Hong Kong's northern border facing Shenzen.
Hong Kong's northern border facing Shenzen.
From City to Metropolis: Planning without Politics in Hong Kong
[excerpt]
…While Corbett cites Hong Kong as an exemplar of this kind of new tax haven, more recently the territory is undergoing an expansion that attempts to recast it in an image that goes well beyond that of its post-colonial heritage: more Hong Kong than Hong Kong in its set-apartness from what may have once been understood as a city. These efforts coincide with a new age marked by the rise of a Global China and the Guangdong, Macau, Hong Kong Greater Bay Area (GBA) in which the terms of the SAR’s original articulation—as special, as administered, and as a region—are themselves being transformed through the language of new urban forms. We look at the role of these articulations of Hong Kong’s status, particularly as they appeared in a foundational government document outlining plans for the “Northern Metropolis,” a future oriented development along the SAR’s northern border. We refer throughout to the English language version of the planning document, which also exists in traditional and simplified Chinese. While the spatial terms carry different cultural valence in Chinese than they do in English, the English text is significant for the way it implicitly communicates the local and national government’s vision—for Hong Kong, for the GBA with which it is increasingly identified, and for the Northern Metropolis—to a global audience.