The shape of things to come, Hong Kong's infrastructural city fabric: 1989-2020
Résumé
In revisiting the metamorphosis of Hong Kong’s air infrastructure, this article explores the transition over the past thirty years that has seen the City–State transformed by a multi-faceted process. This has been the instrument of its metropolization within the context of its handover to China and its ’integration’ within the Pearl River Delta Megalopolis. Given the political backdrop, the history of its formation is fraught with controversy concerning the urban development challenges inherent in the archipelago’s future. This essay sheds light on these through an analysis of the infrastructure-based reform discourse that underpinned it and its effects on the production of the city. While infrastructure was changing the urban geography, it was simultaneously being shaped according to its context; as the city colonized it, the two merged into a single whole whose boundaries shifted and recomposed over time as the infrastructure was rolled out. This article tells the story of this trajectory and what it says about the role of infrastructure in metropolitan transformation processes, just as questions were being raised over the future of Hong Kong as a global city.