Enclosure and recommoning in Wanchai, Hong Kong: The struggle of local community development in Asia’s World City

Abstract

Wanchai, situated east of the Central Business District of Hong Kong, Asia’s World City, is a highly accessible and mixed community with old and new buildings constructed over the years through successive waves of reclamation. The less well-off population in the District was hard hit by the Asian Financial crisis in the late 1990s, followed by another wave of redevelopment as the economy recovered. This paper examines how the local stakeholders have worked together to resist wholesale redevelopment (‘enclosure’) as well as the interrelated practices of ‘recommoning’. With the help of a local charity, St James Settlement (set up in 1949 modelled after the Settlement Movement in UK), local residents have succeeded in saving a heritage building cluster, the Blue House, and are using it as a hub to further develop their community and rebuild the socio-economic network within a rapidly gentrifying area.