceed[ing] through an intensive commitment to improvising with available ideas, materials, spaces, and bodies, and affective states’ (Jeffrey and Dyson, 2021); second, it creates structure, by institutionalizing some practices, which ‘often create protected spaces where counter futures can be further developed’ (ibid.). Third, these practices then impact wider systems, for example, by altering the momentum of dominant projects, changing perceptions, or shaping spaces and society. In the following sections we will refer to these as the 3Is. Localized in Singapore, pref igurative acts counter the dilemma of mass social change buoyed by developmentalist narratives of scarcity and meritocracy, enforced through the state’s tacit and explicit legitimation of ‘progress’. Instead of the promise of a better future at someone else’s expense, improvisational practices that are impactful and long-term are crucial to unworking the continual co-optation of narratives that make it into public discourse (e.g., see Goh’s 2015 work on this). Such civic urbanism does not simply become another iteration of civil society within the ‘eco-developmental state’ (Esarey, Haddad, Lewis, and Harrell, 2020). Prefiguration instead reshapes modes of decision-making between state and people, through practices that build civic organizations’ and small enterprises’ institutional capacity (Cho, Križnik, and Hou, this volume). In the anecdotes to follow we will show how this includes the improvisational embracing of open-endedness and trust that, through physical and emotional labour with people and other living organisms, efforts can yield outcomes,2 sustainable impact by building long-term capacities for bodily health (through food as medicine), financial health (through enterprise), and civic space and capacities for autonomous knowledge-building and research (also discussed in Ng, 2020). Finally, as the anecdotes below demonstrate, civic actions around food systems involve individuals who come from a range of backgrounds: from those who have spent most of their lives overseas (e.g., Chingwei), to those who have returned after some years abroad (e.g., Vivian), to those who are 2 There are many common perceptions that deter people and organizations from such efforts: poor topsoil, scarce land, few resources, farming as backbreaking labour, manual work as a waste of scarce human resources, farming as undesirable, food as detached from ecosystems, Singapore’s urban ecosystems as artificial, to be managed for beauty but not inherently (still) alive, with the capacity to be revived.
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informed by global imaginaries with more local experiences (e.g., Marcus). Our co-authors are by no means representative of the larger set of backgrounds, income groups, ethnicities, and genders of people who improvise with new food practices, and thus this written work may be said to prefigure how certain privileges can aid in opening and expanding spaces to perceive more diverse expressions. Alongside acts of prefiguration, a second, important concept for us is our focus on thinking, being, and acting within place. We view placemaking as taking place not only in observable practices, but also in how we locate or place ourselves. Following Lefebvrian notions of what makes space into place, we note that spatial practice intersects continually with spaces-as-lived. Place holds processual characteristics of being and becoming (Cresswell, 2014), as it is worked, lived in, appropriated, reshaped, or sculpted by both everyday people and structures of governance (Friedmann, 2007). This tendency to think via place brings us to ask how the spatial practice of thought and intentionality works its way into the emotional body of a people, and of their visceral and emotional connections to place. This is particularly relevant given how Singapore’s histories of agriculture and state-led land appropriation have been rendered place-less and memorial-less, in both civic space and physical place. We extend the question of spatial practice to how communities become able to access space and place, to produce healthy food for themselves. A placemaking lens asks how Foodscape Collective imagines the work of creating a different future for the food system in Singapore, which is inclusive of humans and non-humans. Foodscape Collective’s focus has not solely been to advocate; many activities have also been to create connection, between people, people and the environment, and through placemaking, as an alternative way of building place and connection. In the absence of the places that hold strong memories of connected food cultures, activism begins in place, and as a networked process. In our experience, the fight to make place and spatial identity involves an affective range of experiences that speak to diverse groups, compared with other civic actions (including rights and liberties, and climate action). This is not to say other actions are less impactful or urgent, just different, and thus they speak to different groups of people. Our understanding of food may be summed up (though always as part of an ongoing dialogue within the collective) as involving a visceral path to food, that is about identity, relationship, and is also implicitly political. Through the act of asking what nourishment different bodies need, it becomes possible to be motivated towards direct action (e.g., setting up community gardens) that combines
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the search for, and use of land, as an act of enlarging autonomous space in a state where central planning subsumes land use under bureaucratic layers. This chapter has emerged from a process of collective writing. The chapter consists of three anecdotes analysed to reflect on emergent linkages between prefigurative politics and civic urbanism in Singapore. Vivian writes about building people–public capacities and critical approaches to collaboration with the state; Marcus describes choice-making towards permaculture pathways and Chingwei expresses what ‘finding place’ means, on her return to Singapore. We will relate these to the larger point we make about civic urbanisms in Singapore as follows. Vivian’s section will address our conceptual point 1: while Singapore’s central planning adapts new behaviours quickly, this is often reduced to the co-optation of a practice into a behaviour, without recognizing the discursive assertion of autonomous decision-making as a significant form of capacity-building for civil society. Marcus’s section will address conceptual point 2: in Singapore, the narrative of land as a reproductive space departs significantly from its national narrative as a garden city. Chingwei and Vivian’s anecdotes address conceptual point 3 on collective action: bringing in the introduction’s mention of ‘civic urbanism as a result of autonomous collective action’ (Cho, Križnik, and Hou, this volume: [page]) which does not preclude collaboration with the state, but transforms people’s capacity to negotiate with it. Chingwei and Vivian’s case studies will be read to explore how collaboration can be distinguished from compromise or co-optation, in expanding citizen imaginaries beyond state imaginaries. We will add to our analysis of networks by describing the building of relations and imaginaries autonomous from the state. Combined, the anecdotes address conceptual point 4: that research on prefigurative politics has tended to focus on deliberation, collective agency, and citizen empowerment (Yates, 2020) but less on the current-day strategies and tactics of prefigurative politics. These will be further discussed in the Discussion section, according to the following themes: citizens and the state, more-than-human nature, and expanding imaginaries. Anecdotes: The Work of a Learning Network Vivian Lee: On Collective Trajectories and Holding Space My first active initiative as part of Foodscape Collective was in 2017, when I proposed to write a letter to the Agri-Food and Veterinary Association (AVA; now the Singapore Food Agency, SFA) in response to the parcelling
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of more land for agricultural use. Through the grapevine, I’d heard that all of the plots were allocated to companies that proposed high-tech farming methods, that a proposal by someone who had a mix of both high-tech and natural approaches to farming was rejected, and that two plots had not been awarded as there were ‘no suitable tenders’, as reported in the papers. I felt that we needed to diversify our approaches to growing food. Aware of the climate crisis and health issues caused by industrial farming methods, and of alternative methods of permaculture and natural farming, I wanted public discussions to look beyond productivity as a goal. With Huiying, I began writing the letter, invited a few others into the editing process, and sent it to AVA and the National Environment Agency (NEA). In this letter, we briefly included the concept of an agrihood as one imagination of where food could be produced in Singapore’s urban context. The vision of an agrihood, where food-growing spaces are at the heart of every neighbourhood in Singapore, was further elaborated upon over the following years by members of Foodscape Collective. In this agrihood – a suburb or residential neighbourhood centred around commonly shared food spaces, from production to preparation and decomposition – the sense of place is clearly connected to the livelihood of the residents living in it.3 With micro-farms at their heart, each neighbourhood would serve as a place for aspiring farmers living in the area to make a living – part-time or otherwise. Around a commercial farm sustained by the local residents, elders could gather to participate in lighter farm work, such as supporting the harvesting and the packing and distribution of the produce. For schools, these neighbourhood farms could serve as living classrooms to learn and apply lessons in the sciences, arts, and mathematics. The micro-farms could be extended to a farmer’s market for residents to pick up their organic fresh produce in a social setting, in conversation with the people who grow their food. The kopitiam4 or hawker centre nearby would offer a farm-to-table-to-farm experience that is affordable to everyone – buying produce from the farm and returning food scraps to the farm for composting. A nearby community centre could house a seed-saving facility, with gathering spaces for community potlucks, seeds and skills 3 We draw our use of the term ‘agrihood’ from images of successful examples in the United States (e.g., see Hauser, 2019), but for practical purposes, the concept is akin to other ideas of place-based edible neighbourhoods, and invites reformulation. For the purposes of Foodscape Collective’s discussion of the concept, agrihoods foreground the possibility of neighbourhoodliving centred around edible food growing. 4 Kopitiam is ‘coffeeshop’ in Hokkien.
278 Huiying Ng, Monik a Rut, Vivian Lee, Marcus Koe, Chingwei Chen Figure 11.2 Boon Lay Nature Garden, originally named the Biodiverse Edible Garden at Jurong Central Park
Source: Pui Cuifen
sharing, where afterschool activities could see children playing safely in the playground amongst a community closely connected in their kampung.5 In this agrihood, conditions would be created to nurture connections to self, to an intergenerational community, to the planet, and all the beings who dwell on it. We – those of us in the network who have been discussing this – are keenly aware that this vision can only be realized with the active participation of residents, and how they choose to show up in co-creating this place. It is also necessary to engage public institutions and government agencies in constant conversation to share our ideas for this vision. Fortuitously, in 2019, the National Parks Board (NParks) wanted to experiment with creating a biodiverse edible garden at the Jurong Central Park.6 Mr Tang7 and the Foodscape Collective were invited to work with NParks for this project. In the process of creating the garden, a group came together, and we began to see how NParks had to manage public expectations, which sometimes could be challenging because some park-users did not understand what the project’s intentions were. With our intention of cultivating 5 Kampung is used to express ‘village’ in Bahasa Melayu. 6 This has since been renamed the Boon Lay Nature Garden. 7 Mr Tang Hung Bun is a practitioner of natural farming, a former physics teacher, and a dragonfly specialist for various environmental impact assessment projects in Singapore.
