Asian Urbanization

Asian Urbanization surveys the most significant facets of Hong Kong’s remarkable urban development during the last twenty-five years. Some of the contributions, by authors from both the University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Government, were originally given at a series of seminars on problems of urbanization held in the Centre of Asian Studies of the University of Hong Kong. In this up-to-date form they provide a comprehensive survey of the problems of physical planning in Hong Kong and, on a comparative basis, in Asia and elsewhere. The wide scope of the book includes studies of the massive housing programmes for the resettlement of squatters which have attracted such international attention; the legal background to urban growth; urban renewal; the transport pattern and recent proposals for an underground-mass-transport rail system, small-scale industrial units, and the creation of new towns—all extensively illustrated with detailed plates, maps and diagrams. Hong Kong’s pattern of urban development is perhaps the most dynamic in the Third World and this assessment, which may in parts prove to be controversial, should be read by all those concerned with the planning of the rapidly expanding cities of developing countries and by students of comparative urbanization everywhere.