1st Edition
Hong Kong Public Housing An Architectural and Policy History
Introduction - A mirror of identity? Public housing in Hong Kong
PART 1: TOWARDS A PUBLIC HOUSING DRIVE
Chapter 1
1945-1953: Laying the foundations
Chapter 2
1954-1957: Shek Kip Mei and the Resettlement revolution
Chapter 3
1958-1964: Robin Black and incremental reform
Chapter 4
1964-1971: Trench’s governorship – pragmatism and tentative reformism
PART 2: THE MACLEHOSE YEARS
Chapter 5
1971-1973: Building a ‘model city’? The MacLehose Revolution
Chapter 6
1973-1976: Utopia on hold - from crisis management to programme planning
Chapter 7
MacLehose’s ‘brainchild’: The Home Ownership Scheme
Chapter 8
1977-1982: Consolidating the revolution
PART 3: COUNTDOWN TO THE HANDOVER
Chapter 9
1982-1986: Youde’s governorship – from sovereignty to stabilisation
Chapter 10
1987-1992: The Wilson years - accelerated decolonisation and the Housing Strategy
Chapter 11
Living in ‘Harmony’: a revolution in Hong Kong housing design
Chapter 12
1992-1997: The last Governor – from constitutional impasse to housing boom
PART 4: JULY 1997 TO THE PRESENT DAY
Chapter 13
1997-2005: The Tung administration - building a ‘new identity’ through public housing?
Chapter 14
2005 to the present: a frustrated recovery?
Conclusion
Hong Kong housing - a monumental heritage of the Lion Rock Spirit
Biography
Miles Glendinning is Professor of Architectural Conservation at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
“Hong Kong Public Housing offers a bold and novel contribution by adopting a bi-modal lens, planning policy and architecture, to reinterpret the city’s public housing history… Glendinning’s fine-grained analyses, which deconstruct myths portraying Hong Kong’s public housing story as a ‘miracle’ simply born from the devastating 1953 Shek Kip Mei fire or as an adjunct to the city’s industrialization and rise as an Asian Tiger, make the book a compelling a read… Glendinning’s balanced critique of both colonial and post-handover housing policies stands out as exemplary.”
Luk, Y. X. C. (2025). Hong Kong Public Housing: An Architectural and Policy History: by Miles Glendinning, Oxfordshire and New York, Routledge, 2024, 517 pp., £94.50 (e-book), £105.00 (hardback). Planning Perspectives, 40(5), 1416–1418. https://doi.org/10.1080/02665433.2025.2548077