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inclusivity as part of this placemaking project, we took these inquiries and challenges as teaching and learning opportunities to engage the public. Tension formed between NParks’ need to manage public expectations and learning how to bring awareness to the public of the different ways of using the public space. Ideas were crafted in partnership with NParks and though there were challenges, we did not compromise. Instead, when differences arose we maintained engagement to continue working towards our vision with baby steps. As the experienced natural farmer of the team, Mr Tang was the obvious leader, but the leadership role was fluid and taken up by whomever had the skills that were required. As the community, and garden, continue to grow, we are also holding space for individuals with creative ideas towards our shared vision to step in and lead in any proposed initiatives to nurture a sense of ownership and belonging. While these proposed initiatives have to be in consultation with Foodscape Collective and NParks, we are also mindful of how to strike a balance between collective governance, institutional support, and individual autonomy. This improvisational approach to the place-making process feels organic and empowering for the individuals. With this garden, I began to see what an agrihood could look like in the heartland of Singapore, and what it takes to realise it. It is our hope that, with the success of this experimental partnership with NParks, the precedents set within NParks to work with a partner organization on place-based community growing can inform the institutional culture in other neighbourhoods in Singapore. Marcus Koe: Building Appropriate Permaculture Pathways Two questions about food deeply concern me: (1) What can be done for people to have more agency and participation regarding their food?; and (2) How could an improved food system be capable of reversing the damage done to the environment? I was convinced that the answer lay in permaculture – a holistic worldview that works with nature for sustainable living, and a system of design for how to do so. However, I quickly learned that permaculture centred largely around homesteading, assuming (or rather, advocating) access to land – something that the majority in Singapore do not have. In Singapore, the government owns 90% of our 728 km 2 island, and the remainder is split very unequally amongst our 5.5 million residents. I had two options: join the rat race and earn enough to buy land to practise permaculture; or develop the appropriate agricultural stepping stones – a prefiguration for a better society that utilizes and pushes forward the holistic
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worldview of permaculture. I chose the latter. While I was developing a proposal for a network of small farms that would serve my neighbourhood, the government steadily pushed forward its own idea of agriculture in the future. I was hopeful for a moment, with the announcements of the ‘30x30’ target (that Singapore produce 30% of its food by 2030, up from less than 10%), a new statutory board for food safety and security, the Agricultural Productivity Fund to support local farms, and the public realization of our food insecurity at the start of the Covid-19 crisis. However, it soon became very clear that all this support was for an agriculture that emphasizes profits and design over science and knowledge, and the manufacturing instead of cultivation of food. Instead, I wished to advocate an agriculture that is soil-based, with nature as technology, that is community-supported, place-based, and neighbourhood-scaled, and designed for positive impacts beyond the provision of food. All I needed was the approval to operate a handful of unused grass patches as a combined small farm. I proposed this project to multiple agencies of government and failed to make any signif icant progress. The reasons were multiple. For one, there was no established process for actualizing such a project. Agricultural land is conventionally released for tender to companies, and there has been no consideration for marginal spaces to be leased out or even used for commercial purposes, much less for farming. There exists a statutory board that oversees community gardens, but these are for hobby gardening and strictly cannot have any commercial activity. The proposed farm is innovatively interdisciplinary and its interests are spread across various sectors of governance. The farm aims to develop the interests of urban green spaces and soil (National Parks Board), environmental concerns (Ministry of Environment and Water Resources, renamed the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment), land use (Singapore Land Authority), urban planning and design (Urban Redevelopment Authority), food and agriculture (Singapore Food Agency). Unfortunately, these agencies largely operate in silos when dealing with non-governmentinitiated projects; this leads to a lot of diff iculty in securing actionable support. There might be a specialization bias suggesting that a system that tries to do many things will not be able to do anything well (i.e., not produce enough food). Because the industry is being pushed towards high-tech, vertical systems by government and capital, available tenders for agricultural spaces demand requirements that are tailored for such systems. Furthermore, government and private funding seem to follow a combination of ‘high-tech equals good tech’ and ‘high investment equals
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Figure 11.3 At work on the market garden.
Source: Marcus Koe
prof itable investment’. Lastly, there is no example of such a farm in Singapore, nor is there a farm that can provide documentation or proof to support what I proposed to be achievable in such a farm. This is where some progress is possible. The current challenge is to develop a proof-of-concept that is scalable and replicable. Fortunately, the community garden that I was a member of required some revitalization due to a loss of members and activity exacerbated by the Covid-19 situation. I managed to acquire additional space within the garden to develop this proof-of-concept. Key to this project are the showcase of design for a small-scale soil-based farm, the documentation of processes, operations, costs and yield, the development of a communitysupported model of agriculture, and the evidence of positive impact on soil and ecology. In the eight weeks since this project started,8 there has already been a flurry of activity – individuals and food rescue groups reaching out to contribute scraps for composting, collaboration with a soil research team, activation of garden members to prepare planting beds, and hosting or working with various interest groups and allies. The space has already 8
The project has continued since and is known as Habitat Collective.
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been activated to function as a hub for activity around food. The goal is not simply a successful garden; it is a political effort for Singapore to think of agriculture and food systems holistically, and to set in motion progress towards a culture that is more permanent. Chingwei Chen: Finding Place with Community Compost Hubs I’ve always felt vaguely ‘dis-placed’ in Singapore, my birth country, and assumed it was because I have been living overseas most of my life. Recently, after spending a prolonged period of time back in Singapore, it dawned on me that the feeling of displacement was because I do not relate to the mainstream food culture here. This led to an epiphany – my sense of place in the world is derived from food culture and food matters. While living in Australia, I had become accustomed to an underlying awareness of the many aspects of food matters – from serious intellectual discourse to pleasurable shopping, cooking, and eating; from food writing to reality cooking shows, from grassroots activism to government policymaking, and then of course there is the actual food growing – backyard and balcony vegetable gardening, small-hold farming, permaculture, agriculture, animal rights, logistics, distribution, land, soil, compost, water, ecology, climate. Living and breathing this food culture, the eastern seaboard of Australia (and even other parts of the world) became an intimate web of places, food-wise, that I grew to feel centred in. Back in Singapore, I found myself finding my place again, doing consciously what I had been doing unconsciously in Australia – using food matters as markers to define a sense of place, and by association, a sense of belonging, in a country both familiar and strange. For example, where I used to visit growers markets every weekend in Australia, I now seek out local produce and food products, such as cage-free eggs, yoghurt, organic tempeh, vegetables, artisan donuts in supermarkets and online. Where I used to visit farms to pick my own pecans, strawberries, oranges, I am now gifted with harvests such as sugarcane, papayas, blue pea flowers, roselles, Indian borage, and lady’s fingers when I visit my regular community gardens. Participation in Foodscape Collective’s activities lent an alternative lens on Singapore’s food culture where I realize there is room for questions, explorations, and experiments. In this newly discovered expanse, a different kind of Singapore and Singaporeans emerges for me, and new desires, indigenous to Singapore and no longer tied to Australia, arise to fill the space. Desires have a momentum of their own, especially one that is proclaimed. In mid 2019, I mentioned to a co-founder of Foodscape Collective
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Figure 11.4 Making compost, Bukit Gombak, Singapore
Source: Chingwei Chen
that I would love to see a proliferation of community compost hubs all over the island. Within two months, unexpectedly, I was back in the country to participate in a Citizen Work Group on recycling, conducted by the Ministry of Environment, and unsuspectingly taking the first steps towards community food scrap composting in Singapore.
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This desire manifested again as Project Black Gold. Project Black Gold emphasizes community and soil ecology (complete with lab tests of finished compost), the preparation of food scraps, a prerequisite theoretical syllabus, and the hands-on teaching of not one, but four, tried-and-true composting methods that work in various Singapore contexts. It is also unique in its focus on hand-holding the community it has selected to work with, and walking the learning journey together at the composting site, until the end of 2020.9 In spite of the disruption from Covid-19, Project Black Gold is underway, particularly at the private Bukit Gombak site, one of the three selected communities. The community has progressed from learning how to make compost, to exploring how to encourage even more households within their estate to segregate and give food scraps – a practice that is generally alien to Singaporeans but is an essential sister act to the composting (and by association the upcycling) of food waste. Does Project Black Gold prefigure nationwide composting? Is an aspect of a future I wished for Singapore being created right now? Quite possibly. I speak not only from hope, but from observations of the desire of Singaporeans to learn about composting, and of the support from local businesses, councils, and government agencies sensitive to the concerns on the ground.
Discussion These place-based anecdotes provide vital accounts of how individuals engage in the creation, and weaving together, of place and relationship. Reflecting on a similar process of ‘relational placemaking’, Pierce, Martin, and Murphy (2011) have pointed to the importance of novel place-frames (e.g., imaginaries) emerging within a networked political process. As such, the anecdotes trace the gap between what is seen and not seen: the germination processes and their visible fruits. We argue that the two – germination and fruiting, seen and unseen – are interlinked, and that together they challenge the historical dominance of political power within developmental states. We have looked at, for instance, the formative capacities that civil society plays in building and maintaining a healthy, intergenerational civic conversation about citizen desires and the visible provisioning of those desires (Vivian); the reproductive spaces and pathways needed to grow a garden city (Marcus); and at the work of capacity-building as a long-term strategy of making the future: on one’s own terms and collectively (Chingwei and Vivian). To understand how these efforts matter, we worked with Jeffrey and Dyson’s 9
As of February 2022, Project Black Gold is still thriving and continuing its work.
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(2021) approach to prefigurative politics. As they emphasize, futures may be anticipated, with a heavy focus on control; or prefigured, with a focus on designing for emergent and mutually-interacting human-nature patterns that boost the ability of collective future-making. Through a reading of practitioners’ experiences, desires, and ways of prefiguring the future of food in Singapore, we came to understand prefiguration as a process in which improvisation, institutionalization and impact co-evolve in the course of placemaking. Prefigurative acts cascade confidence across scales: through engagement with practical, experiential learning, socio-affective relations, and the space itself. For example, Vivian’s and Marcus’s anecdotes show us how the desire for agrihoods and growing edibles can grow the capacity for civic urbanism, rather than ignite disagreements with residential development. In the context of a housing market largely determined by state institutions, their anecdotes expand notions of neighbourhood and everyday living, suggesting the possibility of delinking imaginations of the good life from total state-dependency. This widens civic spaces ‘where state and markets are kept at arm’s distance from dominating the production and reproduction of urban life’ (Cho, Križnik, and Hou, this volume: [page]). Furthermore, Jeffrey and Dyson’s (2021) work has been helpful to express the strategic role of place-based work in prefiguring emergent, inclusive futures. Their notion of prefiguration, and its constitutive processes of improvisation, institutionalisation, and impact, demonstrates the disservice done to place-based work when it is described as non-replicable and non-scaleable; doing so removes such work from ‘serious’ discussions of scaled planning. Their conceptual terms also give a set of parameters with which to evaluate place-based work, distinct from the outcome-oriented, managerial, and aestheticized community engagement for the sake of building community, that was prevalent during nation-building in Singapore. Finally, the embodied nature of community food relations, as a biological and affective experience, suggests that prefiguration is not only made when people, places, and their material properties meet, but is also a process of caring (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2015). The anecdotes presented in this chapter communicate a caring engagement with foodscapes that advance the politics of claiming places for reproductive access to land and edible food spaces, as opposed to the managerial use of land resources. These run counter to infrastructures of community-organizing that the state or corporate sector works into its activities, which in Singapore take the form of Corporate Social Responsibility programmes and Residents’ Committee activities designed to rekindle kampung spirit. Such caring experiences of making place (both physical and relational) opens up new ways for the collective imagining of
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alternative food production practices and cultural change, within a spread of local networks. Below we elaborate on the three conceptual themes that have emerged in the process of writing this chapter. Citizens and the State Given the state’s proclivity to assert first-mover status, a necessary challenge for civic urbanism in Singapore is to create sustained attention spaces in which organizational capacities can form, where non-state actors speak to and beyond dominant forms of power, including state and corporate power. Vivian’s anecdote addresses this question by showing the length of time it takes for individuals to pay attention to decisions taken by state and state-linked capital, and to develop the capacity to participate with independently acquired information, in order to participate as informed citizens of a democracy. This experience is not unique to Foodscape Collective. As Lim, Yeung and van den Broeck show (this volume), citizen participation in Singapore is often made into a utility: useful to the state’s machinations, not for empowerment as an end. This negates the intrinsic motivation that makes citizen participation meaningful. Where citizen participation is often used, to quell public dissatisfaction, as Cate Christ and Tieben (this volume) show, it helps to see that building civic capacity is a long game that is regularly diverted, and that is it still possible to build ways to create decentralized bases of power, and more collective capacity, without giving it away. Our contribution makes visible how people are civic agents – which we discuss in conceptual terms here as ‘citizens’10 – whose relational engagements with food create new experiences of multiplicity and entanglement with ecological and social beings or processes. These experiences open communication channels with the public sector, as extensions of the state. Discussions within these communication channels then serve as a space in which the relationships of citizens in relation to the state – including that of public servants employed by the state, and non-Singaporean residents in their neighbourhood park – are negotiated. Transformation takes place at 10 By ‘citizens’, we refer to all people who participate in the making of the multiple urban food systems in Singapore, including Singaporean citizens and Permanent Residents as well as people who do not hold formal citizenship, but who live and work in Singapore. The Biodiverse Edible Garden in Jurong Central Park for instance has people of different nationalities who are residents of the area taking ownership and directly involved in making collective decisions. Foodscape Collective itself involves people of different nationalities, and sees people as citizens of a co-inhabited world, who have a stake in it.
