The Last Urban Frontier : Commodification of Public Space and the Right to the City in Insurgent Hong Kong

Sammanfattning: This thesis explores the production and transformation of public spaces in Hong Kong, a city that is steeped in neoliberal ideals and has seen substantial deterioration in terms of democratic rights and freedoms in recent years. As a result of the expansion of neoliberal capitalism, commodification of urban space has not only exacerbated, but also become more far-reaching and indiscriminate. While existing lines of enquiry such as privatisation and commercialisation remain highly important, it could be argued that they may no longer suffice to encapsulate the exploitative motives and practices of public space due to the growing importance of public space in urban development, as well as the increasingly complex and dynamic models of funding, ownership, and management. Rather than fixating on certain characteristics like public ownership and commercial use of public spaces, the thesis argues that a broadened conceptualisation of public space commodification will be key to not only unpacking its multi-scalar socio-spatial impacts, but also revealing its connection to other urban processes. By rethinking commodification processes in relation to public space, this thesis sets out to establish the linkages between capitalist productive forces and the development and production of public space. Moreover, drawing upon recent protest movements in Hong Kong and the ways in which protesters appropriated and transformed different urban spaces into spaces of public discourse, the thesis argues that everyday contests over public space use and development are imperative to the city’s future political struggles. It is for this reason that the thesis started by examining the commodification of everyday public spaces in Hong Kong, and while inspirations for an alternative public space can be drawn from the sites of political struggles and contestations, it is ultimately in the spaces of everyday life where the right to the city can be formulated and enacted. The empirical cases are centred on three different public spaces in Hong Kong, as well as the protest sites of both the Umbrella Movement and the Anti-ELAB protest movement. By adopting a combination of both on-site and digital ethnographic approaches, this study examines the social production of different public spaces in Hong Kong. The main sources of data for this study include participant observations, interviews, documents, live stream footages, and online forums. The cases are analysed and presented across the four papers included in this thesis.