Commoning Experiments in a State-Corporatist City State: The Case of Hong Kong

Abstract

This study addresses the research question of how the tensions between urban commons and ‘the public’ might be resolved through boundary spanning. Urban commons offers a new lens for public managers and politicians to rethink ways that urban resources could be governed to enhance public problem-solving and co-create public-value outcomes. Through in-depth case analyses of commoning initiatives at five public markets in Hong Kong, we find that tensions with bureaucratic modes of governance, marketisation of public space, land politics, and little trust in the government were major barriers of commoning. The results also pointed to the unique boundary spanning strategies to facilitate commoning such as using co-creation and political framing to align community interests and public agenda and using legal framing to enable the reallocation of property rights among property owners and community actors. This research also revealed distinct dynamics of boundary spanning in illiberal democratic systems.