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varied paces; while institutional change is desired, much of the work involves collaborations with policymakers and project managers through practical actions that bear fruit over time, often without linear cause-and-effect. The transformation of Jurong Central Park (JCP) for instance, bears testament to a process that alters how state agencies collaborate with a community initiative, as well as how placemaking can happen through a non-corporate, public–people partnership. While the ambition of systemic change that Foodscape Collective envisions may go beyond the current institutional capacities of state and public infrastructure, small steps that introduce a more improvisational culture provide a means to work towards the bigger vision. As a networked entity, Foodscape Collective’s members and friends create connections with institutional actors, which formalize or stay informal depending on the urgency or significance of a connection. The work at JCP presents an example of how a civic, non-registered group is given permission to work in the park and dig into the ground – an action that would typically require explicit permission in Singapore if done formally – and given relative freedom to shape and manage the space. In this case, we see improvisation in the institutionalization of a co-design, co-creation approach to placemaking. More-than-human Nature Placemaking involves a committed partnership to more-than-human processes. At JCP, the creativity and change newcomers bring is celebrated. While points of tension do arise, this relationship is not between human parties or institutional actors alone, as they involve life in the garden. Gathered around a common aim of cultivating a flourishing garden, what counts as success depends on the visible effects that unfold in the place. Marcus’s anecdote shows us how forging a pathway between landscapes that have been reproductively separated from the daily reproduction of human life, is not only a discursive (or indeed academic) struggle, but also one conducted through organising with land and people, through the building of relationality, grounding, appreciation and mutual connection, as well as a representative case study that demonstrates the potential of such pathways to more dominant powers. As others have shown, balancing these human and more-than-human relationships involves active processes of mediation and asks for communication at the right time and pace to respond to the needs of decomposing matter and growing ‘weeds’ (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2015; Lyons, 2020). This brings us further to the reflection that prefiguration can involve learning processes that go beyond anthropocentric considerations, in which a group learns to embrace the relationships with, and responsibilities
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towards, more-than-human worlds. Situated in the ethical socioecological considerations of a specific place, participants cultivate an empathetic awareness of the dilemmas faced by people living in conditions of greater ecological marginalization, and find ways to nurture cross-cutting solidarities for shared celebrations, renewals and struggles. Expanding Imaginaries for Collective Action and Cultural Change through Situated Food Practices The building of empathy and solidarity is often overlooked in prefiguration (Jeffrey and Dyson, 2021). In the practices outlined, impact is often found in the everyday practices that nurture affective ties, strengthen community relations, and create local spillovers of knowledge; these are necessary ethics of ‘situated knowledges’ (Haraway, 1988). On the governance level, making space for a flourishing of diverse communities of practices is crucial to achieve inclusive participation in food systems (Rut and Davies, 2018). Furthermore, we have also seen how the network identity of prefiguration grows in its vision and strength as it forms connections, builds, and works in place. Socioemotional reconnections find a home and spatial marker in physical space, and the continual shaping and reshaping of a place one knows, or comes to know, enables collective grounding – of place identity and belonging, location, and future possibility. They are supported by the vision of change – of a novel way of living in Singapore as Chingwei sketches out – or of finding cultural anchors to place that suit one’s principles and beliefs. Improvisation can loosen up existing societal structures, as we see when Chingwei articulates her search for a place in Singapore. The concerns she shares aloud seed a self-transformation linked to the transformation of those around oneself, and renews connection with a place. The continuation and expansion of these improvisatory searches may then institutionalize a broader movement towards a desired future, while coaxing participation, sociality, and conviviality into such a vision. In seeking to replicate her desired state of being (a more connected relationship with food), Chingwei describes how her search matures as she finds room for experimentation in Singapore’s food culture, and the ability to act on it (through partners and financial momentum). This, too, is a negotiation of place, and one’s relationship with it. This seeds the ground for non-linear civic transformations as the civil-society-state relation changes, through co-temporal, sometimes simultaneous and overlapping cycles of learning. Prefigurative actions thus reflect a conscious choice to tap out of an existing cultural frame, while institutionalizing an improvisational culture or approach. As Marcus
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expresses, to work towards the goal of practising permaculture in Singapore, he elects to take the strategy of working towards creating a system supportive of permaculture, rather than saving capital through years of work, in order to buy land. This view takes the understanding that change is not found in the acquisition of a ‘successful garden’. Rather, impact is found in a holistic change of culture.
Conclusion In this chapter we looked at acts of placemaking as pref igurative acts. In urban spaces without an agrarian imaginary, such acts around food provide conditions for capacities to form around civic urbanism: helped by a more-than-human ecosystem. More-than-human relations have a sociopolitical dimension, as the microbial, neighbourhood, citizen, and resident experience the same discursive handling of being seen as small, powerless, or disempowered. Attending to these relations through practical action and shared reflection opens space to practise constructing new perspectives together. Our anecdotes further show that understanding prefigurative politics as a networked process adds analytical value to the study of prefigurative practices. While the backgrounds of our co-authors are not fully representative of those who live in Singapore, the writings reflect work done by individuals with the financial or circumstantial capacity to shoulder burdens of non-waged labour, while broadening a discussion for a wider range of actors to be heard. This contradiction of who speaks and how we are each able to represent someone else, remains at the heart of discussions about power and privilege in Singapore, where feelings of access, discrimination, and dis/empowerment amongst ethnic, linguistic, and religious majorities and minorities form the current shape of discussions about the ‘privilege system’ (Sai, 2021; McIntosh, 1988; George and Taib, 2021). One answer we give to this discussion is a contradictory one: that we can represent no one and someone. Paraphrasing Stefano Harney and Fred Moten (2013), who say more than we can here: we are not here to represent anyone else; we can hardly represent ourselves (20). The point is not to make representation a zero-sum game where one group’s appearance is another’s loss, but to build and consciously choose how each new mode of representation disrupts or complements a pre-given idea of what is representable, and enables something that was formerly unheard, to be heard on its own terms. This is a way of taking power that diffuses its hegemonic character.
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Our chapter also addresses the roles of citizen participation and stateled transformation which are central to this book: is civic participation occurring only with the permission of the state, or is there something else at work? Our answer is that one must remain sceptical, but one cannot rule out that certain openings are enabled by people who work hard, within and outside governmental agencies, to create more openness in society for what is considered too different, illegal, unruly, toxic, or troublesome to be heard. While countries that embrace developmental urbanism have disproportionately state-centric societies, they are also a physical and virtual home to international information flows. These flows – crucial to attract and support businesses – are cyclically seen as a threat. At present, laws that enforce the power to circumscribe what, and who, can be heard in online public spaces, are being incrementally passed in Singapore. In countries where the state appears everywhere in spatial practices and landmarks, place-based rearticulations of people–state relations matter. Exercising voice and citizenship through ‘situated care’ (Wang, 2021, italics in original), means to probe alternatives to ‘inward-look[ing] care [that] may set up a dangerous model that turns its back on environmental issues […] present in compromised systems’. How we eat is crucial at a time when food production drives landscape transformation, and it is in the details that we set stitches for another ethical world: personal and civic practices of non-linear transformation, improvisational civic cultures, and the intimacies of place.
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Rut, Monika and Anna R. Davies. 2018. ‘Transitioning without Confrontation? Shared Food Growing Niches and Sustainable Food Transitions in Singapore’. Geoforum, 96: 278–288. doi: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.07.016. Rut, Monika, Anna R. Davies, and Huiying Ng. 2021. ‘Participating in Food Waste Transitions: Exploring Surplus Food Redistribution in Singapore through the Ecologies of Participation Framework’. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 23(1): 34–47. doi: 10.1080/1523908X.2020.1792859. Sai, Siew Min. 2021. ‘Why There Is Chinese Privilege in Singapore, But It’s Not Analogous to White Privilege’. 17 June, Academia.sg. Available at https://www. academia.sg/academic-views/why-there-is-chinese-privilege-in-singapore-butits-not-analogous-to-white-privilege/ [accessed 8 October 2021]. Savage, Victor R. and Lily Kong. 1993. ‘Urban Constraints, Political Imperatives: Environmental “design” in Singapore’. Landscape and Urban Planning, 25(1-2): 37–52. doi: 10.1016/0169-2046(93)90121-S. Singapore Food Agency. 2021. ‘Levelling Up Singapore’s Food Supply Resilience’. Food for Thought. Available at: https://www.sfa.gov.sg/food-for-thought/article/ detail/levelling-up-singapore-s-food-supply-resilience [accessed 19 May 2021]. Tian, Yuhong, Chi Yung Jim, and Yan Tao. 2012. ‘Challenges and Strategies for Greening the Compact City of Hong Kong’. Journal of Urban Planning and Development, 138(2): 101–109. Tornaghi, Chiara, and Barbara Van Dyck. 2015. ‘Research-Informed Gardening Activism: Steering the Public Food and Land Agenda’. Local Environment, 20(10): 1247–64. doi: 10.1080/13549839.2014.949643. Tsai, Yen-Ling. 2019. ‘Farming Odd Kin in Patchy Anthropocenes’. Current Anthropology, 60(S20): S342-S353. doi: 10.1086/703414. Wang, Jamie. 2021. ‘The Sprouting Farms: You Are What You Grow’. Humanities, 10(1): 27. doi: 10.1086/703414. Warner, Michael. 2014. ‘Publics and Counterpublics’. Public Culture, 14 (1): 49–90. Wittman, Hannah. 2009. ‘Reworking the Metabolic Rift: La Vía Campesina, Agrarian Citizenship, and Food Sovereignty’. Journal of Peasant Studies, 36(4): 805–26. doi: 10.1080/03066150903353991. Yates, Luke. 2020. ‘Prefigurative Politics and Social Movement Strategy: The Roles of Prefiguration in the Reproduction, Mobilisation and Coordination of Movements’. Political Studies. doi: 10.1177/0032321720936046.
