Displacement by Neoliberalism: Addressing the Housing Crisis of Hong Kong in the Restructuring of Pearl River Delta Region

Abstract

The chapter offers a review of how the planning of housing provision has transformed in post-handover Hong Kong against the rise of China’s influence. Focusing on housing or geographies of housing, this chapter argues that neoliberalism has evolved in Hong Kong as an ongoing process of reshaping the boundary of the city, which demands a normalization of displacement. ‘Displacement’ has been naturalized in a set of policy changes resulting from a hybrid of developmentalism and neoliberalism. In the chapter, the author discusses how displacement has occurred in three senses, yet is embedded in a particular mode of economic growth, and how housing shapes and is shaped by a continuous rearrangement of economics, employment, and cross-border geographies.