opening paragraph:Time-lapse video amplifies the speed of traffic, people, and their movement around the cityscape of Hong Kong. In a video, "The Best Is Yet to Come," dedicated to promoting Hong Kong as "Asia's World City," for example, writers used the magnification of speed to emulate the dynamics of capital's never-ending flow.1 Time-lapse brands Hong Kong and creates a visual metaphor for the elusiveness of "connectivity" that depicts Hong Kong culture as one of rapidity and instant gratification. Recently, speed has been foremost on the mind of Hong Kongers caught in the political quagmire surrounding what has been lambasted as "white elephant" projects devoted to more speedy connections to mainland China. Time-lapse forms the idealized mirror image of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link, which, without station stops cuts traveling time to Guangzhou from two hours down to forty-eight minutes. The fantasy of uninhibited speed occludes the controversy of the co-location agreement that ceded Hong Kong territory to the mainland allowing for the practice of Chinese law on Hong Kong soil in direct counter-indication of Hong Kong's mini-constitution. "One train, two systems" directly challenges "One country, two [End Page 619] systems." Plagued by financial woes and construction setbacks, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau mega bridge connects Hong Kong to the Pearl River Delta and puts each city within an hour's commute of each other. Faster and more efficient connections between locations in southern China cemented a new geographical and economic proposition envisioned by officials as the Greater Bay Area. In the context of Hong Kong, faster connections also compress space by supposedly bringing "two systems" closer in a more harmonious temporal and political network.

This paper describes the effects of Seating for Socializing (SOS), a
place-making project designed to revitalize open public spaces in
Hong Kong which suffer from a lack of urban life. The study was
conducted by combining quantitative and qualitative methods in
order to understand the impact of this temporary urban design
intervention in different spatial contexts. The results suggest that
the use of bottom-up approaches and tactical design actions can
be a valuable tool for promoting new social relations among the
citizens as well as rethinking existing weaknesses in the conditions
of the city’s public spaces.

Private ownership of publicly-accessible space is a phenomenon that is increasingly being adopted in new urban developments in many cities around the world. The purpose and role of these spaces, especially in Hong Kong, has been widely criticised for failing to effectively engage with the public realm of the city, a fact which, in addition to being a cause for concern for the Hong Kong government, has raised questions about the benefits of the programme.
Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, this study examines 28 public open spaces in private development (POSPD) in the financial district of Hong Kong with the aim of both evaluating the spatial characteristics as well as understanding their potential contribution to the multilevel structure of this dense urban area.
The research further establishes a new evaluation index as an alternative theoretical framework to assess other critical aspects which may affect their capacity to encourage social activities.
The results of the study suggest that, although a large percentage of the POSPDs analysed are not providing positive impact to the district, they hold significant potential which, with new strategies in place, could greatly enrich the pedestrian and social experience in Hong Kong’s dynamic and complex urban environment.

By 2036, about 31% of Hong Kong’s population will be 65 or above. This situation triggers the need for an Age-Friendly City framework (AFC) to promote healthy ageing. In this paper, we present a study on how conscious and collaborative interventions affect the public’s perception of various AFC domains and the implications for health-related well-being over time in Hong Kong’s Islands District. As part of a territory-wide project, the study used a repeated cross-sectional design to gather data among older persons in 2016 and 2018. Findings showed significant improvements in five of the AFC domains after the interventions. Although health-related well-being was lower in 2018 than in 2016, perceived improvements in AFC domains, including community support and health services, social participation, respect and social inclusion as well as the overall AFC index were positively associated with health-related well-being. Thus, even in the face of declining health, the enhanced forms of certain AFC domains might improve the health-related well-being of older persons. The findings are discussed within the broader theoretical debate on ecological ageing. Implications for community-led social care are drawn.

Hong Kong has one of the least affordable housing markets in the world, but little is
known about its housing advertisements, which constitute important discourses that
shape the cultural ideal of homeownership. In many ways, Hong Kong’s property market
represents that of other ‘global cities’, which are important nodes of global culture and
capital flows. How do private property developers market housing in this context,
where the nature of housing has developed from accommodation to investment/speculation?
What can housing advertisements tell us about the nature of housing consumption,
the role of the state and housing developers in a global city like Hong Kong? Using
both content and textual analyses, this article presents findings from a longitudinal study
of Hong Kong’s private housing newspaper advertisements between 1961 and 2011 and
examines how and why representations of the ideal home have changed. Unlike the
existing literature on housing advertisements which are mostly ideological critiques or
socio-historical accounts of housing advertisements in consumer capitalism, our analysis
utilises insights from Baudrillard’s political economy of the sign and Lipovetsky’s concept
of hypermodernity. Our contextual and longitudinal analysis contributes to the existing literature by integrating temporality with the three modalities of housing consumption,
that is, as living space, investment and financial speculation. We argue that from the late
1970s onwards, Hong Kong government policy actively promotes homeownership and a
housing hierarchy discourse, as housing advertisements changed from emphasising functionalities
and everyday living in 1961–1981, to privatised quality living in 1991–2001,
and abstract living and ‘hyperindividualistic’ political subjectivity in 2011. By demonstrating
the increased abstraction of living, the promotion of the hyperreal, and private
housing as objects of financial speculation as evidenced in the construction of ideal
homes, we illuminate key features of and inequalities associated with housing advertisements
in a global city in neoliberal, late capitalism.

Building on insights from critical luxury studies, this paper examines how developers produce ‘luxury’ in Hong
Kong’s high-priced housing by using textual analysis on a sample of newspaper advertisements for private
housing from 1961 to 2011. Findings show how advertisers and developers actively injected new elements
of luxury to maximise profits. We argue that Hong Kong’s property oligarchy has successfully created luxury
housing in previously unremarkable locations by producing various exclusivist aspirations, thus promoting
excess and reinforcing housing and socio-spatial inequalities. Our discussion deepens understanding of Hong
Kong’s housing hierarchy by looking beyond location-based exclusivity and contributes to critical luxury
studies by underscoring the strategies of property conglomerates in the production of luxury housing.

The often-heated debates concerning Hong Kong’s literary representations all take as a premise that Hong Kong has an urban identity, defined by its mythic transformation from a fishing village to a metropolis. On the return of the sovereignty to mainland China in 1997, the discourse stresses Hong Kong’s exceptional status, reflecting a general anxiety that Hong Kong could be replaced by or even become just another Chinese city. This anxiety
for the future is evident in an ecocritical turn, manifested in both the social realm (popular movements and organic communities) and artistic circles (independent cinema and literature). This article looks at Hong Kong literature—Wu Xubin’s 吳煦斌 (1949–) stories, Dung Kai-cheung’s 董啟章 (1967–) literary experiments, and a recent edited volume about plants—to determine how ecotopian imaginaries and cultural identities are closely linked to different moments in Hong Kong history. The author finds that the ecocritical turn in Hong Kong literature has opened a new space for Hong Kong’s postcolonial identity.