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About the Authors Huiying Ng’s research practice explores rural-urban agricultural learning networks. She is an initiator of the Foodscape Collective, and part of the Soil Regeneration Project and soft/WALL/studs. She is a doctoral researcher on the ‘Environing Infrastructures’ Freigeist Fellowship project at the Rachel Carson Centre for Environment and Society in Munich, Germany. Monika Rut is a researcher and practitioner interested in sustainable food systems, transitions, and cultural and social change. Her research explores grassroots innovations and sustainable food transitions. She received a PhD from Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin and she is a co-founder of Virtuale Switzerland, an augmented reality art festival. Vivian Lee’s social artistry brings people together to explore meaningful ways of being. Through a trauma-informed approach to community-building, mindful eating and somatic practices, her nature-based work focuses on healing and regeneration. She co-created Garden of L.E.A.H. – a consciousliving practice space in Chiang Mai, and Foodscape Pages in Singapore. Chingwei Chen is an Australia-based permaculturist and conscious bon vivant whose preoccupation with beauty in the natural world and goodtasting produce has led to explorations and experiments in food growing, off-grid living, landcare, and house and product design. More recently, she is co-leading a Foodscape Collective community food scrap composting project. Marcus Koe is an urban farmer based in Singapore who passionately pursues expertise in designing ecological food gardens, urban composting systems, small-scale production farming, permaculture inspired regenerative solutions, and community-supported agriculture. He also freelances as a food garden designer and tutor, and consults on other small-scale farming projects.
12 Conclusion: Civic Urbanisms and Urban Governance in Asia and Beyond Im Sik Cho, Blaž Križnik, Jeffrey Hou
Abstract The concluding chapter addresses the various themes explored in this volume by juxtaposing the findings from different cases of activism and resistance, collaboration and placemaking, neighbourhood community building, and self-organization and commoning in Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei. It critically examines how emerging partnerships between the state and civil society reshape and build more resilient and participatory neighbourhoods and cities. The chapter further explores the changing state–civil society relations, affecting civic urbanisms, their actors, forms, impacts, and consequences. Finally, we argue that the concept of civic urbanisms provides not only a conceptual framework to understand the ongoing social and urban change but also an aspirational model of urban governance for cities in Asia and beyond. Keywords: Citizen participation, civic urbanism, resilience, urban governance
In this volume, we used civic urbanism as a conceptual framework to better understand how the changing relationship between the state and civil society affects citizen participation in shaping the living environment in Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei, as well as to understand how these cities are moving beyond what we call developmental urbanization. Moreover, we explored how emerging partnerships between the state and civil society contribute to building more resilient and participatory neighbourhoods and cities by juxtaposing cases of activism and resistance, collaboration and placemaking, neighbourhood community building, and self-organization and commoning in Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei. The concluding
Cho, Im Sik, Blaž Križnik and Jeffrey Hou (eds), Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia. Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei beyond Developmental Urbanization. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463728546_ch12
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chapter aims to highlight the possibilities and challenges for civic urbanism by critically exploring the transformative potential that the case studies imply. All of them represent an ‘exercise of collective power over the process of urbanization’ (Harvey, 2012: 4) regardless of their specificity, albeit in different degrees. Our approach echoes Chen’s (2010: 254) notion of Asian inter-referencing as an open-ended method to ‘understand different parts of Asia but also to enable a renewed understanding of the self’ which has a potential ‘to transcend the existing understanding of Asia and thereby change the world’. Although it is beyond the scope of this volume to project possible changes that our contribution may bring forth in the world, we hope that the relevance of the cases in this volume reaches well beyond the four cities. In the concluding chapter, we first explore how relations between the state and civil society affect civic urbanism, who the actors of civic urbanism are, and what forms the emerging civic urbanisms take in Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei. We then discuss the impacts and consequences of civic urbanism in the selected cities, before concluding with a final remark about the importance and wider implications of civic urbanism for the future of cities in Asia. In this way, we see civic urbanism not only as an explanatory framework to understand the ongoing social and urban change but also as an aspirational model that is relevant in Asia and beyond.
How Do the Changing Relations between the State and Civil Society Affect Civic Urbanisms? This volume shows that citizen participation in Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei is expanding, although with conditions and limitations. In contrast to developmental urbanization, which used to be largely state-led or market-driven, citizens and communities are becoming increasingly involved in shaping their neighbourhoods and cities. The surge of civic urbanism seems to be related to evolving state-civil society relations, which have shifted to varying degrees, from top-down and controlling towards more collaborative and inclusive. Although signif icant differences exist across the cases, growing citizen participation is encouraged by a more inclusive urban governance, which recognizes collaboration and partnerships with citizens and civil society as the key towards a more resilient and participatory urban development. At the same time, the surge of civic urbanism in Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei could be also attributed to ongoing changes in civil society
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that is becoming more vocal and active in exercising the collective right to the city. The state in South Korea (hereafter Korea), Singapore, Taiwan, and partly Hong Kong has expanded and institutionalized citizen participation in neighbourhood planning and management over the past decade to strengthen social networks, build more inclusive and sustainable communities, and expand local autonomy. For the most part, the state has opened new opportunities for citizens to have a greater say in the transformation of their living environment, resulting in ‘a less adversarial environment to operate within, with access to state resources for enabling concrete outcomes’ of citizen participation (Lim, Yeung, and Van den Broeck, this volume: 237). Moreover, several case studies from this volume show that citizen participation has also improved communication between the public and civil society actors, built their capacity for collaboration, and strengthened citizens’ confidence in public institutions. The state, however, continues to dominate decision-making in many cases. In Seoul, for instance, the city government has institutionalized citizen participation in urban regeneration as an alternative to the market-driven urban development of the past. Lee and Han (this volume), however, argue that the state has also instrumentalized citizen participation and co-opted neighbourhood organizations to expand the governmental agenda. In Singapore, the state has similarly prioritized citizen participation in terms of procedures and rules to be managed, rather than promoting it as an instrument of community empowerment (Lim, Yeung, and Van den Broeck, this volume). Moreover, the case of To Kwa Wan House of Stories in Hong Kong suggests that the state can use citizen participation to quell public dissatisfaction rather than to engage the civil society on equal footing (Cate Christ and Tieben, this volume). State involvement and dominance in decision-making – which may be traced back to the developmental state – can eventually weaken urban governance and attempts to build more resilient and participatory neighbourhoods and cities. In Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei, citizen initiatives represent another form of civic urbanism that takes place through and beyond stateenabled or state-led programmes. In Seoul, the city government provides institutional support for a wide range of grassroots initiatives, while in Singapore engaging the state seems to depend on the capacity of civic activists to promote state-endorsed values and collective interests (Wong, this volume). The collaboration with the state can also result from collective struggles, where the citizens and civic groups oppose and challenge the governmental agenda to pursue their collective right to the city. Yen (this
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volume) shows that the Lo-Sheng Sanatorium preservation movement in Taipei succeeded in partially forcing changes in the state policy after years of uphill battle by the residents and civil society organizations. Ng (this volume) also describes similar struggles in the Choi Yuen Village in Hong Kong, where it took years before the state was persuaded to approve the relocation and reconstruction of the village. Community movement in Songhak Maeul is another example of a successful yet enduring collective struggle of urban poor in Seoul to resist forced evictions and protect housing rights against state oppression (Križnik and Kim, this volume).
Who Are the Actors Involved in Civic Urbanisms? Civic urbanism refers to citizens and communities shaping the living environment on their terms. This volume shows a growing range of civil society actors involved in a variety of initiatives. They include civic activists and volunteers, local communities, neighbourhood organizations, NGOs and NPOs, as well as advocacy and expert groups, which often build diverse coalitions. In the cases of Choi Yuen Village, the Lo-Sheng Sanatorium, and the community heritage movement in Singapore, coalitions of different civic groups turned out to be instrumental for improving the organizational capacity of civil society actors and for enabling and sustaining collective action (Ng; Wong; Yen, this volume). Moreover, Križnik and Kim (this volume: 187-188) observed that community movements in Seoul successfully built coalitions with ‘civil society organizations, which strengthened their self-reliance and expanded grassroots collective action beyond the neighbourhood’. On the other hand, governmental institutions and agencies at the national, city, or local level are also involved in civic urbanism, particularly through state-enabled and state-led programmes that aim to expand citizen participation in neighbourhood planning and management. This volume discusses several such cases, including the Urban Renewal Fund (URF) in Hong Kong, the Residential Environment Management Project (REMP) and the Urban Regeneration Project (URP) in Seoul, the Neighbourhood Renewal Programme (NRP) in Singapore, and the Open Green Programme in Taipei. These programmes have significantly expanded opportunities for citizen participation, despite the challenges that state involvement brings, including persistent state involvement and control (Lee and Han, this volume). This comes as no surprise given the long history of state interventionism in East Asia. To overcome these limitations, the state tries to engage civic groups as
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intermediaries, as seen in the Open Green Programme in Taipei, Participate in Design’s engagement in Singapore’s NRP or Sharing for Future in the REMP in Seoul (Hou; Lim, Yeung, and Van den Broeck; Križnik and Kim, this volume). These cases show the important role of intermediaries in the emerging civic urbanisms in Asia. Several other chapters in this volume also highlight the importance of intermediaries in mediating between citizens and the state. In Choi Yuen Village in Hong Kong or Foodscape Collective, My Community, and Geylang Adventures in Singapore the intermediary role was taken by civic activists and community leaders, while NGOs, advocacy and expert groups played the intermediary role in the cases of Lo-Sheng Sanatorium, Magic Lanes, Seowon Maeul, and Samdeok Maeul. The involvement of intermediaries has been instrumental in enabling and expanding civic urbanisms through processes such as mobilizing and capacity-building. The cases of foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong and urban poor in Songhak Maeul in Seoul show that the intermediaries are particularly important for collective action by marginalized and disadvantaged social groups that lack organizational capacity to work with the state (Chu and Catalán Erazo; Križnik and Kim, this volume).
