Contortions of the unconsolidated

Abstract

This paper makes a case for the analysis of urban grounds as urbanizing agents at the intersections of the material and cultural. Through a case study of four decades of landslide management in Hong Kong, it casts new light on the role of urban nature as a participant in the generation of urban forms and conceptions of city life. It demonstrates the active role of anticipation, its differential distribution and materialization through a close study of how geotechnical engineers, film, literature and capitalists portrayed and operated on a territory on the verge of material collapse. In conversation with theories of urban assemblage, this paper contributes the process of ‘consolidation’ as it operated in geotechnical discourses in Hong Kong (and elsewhere) as a useful framework for analysing urban socio-natural interactions in contexts of volatile nature. This positions the city within fraught entanglements with a ground that is projected upon, surfaced, shaped and metamorphosing at variable rates.

Key words:

• Hong Kong
• assemblage
• landslide
• geotechnical engineering
• anticipation
• ground

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Jonathan D. Solomon and Seth Denizen, formidable guides to unstable territory.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Their terminology at this point is ‘loose fill’.

2 Chunam has an uncertain but compelling history in Hong Kong. Joseph Needham (1971) suggests that its arrival in the archipelago may have been at the hands of mainland labourers and shipbuilders. It has been used in the sealing of boat hulls. It is also commonly used in South Asia as a plaster and may have found its way to Hong Kong that way via the British. In each genealogy it is a substance of both repellent and sealant qualities.

3 For example, see the wide variety of references at the CEDD website: www.cedd.gov.hk. See also Andrew Malone (2005, 643–675).

4 Sau Mau Ping is never named but would have been unmistakable to anyone in Hong Kong.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adam Bobbette

Adam Bobbette is a PhD candidate at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge.