‘Consensus’ as a Tool of Foreclosure: Hong Kong’s Land Supply Consultation

Abstract

In the Hong Kong government’s latest effort to address land and housing shortages in the city, a task force was appointed to forge a consensus among the public as to how the city can increase its land supply. Using this case as an example and drawing on the literature of post-politics, this paper explores how the narrative of consensus has been deployed by state and non-state interests over the question of land supply to legitimise positions and to restrict the space of debate. This paper contributes to the literature by identifying post-politics’ relevance and limitations when applied to non-Western contexts.

Keywords:

• Hong Kong
• post-politics
• semi-democracy
• consensus
• public engagement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their input. Their comments have helped clarify the key contribution of this paper to literature. As usual, all remaining errors are our own.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Before 1 July 2022, transport and housing were overseen by the single bureau of Transport and Housing.

2 Among the paper and online questionnaire respondents, 87% support brownfield development. The figure for telephone survey respondents is 79%. The next most popular option is tapping into the private agricultural land reserve in rural Hong Kong, which yields support from 68% of the questionnaire respondents and 61% of telephone survey respondents.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ada H. Y. Lee

Ada H. Y. Lee holds a PhD in Land Economy and an MPhil in Environmental Policy, both from the University of Cambridge. Her research and teaching experience spans the areas of public engagement, planning theory and environmental policy. Ada was a journalist at the start of her career. She now works in planning policy, focusing on the topics of infrastructure and climate change.

Phil Allmendinger

Phil Allmendinger was appointed Professor of Land Economy at Cambridge in 2008 after holding senior roles at a number of other universities across the UK. From 2012 he was Head of Department and Deputy Head of the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences and from 2015 to 2020 Head of the School. He was also a senior advisor to the Vice Chancellor on City and Regional Affairs and a Deputy Vice Chancellor. In 2022 Phil joined the University of Bath as Deputy Vice Chancellor. His research focuses on urban planning and his latest book, The Forgotten City, was published in 2021.