What Forms do the Emerging Civic Urbanisms Take? The case studies in this volume feature a wide variety of ways that represent different expressions of civic urbanism, ranging from protests and organized resistance on one end to state-led programmes to encourage citizen participation on the other. The cases of Choi Yuen Village, Songhak Maeul, and the Lo-Sheng Sanatorium represent many struggles in the region as communities faced threats of displacement due to new development projects or gentrification. Under threat and sometimes with the help of civic groups, these communities engaged in organizing and protesting in the hope of at least stalling the development and, at best, seeking alternative development scenarios. They are examples of agonistic struggle as a necessary condition of vibrant democracy (Mouffe, 2016). On the other end of the spectrum, we see cases such as the Open Green Programme in Taipei, the URF in Hong Kong, initiatives under the REMP and the URP in Seoul, and the NRP in Singapore representing state attempts that offer varying degrees of participation and engagement in community-based urban regeneration. Between the two ends of the spectrum, there are also self-organized citizen initiatives such as the heritage walking tours and the Foodscape Collective in Singapore,
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and the activities of migrant workers in Hong Kong, which exist outside the domain of state support. Individually, their focus varies widely, from advocacy and resistance to community building and commoning, and to community-based urban regeneration. The rich array of cases in this volume suggest different ways through which civic urbanism, or citizen engagement in urban governance may take shape in the context of changing relations between the state and civil society. In examining these cases, it is also important to note that different expressions of civic urbanism can together form particular pathways for scaling and capacity building. In the case of Choi Yuen Village, for example, the initial struggle led to a collective effort to rebuild the village through a participatory process. Although the villagers lost the battle and had to relocate, they worked with the supporters to rebuild their homes. Also in Hong Kong, the migrant workers’ self-organized activities have led to lasting resource networks and greater capacity to improve their lives. As Chu and Catalán Erazo (this volume: 263) argue, ‘participation in the various collaborative endeavours becomes a crucial means to connect personal transformation with civic engagement in the public realm’. In Seoul, the multiple cases of community building show, as Križnik and Kim have argued, that when political opportunities become available, civic urbanism, marginalized in the past, can re-emerge as an integral part of urban governance. This was also the case of the Open Green Programme in Taipei which came about as a result of government response to public criticism and as placemaking became a trendy concept internationally. In these cases, what began as informal responses or activities could become formalized over time. What started as spontaneous, independent efforts could also develop into sustained cooperation and partnerships. While there is ample evidence of civic engagement across the region, the collection of cases also shows that not all forms and cases of civic urbanisms are equally successful or effective. In Seoul, Lee and Han (this volume) find that citizen participation through the institutionalized programmes remains tokenistic, and the policy process is still dominated by the state. In Hong Kong, Cate Christ and Tieben (this volume) identify prevailing contradictions between the small-scale, citizen-driven projects supported by the URF, and the large-scale redevelopment projects led by the Urban Renewal Authority. Both cases reveal the limitations and continuing challenges of state-led programmes in granting citizens full access to substantive participation in urban governance. Even in Taipei, where state-led citizen participation has evolved and improved over time, new issues and challenges have emerged as the government staff become less engaged and more dependent on outside
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professionals in delivering services and managing projects as evident in the outcomes of the Open Green Programme. In the case of the Lo-Sheng Sanatorium, there is no clear resolution as the community continues to face an uphill battle to protect their home. The apparent conflicts between the agenda of community building and heritage conservation and that of transportation development remained unresolved despite years of struggles. Despite the promises of civic urbanism, there is still a long way to go for the different actors, including the state, to develop and acquire the necessary capacity for substantive and meaningful engagement.
What Are the Different Impacts and Consequences of Civic Urbanism? While it may be premature to fully assess the impacts and consequences of emerging civic urbanisms in their specific sociopolitical, cultural, and institutional contexts, the cases in this volume offer insights into the implementation of a more inclusive model of urban governance based on civic urbanism. Immediate and tangible impacts of civic urbanism are found in civic spaces that are shaped and reshaped by citizens and communities engaged in everyday practices that ‘nurture affective ties, strengthen community relations and create local spillovers of knowledge’ (Ng, Rut, Lee, Koe, and Chen, this volume: 288). Furthermore, making these diverse practices visible and accessible to others can facilitate ‘new experiences of multiplicity and entanglement with ecological and social beings or processes’, and offer opportunities for placemaking to happen ‘through a non-corporate, public-people partnership’ (Ng, Rut, Lee, Koe, and Chen, this volume: 287). Several cases in this volume discuss the impact of civic urbanism that reaches beyond the immediate living environment; for example, in Seoul, civic urbanism has shown the capacity to contribute to urban change beyond the neighbourhood, where strong social networks and prior experience of community activism existed (Križnik and Kim, this volume), while in the Open Green Programme, new partnerships and programmes were adopted in additional cities beyond the state-initiated programme initially implemented in Taipei (Hou, this volume). Although the direct impact of civic urbanism on the built environment may be modest in size and scale, its significance often transcends specific sites or projects. Specifically, the more significant impact of civic urbanism can be found in the process of building community capacity and resilience through public engagement and collaborative approach
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to urban regeneration and neighbourhood improvement, rather than the physical outcome or immediate result only. As such, civic urbanism should be approached as an evolving process that needs to be co-created by all the actors involved, a process that will be constantly contested and negotiated. Discussing ‘commoning’ or ‘bottom-up urbanism’ involving Hong Kong’s foreign domestic workers, Chu and Catalán Erazo (this volume) suggest that collective activities such as beauty-styling endeavours held in the city’s public spaces and busy streets have significant impact not only on the foreign domestic workers’ daily lives and their immediate surroundings but also on the prospects in the future after the workers return to their home countries as empowered citizens. In Singapore, Wong (this volume: 48) discusses cases of emerging civic practices such as Geylang Adventures that extends the idea of community heritage to the migrant workers and My Community initiated by a volunteer group, both using walking tours as a form of civic activism ‘to materialize knowledge production, civic engagement and participation in community heritage and related issues’. Wong highlights that the impact of civic urbanism can expand over time by transgressing traditional formal organizations, not tied to places and narrow causes, through ‘spontaneous formations of coalitions for immediate needs’. Several cases such as the Choi Yuen Village and Lo-Sheng Sanatorium offer ‘important lessons for sustainable community development, for vulnerable and marginalized communities to fight for their right to the city’ (Ng, this volume: 87). Through the framework of ‘community resistance and resilience’ and ‘public interest and spatial justice’, which are often neglected in the current planning discourse, Yen and Ng (this volume) raise critical questions on whether a paradigm shift towards a more humanistic and inclusive urban governance is possible. The chapters share pertinent challenges that remain to be addressed for civic urbanism to evolve towards a ‘radical, anti-discriminatory practice that is capable of transformative change’ (Ledwith, 2011: 11). It is important to note that there are also cases in which the immediate impact is absent or less clear. In Hong Kong, Ng (this volume: 88) argues that the case of Choi Yuen Village ‘has made practically no impact on the solidified institutional framework’ and ‘the established institutional and cultural spatial practices have remained rather intact in Hong Kong’. She further points out that ‘the implementation has been marred by all sorts of institutional and technical problems, suggesting that the learning pathways towards grassroots resistance and resilience to fight for spatial justice are always full of challenges’ (Ng, this volume: 87). Similarly, Yen (this volume) questions public interest in urban planning as the preservation movement
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in Taipei ultimately failed to achieve its original goals despite the numerous struggles and negotiations between heritage preservation activists and the state. Even in the cases related to state-enabled and state-led community building and urban renewal programmes with greater participatory process compared to the past, citizens and civic groups struggled to improve their organizational capacity and self-reliance, as the state interventionism is still clearly visible and community participation remains largely a form of tokenism (Lee and Han, this volume). These challenges raise concerns that possible co-optation of civic urbanism to governmental agenda can prevail over the citizens and community empowerment. To realize their transformative potential, civic urbanisms must be cautious of being co-opted for ‘gestural politics’ (Lee, 2005). This is closely related to practical issues such as the lack of an established funding structure and sustained funding, which challenges the long-term sustainability of civic urbanisms despite their initial success (e.g., Open Green Programme; My Community and Geylang Adventures; REMP). Hou (this volume: 137) observed that ‘the neighbourhood and the studio ended up spending more money than what they received from the government’; furthermore, since ‘the funds for the Open Green Programme came from the Central Government, the programme was subject to evaluation by the Central Government’. This has resulted in low review scores in the evaluation process, neglecting essential criteria such as the community capacity that Križnik and Kim (this volume: 189) consider ‘instrumental in empowering citizens to shape the living environment on their terms and challenge the institutionalized urban meaning’.
What is the Importance of Civic Urbanism for the Future of Cities in Asia and Beyond? Despite the limited number of case studies in this volume and their specific sociopolitical, cultural, and institutional contexts and trajectories (including the recent setbacks in Hong Kong), there are shared lessons and significance that we hope will make a case for a vibrant and democratic model of urban governance. Looking beyond a narrow focus on developmental urbanization, we argue that civic urbanism is important for the future of the region for the following reasons: First, urban governance will need to respect and build on the will of citizens and civil society. In maturing democracies such as Korea and Taiwan, democratic governance is key to greater government accountability, social cohesion, and quality of life. In Hong Kong and Singapore,
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without a robust system of political deliberation and accountability, civic urbanism in terms of advocacy and organizing can still play a critical role in making sure that citizen voices are projected and that public discourses are still viable to the extent possible. Although civic urbanism commonly means a more humanistic and democratic model of urban governance based on active citizen participation and shared responsibility, as cases in this volume have also demonstrated, civic urbanism can take place independently of the state. Second, even if the development of democratic institutions can accelerate quickly, a great deal of effort is required to develop the capacity for the state and the civil society to share responsibilities and engage in partnership and collaboration. Several cases in this volume speak to the importance of learning and collaboration as the basis for capacity building. In Taipei, as Hou has argued in this volume, a key success of the Open Green Programme has been the opportunity for learning for citizens, government staff, and professionals alike. In comparison, the material result of the projects represents only a fraction of their actual outcomes. In the cases of the NRP in Singapore, the dialectical interactions between actors and institutions have been found to contribute to the sociocultural and sociopolitical processes in relationship building, community visioning, and participatory planning. Again in Singapore, in the cases of My Community and Geylang Adventure, the walking tours also provided learning opportunities for the organizers and participants to engage in the development of conservation discourses and address issues such as local–migrant worker integration. Third, future urban governance in Asia must address the growing challenge of social and environmental resilience. Specifically, the growing frequency of catastrophic climate events, including superstorms, large-scale wildfires, floods, etc., and now with the addition of infectious diseases, will require not only effective institutional responses but also the capacity of local communities and civil society to organize and prepare for prevention and recovery. The essence of resilience rests with the building of strong social capital and social networks within and between communities (Folke, 2006), using every opportunity to boost one another’s capacity, doing things anew, reaching a higher level of functioning, and creatively transforming our space and place into resilient and participatory neighbourhoods and cities. A necessary first step to counteract environmental and social vulnerabilities created by state-led economics is arguably to build stronger communities; to develop capacities for self-help and mutual aid; to develop the ability to network and get organized, and to collaborate and transcend differences. All these require a model of urban governance based on civic urbanism.
