Paper short abstract:

This paper concentrates on the Sham Shui Po markets area in Kowloon, Hong Kong, to critically challenge the aesthetic normativity of urban renewal, and offer some insights into the critical role played by community practices in the construction of collective identity in public space.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the socio-spatial politics of land redevelopment in Hong Kong. It offers both an investigation of the dominant ideology of economic prosperity, through a study of its impact on the everyday lives of local residents, and an analysis of the forms of social activism and resistance to the urban planning intervention, which have determined the transformation of the physical and socio-economic structures of retailing and dwelling in colonial-global Hong Kong. The selected focus is the progressive annihilation of street markets to create space for ultra-modern, luxury high-rise buildings. Street markets offer a unique lens to investigate the political discourses of the urban and to analyse the negotiation processes between the vertical strategies of gentrification and the horizontal tactics of urban resistance. Street markets are barometers of equity and economic development, collective sociality, sustainability, living heritage, social prosperity, and community cohesion. This paper concentrates on the Sham Shui Po markets area in Kowloon, Hong Kong, to critically challenge the aesthetic normativity of urban renewal offering some insights into the critical role played by community practices in the construction of collective identity in public space. This allows us to better understand the tactics of street hawker associations in the battle 'to save the market' and shed light on the ways in which they challenge the dominant ideology of economic prosperity suggesting alternative heterotopic geographies of social prosperity.