The Production of Space in Hong Kong and Taipei: Socio-Spatial Struggles over Global City Formation

Abstract

Hong Kong and Taipei embraced global city formation in the late 1990s as part of their socio-spatial ‘repositioning’ amidst the rise of China and transformations in global capitalism.

This thesis investigates the production of space in Hong Kong and Taipei, focusing on socio-spatial struggles over global city formation. The focus is informed by a central challenge the thesis sets itself, which is to develop a relational and dialectical understanding of the production of space and global city formation in Hong Kong and Taipei.

Drawing from relational geography and the method of incorporated comparison, this thesis explores Hong Kong and Taipei’s global city formation, understood as moments of spatial-temporal differentiation. By also furthering a spatial political economy perspective, the thesis situates Hong Kong and Taipei’s global city formation within national, regional, and international contexts in the 2000s, as mutually interacting urban processes.

The thesis addresses scholarship on city branding and the production of the built environment to uncover the particularities of Hong Kong and Taipei’s global city formation in the 2000s. Here, the thesis highlights the role of the state, at multiple scales, in the production of global space in both cities. The thesis also specifically explores everyday global city experiences in Hong Kong and Taipei through critical engagement with public housing provision. Drawing on a dialectical strand of socio-spatial theory, the thesis finally turns to questioning the contradictions and contestations of multiple spatial imaginaries and differentiated claims to urban space in Hong Kong and Taipei’s global city formation.