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Finally, as the recent global pandemic has revealed, equity and social justice can be just as critical to society as its total wealth and material well-being. In many countries around the world, the economically disadvantaged communities often experience greater vulnerability due to a lack of access to sufficient resources and the condition of their working or living environments. In Singapore, for instance, the dormitories for migrant workers became hotspots for COVID-19 infection during the pandemic. Similarly, buildings without proper ventilation in Hong Kong also become areas of high infections. Equity and social justice present another area in urban governance in which civic urbanism can play an important role. By making the challenges of social inequality more visible through the collective actions of civil society organizations, for instance a greater awareness and public attention to hold governments accountable in addressing such challenges can be brought about. In situations where government responses are absent or lacking, citizens and civil society organizations can step in to fulfil the need. By protecting the most vulnerable members of our society, civic urbanism represents a model of urban governance based on equity and social justice, essential for building more resilient and participatory cities.
Final Thoughts Despite the ongoing and impending challenges, this volume shows possibilities for a shared, desired future of civic urbanism in the region. We see creative civic practices emerging in these cities that (re)claim the agency of civil society and empower those whose voices have been missing in the ongoing transformation of the cities. These practices suggest alternative approaches to balance ‘their creative strategies to generate change amidst challenges presented by the state restrictions’ (Wong, this volume: 63), ‘to tactically and subtly inject alternative visions of community building into prevailing approaches, and realign these approaches towards community empowerment’ (Lim, Yeung, and Van den Broeck, this volume: 238), while holding space, making place ‘to continue working towards our vision with baby steps’ (Ng, Rut, Lee, Koe, and Chen, this volume: 279). Through diverse expressions and yet common traits, civic urbanism represents a paradigm shift for cities in the region to move beyond developmental urbanization. The findings in this volume have contributed to a comparative understanding of the diverse nature of state alignment with civil society in Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei. They suggest that civic urbanisms flourish in cities with engaged and involved citizens and communities. Several cases
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have shown that citizens’ ongoing learning and capacity building is crucial for them to be successfully involved in co-creating solutions and becoming an active counterpart in urban governance. The more the state encourages ‘public awareness and creating opportunities for the public to express collective desire and action in working with the state to co-create change’ (Wong, this volume: 63) and ‘regain democratic control of urban processes’, the more likely the public will choose to be involved in the co-creation of ‘alternative sociopolitical and spatial imaginaries’ (Hong, 2017: 17) and participate in urban development and social policy-making. By cultivating this synergy among the various actors involved, civic urbanism can open up new possibilities of re-centring urban governance towards a more inclusive one that takes into consideration the agency and aspirations of diverse citizens and constituents. The f indings here also illustrate the ongoing challenges facing civic urbanisms. These include the continued dominance of the state, the limited capacity of the civil society, and the difficult yet necessary process of learning, engaging, and negotiating. Recent events in Hong Kong, Myanmar, and Thailand have shown signs of the resurgence of authoritarianism. In these instances, however, we have also witnessed how civil society has fought back with a vengeance. Although the state seems to have the upper hand at the moment in some parts of the region, the future pathways to democracy will depend on how the civil society can find ways to thrive and persevere, albeit in a more subdued form, while facing extreme challenges. Lastly, the civil society’s response to the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic is further evidence of the critical role of civic urbanisms in Asia and beyond. Throughout Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei, and elsewhere, communities and civil society organizations have formed social safety nets and engaged in self-organized mutual aid efforts to coordinate resources and support those in need. In some cases, they have partnered with the state to perform much-needed services. As demonstrated in this volume and recent events in the region, civic urbanisms are key to the resilience and well-being of communities and cities in Asia and beyond.
References Chen, Kuan-Hsing. 2010. Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Folke, Carl. 2006. ‘Resilience: The Emergence of a Perspective for Social-ecological Systems Analyses’. Global Environmental Change, 16(3): 253–267. doi: 10.1016/j. gloenvcha.2006.04.002.
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Harvey, David. 2012. Rebel Cities, From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. London: Verso. Hong, Danielle. 2017. Exploring Informal Social & Cultural Activism in Singapore: A Study on Local Ground-up Initiatives. Singapore: Yusof Ishak Institute. Available at hdl.handle.net/11540/7941 [accessed 10 August 2021]. Ledwith, Margaret. 2011. Community Development, a Critical Approach, second edition. Bristol: Policy Press. Lee, Terence. 2005. ‘Gestural Politics: Civil Society in “New” Singapore’. SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 20(2): 132–154. doi: 10.1353/soj.2005.0009. Mouffe, Chantal. 2016. ‘Democratic Politics and Conflict: An Agonistic Approach’. Politica Común, 9. doi: 10.3998/pc.12322227.0009.011.
About the Authors Im Sik Cho is Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at the National University of Singapore. Her research addresses the challenges and opportunities that Asian cities face focusing on the social dimension of sustainable development. Her publications include Community-Based Urban Development: Evolving Urban Paradigms in Singapore and Seoul (2017). Blaž Križnik is Associate Professor of urban sociology at the Graduate School of Urban Studies, Hanyang University in Seoul. He is the co-founder and researcher at the Institute for Spatial Policies in Ljubljana. His research is focused on comparative urban studies, urban social movements, and Korean studies. Jeffrey Hou is Professor of Landscape Architecture and director of the Urban Commons Lab at the University of Washington, Seattle. His work focuses on public space, democracy, community design, and civic engagement with publications including City Unsilenced: Urban Resistance and Public Space in the Age of Shrinking Democracy (2017).
Index accumulation 72, 148, 262 activists 26, 42‒43, 45, 47‒48, 51, 62‒63, 74, 80, 108, 111, 113, 115, 124, 148, 153, 177, 261, 264, 298‒299 heritage activists 98, 124, 303 social activists 74, 79‒80, 82‒83, 87‒88, 99 union activists 249‒250 advocacy planning 100, 223 agriculture 29, 32, 35, 48, 79, 83‒85, 88, 102, 267, 271, 275, 277, 279‒282 Agri‒Food and Veterinary Association 276‒277 Agricultural Land Rehabilitation Scheme 83‒84 Agriculture, Fishery and Conservation Department 83‒84 agrihood 277‒279, 285 ambivalent activism 42, 44, 63 Anti‒extradition bill movement 88 Asian inter‒referencing 18, 269, 296 authoritarianism 20, 119, 174, 212, 306 Bansanghoe 33 beauty styling 34, 245‒246, 251‒255, 260, 262‒263, 302 biodiverse edible garden 278, 286 biodiversity 158, 271, 278 bottom‒up planning 87, 100 bottom‒up urbanism 34, 245‒247, 262, 302 Candlelight Revolution 30 capacity adaptive capacity 75‒77 capacity building 63, 75, 119, 137‒139, 201, 207, 276, 284, 297, 299‒300, 304, 306 civic capacity 31, 286 collective capacity 24, 62, 235, 268, 286 community capacity 74, 80, 88, 137, 196, 225, 303 institutional capacity 72, 274, 287 learning capacity 72, 75 organizational capacity 32, 172‒173, 175‒179, 182, 184, 186‒189, 286, 298‒299, 303 voluntary capacity 228, 231 Caritas 151, 157‒159, 161, 164 Citizens’ Consultative Committee (CCC) 51, 54, 230‒231 civic civic activism 41, 45, 48‒49, 59, 60, 63‒64, 302 civic activists 26, 176, 297‒299 civic engagement 28, 31‒32, 42, 44, 48, 64, 119‒120, 124, 128, 132‒133, 138, 177, 246‒248, 263, 300, 302
civic groups 33, 42, 45, 60‒63, 108, 198, 269, 297‒299, 303 civic society 20, 44, 63, 147 civic space 18, 24, 28, 63, 274‒275, 285, 301 civic urbanism 15, 17‒18, 23‒28, 30‒34, 44, 63, 95, 98‒99, 112, 115, 119‒120, 138‒139, 143, 145, 162‒164, 169, 170, 172, 174, 177, 188‒189, 214, 216, 221‒223, 237, 238, 245‒246, 254, 257, 262, 264, 267‒269, 274, 276, 285‒286, 289, 295‒296, 298‒306 civic values 44 civil rights 20, 45, 114, 264 civil society 15, 17‒20, 22‒31, 33, 41‒44, 47, 50, 61‒64, 73, 88‒89, 95, 112, 115, 124‒125, 128, 138, 143, 148‒149, 159, 162‒164, 169, 170, 172, 174‒177, 184, 188, 196, 198, 222, 224, 237‒238, 264, 268, 271, 274, 276, 284, 288, 295‒298, 300, 303‒306 civil society groups 26‒30, 63, 96, 98, 109, 126‒127, 144, 146, 175, 177 civil society organizations 33, 120, 162, 178, 188‒189, 223, 298, 305 Collaborate Hong Kong 163 Collaborative O 126‒127, 131, 133, 135‒137 collective action 24, 42, 46, 60, 63 collective farming 35, 84‒85 commodification 23, 74, 77, 262 commoning 18, 24, 34, 245‒247, 254, 262, 295, 300, 302 community community advocacy 44, 176, 199, 231‒237, 298, 299 community(‒based) resources 72, 75 community bonding 230‒231, 233, 235‒236 community building 18, 24, 29, 32‒34, 48, 84, 89, 120, 125, 145, 157, 159‒164, 169‒170, 172‒177, 179‒189, 199, 221‒225, 227‒228, 236‒238, 285, 295, 297, 300‒301, 303‒305 community development 26, 32, 87, 123, 162, 208, 233, 302 community engagement 25, 54, 84, 119‒120, 125, 127‒129, 135‒136, 151, 226, 285, 299, 301 community enterprise 27 community gardens 31, 127, 131, 133, 170, 235, 275, 280‒282 community organizations 58, 125, 179 community resilience 72, 76, 89, 162 family‒based community culture 80 marginalized community 87‒88, 245, 302 Community Cultural Concern (CCC) 153, 155 Community Empowerment Programme 124 Community University 133
310 Index communitarianism 44, 59 composting 277, 281‒284 Comprehensive Development Areas (CDAs) 147 comprehensive redevelopment 195‒196, 198‒200, 214 Conservancy Association Centre for Heritage 157‒158 conservation 29, 30‒31, 43, 46, 54, 87, 106, 144, 170, 271, 301, 304 cooperatives 170, 175, 178‒179, 185 co‒optation 32, 63, 145, 173, 176, 185, 187‒189, 206, 237‒274, 276, 297, 303 Council for Cultural Affairs 29, 96, 104‒105, 109, 124‒125 Council for Project Implementation 201‒202, 209, 211, 214 COVID‒19 26, 154, 156, 284, 305‒306 COVID‒19 Migrant Support Coalition (CMSC) 61 cultural geography 72 cultural performances 250 CYV Community‒Building Workshop 84 CYV Concern Group 79‒80 CYV Living Museum 83 Department of Cultural Affairs of Taipei County 96, 103, 109 Department of Rapid Transit Systems (DRTS) 96, 102‒104, 106, 108‒109, 112 Development Bureau (DevB) 78, 149‒150 developmental state 17, 19‒22, 32, 120, 198, 216, 268‒269, 274, 284, 297 discourses 31, 45, 59, 76‒77, 79, 81, 88, 95, 99‒104, 106‒108, 111‒114, 122, 127, 177, 226, 238, 262, 271‒272, 274, 282, 302, 304 displacement 21, 30, 45, 60, 79, 146, 159, 161, 163, 175, 178, 196, 199, 282, 299 District Council 89, 145, 156‒157, 160 District Urban Renewal Forum 150‒151, 153 emergency rescue station 71, 77‒78, 80, 88 empowerment community empowerment 151, 162, 238, 245, 250, 252, 255, 263, 297, 303, 305 empowerment of residents 223, 236 self‒empowerment 101 social empowerment 246, 250‒251, 254 Empower U 258 Enjoy Living Settlement 109, 111 exchange value 72, 76‒78, 87‒89 experts 72, 98, 108‒109, 113, 122, 125, 131, 181, 183, 298‒299 external resources 72, 80 farming 35, 78‒80, 83‒85, 88, 268, 272, 274, 277‒278, 280‒282 Filipinos 245‒248, 250‒252, 255 Finance Committee of the Legislative Council 82
financial crisis 144, 148‒149 Food and Health Bureau 84 food food culture 282, 288 food initiative 32, 34, 267 food security 87, 272, 280 food sovereignty 269, 273 food system 32, 35, 267, 269, 271‒272, 274‒275, 279, 282, 286, 288 Foodscape Collective 31‒32, 34, 267‒270, 272‒273, 275‒279, 282, 286‒287, 294, 299 foreign domestic workers 34, 245‒251, 254‒255, 260‒264, 299, 302 Friends of Singapore 46 General Coordinator 201‒202, 205‒206, 209 Geylang Adventures 30, 35, 41‒42, 48, 55, 57‒61, 63‒64, 299, 302‒303 Geylang Serai’s Integration and Naturalisation Champions Committee 45 glamour 254‒255, 258 global city 22 globalization 22, 43, 72, 269 governance 23, 41, 138, 205, 212, 222‒225, 237, 271‒272, 275, 279‒280, 288 good governance 222, 225 hybrid governance 237 institutionalist approaches to governance 225 local governance 26, 29, 225‒226 participatory governance 138, 198 urban governance 15, 18, 22‒23, 25, 28, 32‒35, 119‒120, 122, 138‒139, 169, 173, 188, 222, 237, 295‒297, 300‒306 government central government 88‒89, 102, 195, 197, 201, 204, 208, 210, 214‒216 colonial government 46, 48, 50, 83, 95 local government 23, 26, 29, 52, 89, 138, 179‒180, 183, 187, 197‒199, 201, 215 governmentality 25, 173, 263 grassroots 156, 162, 170, 199, 226 grassroots collective action 170, 172, 174, 176, 184, 187‒189, 298 grassroots mobilization 23, 27 grassroots organization 28, 48, 230‒231, 237 Grassroots Adviser 230‒231, 233, 235 Guangzhou‒Shenzhen‒Hong Kong ERL (express rail link) 71‒72, 74, 77‒78, 80, 82‒83, 88 Habitat Collective 281 hegemony 77, 106, 163, 225 hegemonic‒cum‒alienated redevelopment 146, 161 heritage community heritage 30, 41‒45, 48, 50, 52, 54, 58‒60, 64, 302
311
Index
heritage activism 30‒31, 42, 45, 47‒48, 58, 62‒63, 95, 98, 113, 115, 124, 303 heritage preservation movement 25, 30, 35, 42, 44, 46, 48, 60, 62‒64, 95, 98‒99, 101‒103, 105, 112‒113, 115, 124, 298 local heritage 47‒48, 52, 96, 108, 162 high‒speed railway 30, 78 Hong Kong Blue House 25, 144, 149, 153‒154 Choi Yuen Village (CYV) 30, 60, 62, 71‒74, 77‒89, 298‒300, 302 Community Dining Room, To Kwa Wan 145, 151, 153, 155‒156, 159, 162 Heung Yee Kuk 83, 88 House of Stories, To Kwa Wan 145, 151, 153‒155, 297 Hung Fook Street 154‒155 Lee Tung Street 144, 149, 153 New Choi Yuen Eco‒village 73‒74, 83‒86 New Territories 72, 77‒78, 83, 87‒88 Queen’s Pier 25, 144, 149 Sai Ying Pun 145, 151, 156‒157 Sheung Fung Lane 157‒158, 160 Star Ferry Pier 25, 144, 149 To Kwa Wan 151, 153, 155‒157, 161 Victoria Park 249, 251‒253, 262 Wan Chai 25, 144, 149, 153 housing housing rights 22, 27, 114, 175, 178‒179, 185, 188, 199, 298 housing shortage 21 public housing 21, 22, 48, 50, 185, 221, 223, 227, 272 temporary housing 85, 177, 178 Housing and Development Board (HDB) 50, 54, 227‒228, 230‒231, 234‒235 Hsiliu Environmental Greening Foundation 133 identity collective identity 34, 76, 250 identity‒formation 31, 34, 267 local identity 25, 180 national identity 19, 47, 236 incorporated owners 157, 159 indigenous village 71‒72, 77‒79, 83, 85 Indonesians 245‒252, 255, 257, 260 improvisation 274‒275, 279, 285, 287‒288, 290 industrialization 16, 20‒21, 43, 48, 174 informal economy 246, 248 informal settlements 21, 203 institutional frameworks 23, 32, 88, 143, 302 institutionalization 26‒28, 34, 169, 173, 176, 181, 185, 188‒189, 196, 198, 200, 285, 287‒288, 297, 300 intermediaries 43, 60, 83, 135, 185, 187, 210, 299 intermediary organizations 28, 172, 183, 195, 201, 209‒210, 213 intellectuals 80, 88 intergenerational 158, 278, 284
internet 81, 155, 249 isotopia 146 Jeongneung Social Welfare Centre 183, 187 justice 101, 106‒107, 115, 273 social justice 43, 76, 113, 115, 305 socio‒spatial (in)justice 30, 71, 89 spatial (in)justice 72‒73, 77, 87, 95, 99, 101, 108, 111‒113, 155, 302 Kaifong 33 kampung 278, 285 knowledge 30, 43, 48, 57, 75, 77, 79, 100, 102, 113, 120, 123‒125, 129, 134‒135, 137‒139, 204, 212, 233, 249, 253, 258‒259, 261, 271‒272, 274, 280, 288, 301‒302 technical knowledge 77 kopitiam 277 land use 27, 28, 63‒64, 78, 280 landscape 23, 43, 49, 59, 96‒97, 104, 109, 222, 272, 287, 290 cultural landscape 84, 108, 248 Land Development Corporation (LDC) 149 Lands Department 78 Legislative Council 82‒83 linzhang 33 Livable Maeul‒making Pilot Project (LMPP) 181, 186 lived space 72, 74, 87, 146, 275 living environment 15, 17, 22, 24, 26‒27, 32‒33, 46, 169‒170, 172, 174, 176‒177, 181, 183‒189, 196, 199, 234, 269, 295, 297‒298, 301, 303, 305 local autonomy 17, 23, 26‒27, 176‒177, 179, 185, 188, 297 Machizukuri 33, 40 maeul 33, 171, 185 Maeulmandeulgi 33, 199 Magic Carpet 31, 157‒158, 167‒168 Magic Lanes 7, 145, 151, 156‒158, 160‒162, 299 market‒oriented society 76 Mandiri Bank 8, 253 Mandiri Sahabatku programme 252 mass media 81, 172, 180 mega‒infrastructure 82 mega‒transport plans 78 migrant communities 246, 248, 250, 261 Ministry of Culture 109 Ministry of Environment and Water Resources 280 Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport (MOLIT) 218‒219 Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment 280 Ministry of Transport 78 mobilization 23, 27, 99‒100, 113, 191, 221 modernization 19, 191
312 Index morale values 89 multidimensional well‒being 87 mutuality 89, 172 My Community 30, 35, 41‒42, 48, 50‒54, 58‒64, 67, 299, 302‒304 nation‒building 27, 35, 41, 44, 46, 48, 50, 64, 230, 285 National Basic Plan on Urban Regeneration 196, 218‒219 National Heritage Board (NHB) 12, 46 National Parks Board 278, 280 National Security Law 89, 145, 165 National Taiwan University 84, 108, 116‒117 nature cum human‒centred development 89 neighbourhood neighbourhood organizations 33, 173, 179‒180, 184‒187, 297‒298 Neighbourhood Renewal Programme (NRP) 12, 34, 221‒222, 227, 240, 298 neo‒confucianism 19 neoliberalism 39 networks 18, 26, 29, 32, 61, 72, 78, 88, 124, 134‒135, 146, 159, 163‒164, 172, 176‒177, 181, 183‒184, 186, 188, 225, 241, 246, 248‒249, 254, 257, 263‒264, 268, 276, 286, 294, 297, 300‒301, 304 informal networks 26 resource networks 246, 248‒249, 257, 263, 300 social (relationship) networks 18, 26, 32, 78‒79, 124, 134‒135, 159, 164, 172, 176‒177, 179‒181, 183‒184, 186, 188, 249, 297, 301, 304 New Public Management 222 New Taipei City 21, 95‒96, 109 Xinzhuang 95‒96, 102‒103, 106‒109, 111‒112 New Taipei City Government 109 Nongol Credit Union 178‒179, 185 non‒indigenous village 72, 76‒78 Office of Health Affairs 96 Open Green Matching Fund 120, 125 Open Green Programme 5, 29, 31‒32, 119‒120, 122, 124‒127, 131, 133‒135, 137‒138, 298‒301, 303‒304 organizational capacity 32, 172‒173, 175‒179, 182, 184, 186‒189, 298‒299, 303 ParkUp 7, 132, 134 participation citizen participation 5, 15, 17, 22‒24, 26‒28, 34, 38, 64, 78, 124, 147, 164, 169‒170, 174, 176, 181, 183, 187, 191, 195, 198, 202, 214‒217, 286, 290, 295‒300, 304 civic participation 29, 125, 290 community participation 153, 196‒197, 200, 210, 212, 215, 303
participatory planning 6, 32, 34, 38, 120, 140, 221‒226, 237, 239, 304 People’s Action Party (PAP) 12, 41 People’s Association (PA) 12, 230 permaculture 273, 276‒277, 279‒280, 282, 289, 294 place‒based values 60 placemakers 158 placemaking 5, 11, 18, 24, 31‒32, 35, 39, 45, 48, 52, 57, 80, 119‒120, 122, 124‒129, 133‒134, 140‒141,143‒148, 151, 158‒159, 161‒164, 166‒168, 170, 267, 275, 279, 284‒285, 287, 289, 292, 295, 300‒301 agency‒driven 148 citizen‒driven 5, 11, 31‒32, 39, 143‒144, 146, 148, 159, 162‒163, 166, 300 citizen‒inclusive 31, 148, 163 collaboration 7, 18, 24, 26, 31, 33, 38, 42, 44, 47, 55, 63, 121, 123, 126, 128, 130‒133, 135, 138, 141, 149, 153, 156, 159, 161, 181, 183, 185‒186, 188, 190, 201, 222, 269, 276, 281, 295‒297, 304 planning theory 39, 90, 93, 95, 99‒100, 116, 164, 166, 223‒225, 238‒241 communicative and collaborative planning 224 rational‒comprehensive paradigm 223 polarization 149, 176 political legitimacy 16, 20, 26, 43 post‒politics 38 postcolonial 21, 76, 267 power power asymmetries 224 power relations 25, 63, 167, 197, 205‒206, 209, 222, 225, 241 pragmatism 42‒43, 68, 239 prefiguration 267, 273‒275, 279, 285, 287‒288, 293 professionals 25, 31, 80, 88, 100, 106, 119‒120, 122, 126, 133‒134, 136‒138, 144, 149, 161, 198, 212‒213, 301, 304 Project Black Gold 8, 268, 270, 284 Prostrating Walk of Five Districts 82 public consultation 82, 150, 228, 231 public interest 5, 30, 35, 47, 95, 98, 99‒100, 102‒104, 106, 112‒113, 115‒116, 302 public realm 247, 263, 300 public space privately owned public spaces 147 public open space in private developments 12, 147 public sphere 95, 100, 102, 106, 108, 114, 116, 248 Railway Objections Hearing Panel 74 regime authoritarian regime 16, 19, 20, 26, 33, 46, 196 land redevelopment regime 32, 144‒146 military regime 175
Index
Residential Environment Management Project (REMP) 12, 177, 191, 298 Residents’ Committee (RC) 12, 195‒197, 201‒202, 205‒217, 285 Residents Community Steering Committee (RCSC) 12, 182 Rural Council 83, 85, 88 Secretary for Housing and Transport 78 self‒help 26, 115, 175, 252, 255, 257, 261‒262, 268, 304 self‒organization 18, 24, 34, 75, 225, 295 Seongdong Residents Association 178‒179, 185 Seoul Geumho–Haengdang–Hawangsimni 177‒179, 185, 191 Haebangchon 5, 8, 34, 195, 197, 201, 203‒212, 214‒217, 219‒220 Haengdang‒dong 8, 177‒178 Samdeok Maeul 8, 34, 171, 177, 182‒187, 191‒192, 299 Seongbuk‒gu 182‒183, 192 Seongdong‒gu 178‒179 Seongmisan Maeul 184‒188, 193 Seowon Maeul 8, 34, 171, 177, 181‒182, 184‒187, 192‒193, 299 Songhak Maeul 33, 177‒179, 184‒188, 298‒299 Yongsan‒gu 12, 197, 203, 205‒206, 219‒220 Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) 12, 26, 170, 192‒193, 197, 205‒206, 219‒220 Seoul Neighbourhood Community Support Project (SNCSP) 12, 177 shantytowns 21, 175, 177 Sharing City Seoul 26, 37 Sharing for Future 183, 187, 192, 299 Shequ yingzao 33 Singapore Boon Lay 8, 278 Boon Lay Nature Garden 8, 278 Bukit Brown 42, 47, 62, 67‒68 Chek Jawa 47, 65, 67 Dakota Crescent 50, 62 Geylang 5‒6, 30, 35, 41‒42, 45, 48‒49, 55‒61, 63‒64 ,67, 299, 302‒304 Green Corridor 42, 47, 68 Jurong Central Park 8, 11, 278, 286‒287 Limbang 228 Little India 46, 56‒57, 65, 67 Queenstown 5‒6, 41, 48‒54, 59, 61, 64, 67‒69 Tampines 228 Woodgrove 228 Singapore Food Agency 12, 271, 276, 280, 293 Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) 12, 50 Singapore Land Authority 280 social action 45, 56, 60, 65, 101, 123 social activism 44 social capital 83
313 social cohesion 27, 34, 140, 221, 223, 231, 236, 242, 303 social inclusion 163 social interaction 46, 56, 61, 147 social learning 5, 32, 100, 119‒120, 122‒124, 130‒131, 134‒135, 138‒141 social media 47‒49, 63, 82, 247, 249, 257 social movements anti‒eviction movements 117, 175, 178, 185 community movements 33, 88, 115, 169‒180, 184‒189, 298 conservation movements 29‒30 democratization movements 20, 175, 223 urban poor movements 175, 177, 185, 199 urban social movements 22, 27, 40, 95, 100, 115, 117, 189, 193, 307 social service agencies 12, 151, 163 South Korea 15, 38, 40, 169, 190‒192, 195, 297 spatial practices 72, 77, 88, 290, 302 Special Act on Promotion of and Support for Urban Regeneration 195 state–civil society relations 5, 15, 18, 20, 22‒24, 29, 31, 73, 169‒170, 172, 174‒176, 184, 188, 295‒296 strategic‒relational institutionalist approach 221, 223 St. James’ Settlement 153, 155, 164, 167 subsistence 45, 85 Sunday spectacles 246‒247, 249 Sunflower Movement 30 Sustainable Sunday Couture 258, 264‒265 tactical urbanism 127, 140, 144, 148, 157‒160, 162, 166 Taipei Changwen 130 Dachiao 137 Gufeng 128‒129, 132, 135 Lo‒Sheng Sanitorium 5, 7, 30, 35, 60, 62, 95, 97‒98, 105, 109, 112, 115‒116, 298‒299, 301‒302 Mingshin 131 Taipei Beautiful 127‒128, 134 Taipei County Government 102‒103, 109 Taipei Mass Rapid Transport (Taipei MRT) 96 Taiwan 15, 19‒22, 28‒30, 33, 35‒38, 40, 45, 59‒60, 62, 65, 69, 84, 95‒96, 98‒99, 102, 104, 108, 112, 115‒117, 119‒120, 122, 124‒125, 133‒135, 137, 139, 219, 271, 297, 303 talent competition 246, 250, 252 Temasek Rural Exploring Enthusiasts 45 The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) 11, 157, 164, 168 Town Council(s) (TC) 12, 228‒231, 233‒235, 237 transformative potential 24, 34, 169‒170, 172‒174, 188‒189, 214, 238, 296, 303
314 Index Umbrella Movement 12, 25‒26, 35, 88‒89, 93, 144, 165 universal suffrage 89, 144 upcycled fashion 8, 257‒262, 266 urbanization 18, 20, 23‒24, 29, 43, 46, 64, 224, 296 developmental urbanization 15, 17‒18, 20, 22, 96, 98, 269, 290, 295‒296, 303, 305 rapid urbanization 16, 27, 170 urban commons 40, 66‒67, 101, 113, 142, 254, 264‒265, 292, 307 urban redevelopment 30, 120, 128, 167, 175‒177, 179, 182, 185‒186, 190, 195, 217 Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) 12, 45, 64, 66, 280 urban regeneration 5, 26‒27, 29, 34, 119‒120, 125‒126, 167, 181, 183, 186‒187, 190‒191, 193, 195‒197, 199‒200, 207‒208, 214, 216, 218‒220, 297, 299‒300, 302 Urban Regeneration Project (URP) 5, 12, 195, 218‒219, 298 Urban Regeneration Revitalization Plan 219 Urban Regeneration Support Center 8, 193, 196‒197, 201, 206‒207, 210, 214, 217, 220 urban renewal 39, 42, 45, 62, 96, 100, 144‒151, 153, 159, 162, 165, 303
Urban Renewal Authority (URA) 12, 143‒144, 167, 300 Urban Renewal Fund (URF) 5, 9, 12, 32, 143, 145, 149‒151, 156, 164, 167, 298 Urban Renewal Strategy Review 12, 149‒150, 166‒166 urban poor 174‒175, 177, 185, 199, 298‒299 use values 72, 76‒77, 85, 88‒89 voluntary associations 173 volunteers 7, 53, 55, 58, 61, 83‒84, 119‒120, 124, 128‒130, 132, 135, 298 vulnerabilities 72, 74‒77, 89, 304 walking tours 5, 41‒48, 50, 55‒56, 58‒59, 62, 64, 68, 231, 299, 302, 304 Way to Community 134, 141 White Hut 7, 129‒130, 132, 134–135 workshops community workshops 157, 178, 181‒183 Yongsan‒gu Office (YGO) 205‒206 Youth for Lo‒Sheng 7, 96, 102‒103, 105, 108‒109, 112‒115
Publications / Global Asia Norman Vasu, Yeap Su Yin and Chan Wen Ling (eds): Immigration in Singapore 2014, isbn 978 90 8964 665 1 Gregory Bracken (ed.): Asian Cities. Colonial to Global 2015, isbn 978 90 8964 931 7 Lena Scheen: Shanghai Literary Imaginings. A City in Transformation 2015, isbn 978 90 8964 587 6 Anila Naeem: Urban Traditions and Historic Environments in Sindh. A Fading Legacy of Shikarpoor, Historic City 2017, isbn 978 94 6298 159 1 Siddhartha Sen: Colonizing, Decolonizing, and Globalizing Kolkata. From a Colonial to a Post-Marxist City 2017, isbn 978 94 6298 111 9 Adèle Esposito: Urban Development in the Margins of a World Heritage Site: In the Shadows of Angkor 2018, isbn 978 94 6298 368 7 Yves Cabannes, Mike Douglass and Rita Padawangi (eds): Cities in Asia by and for the People 2018, isbn 978 94 6298 522 3 Minna Valjakka and Meiqin Wang (eds): Visual Arts, Representations and Interventions in Contemporary China: Urbanized Interface 2018, isbn 978 94 6298 223 9 Gregory Bracken (ed.): Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West. Care of the Self 2019, isbn 978 94 6298 694 7 Henco Bekkering, Adèle Esposito and Charles Goldblum (eds): Ideas of the City in Asian Settings 2019, isbn 978 94 6298 561 2
Gregory Bracken, Paul Rabé, R. Parthasarathy, Neha Sami and Bing Zhang (eds): Future Challenges of Cities in Asia 2019, isbn 978 94 6372 881 2 K.C. Ho: Neighbourhoods for the City in Pacific Asia 2020, isbn 978 94 6298 388 5 Simone Shu-Yeng Chung and Mike Douglass (eds): The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore 2020, isbn 978 94 6372 950 5 Gregory Bracken (ed.): Contemporary Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West. Care of the Self 2020, isbn 978 94 6298 472 1 Emma Stein: Constructing Kanchi: City of Infinite Temples 2021, isbn 978 94 6372 912 3