3 The Captive Global City

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⁰ Photos by Adrian Overholser.

Hong Kong is a city of incredible density.¹ Housing developments in the Special Administrative Region blanket swaths of the city in perhaps too many pastel towers.^A These ubiquitous structures lift from cruciform,^B courtyard and countless other typologies, each repeated relentlessly across the mountains and into the sea. Housing such quantities of people in so little space promotes constant interaction, and the tiered tenements display this livelihood to the world.^C Residents populate the stark facades as they fill crannies and nooks with various rudiments,² and in turn transform the towers into communities. This coalescence of culture out to dry demonstrates Hong Kong's adaptations to the monotone developments through an enlivening of interiors and exteriors with anything at all.

¹ With a total area of about 1000 km² / 400 mi² — of which only about a quarter of which is occupied — and a population of over 7 million, Hong Kong provides each resident 40 m² / 400 ft² without including room for any additional infrastructure, of which there is much. For comparison, New York is only slightly smaller (though almost entirely developed) and slightly more populous, giving each resident 90 m² / 1000 ft².

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Sheung Tak Estate, a typical housing development, in Tseung Kwan O. As a 'new town', Tseung Kwan O saw rapid construction in the '80s as the Hong Kong government sought to house the city's growing population. Most new towns are far from downtown Hong Kong; the closest terminate MTR subway lines while the farther border Shenzhen.

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An exploded and overlaid axonometric of the standard Concord 1 public housing block. Drawing by author.

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Haphazard ornaments of daily life embellish the repetitive rhythms of the facades. The pastel expanses become a backdrop to an organic, utilitarian facade.

² Hong Kong's climate permits more than usual to be on exterior display. While air conditioners, laundry and bicylces on balconies appear on residential buildings across the globe, developers in Hong Kong can save on construction by relegating plumbing and beyond to the never-freezing outdoors, creating an even more quotidianly ornate exterior.

Hong Kong is a city of makeshift amenities. High-rise developments, with their Feng Shui formalities,^D accommodate the activities of perhaps too many people. The structures leave room for playgrounds,^E picnics and plenty else,^F and in doing so provide an alternative to archetypical urbanisms. Housing blocks reject both modern and medieval methods of metropolizing, favouring amorphous spaces where ideologies interact and come alive to a captive globe.³ People may reside in the regulated buildings, but the spaces between offer the varieties of routine life,^H and for these moments the austere towers shift to compromise. With its congested culture, Hong Kong inverts Manhattan's model into a monotony that frees the public realm (not the architecture) to be anything at all.

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Slight shifts in alignments and curved elements create flowing spaces good for one's qi..

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A playground tucked in the leftover space between towers.

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Local shops and logistics lodged between repeated buidlings.

³ We can draw a quartered city to express this idea more clearly.^G Along one axis, the structure of the urban fabric will go from rigourous to improvisational; along the other, the structure imposed on the architecture will go from repetitive to unregulated. Such a city gives us medieval and modern neighbourhoods in opposite quarters — the former being wholly unregulated and the latter wholly regulated — and New York and Hong Kong in the remaining quadrants. These two unstable metropoli provide alternate interpretations of Koolhaas' City of the Captive Globe. New York gives the original understanding: its unwavering urbanism is reinforced by its unruly architecture. Hong Kong provides an antithesis with the same globalizing effect: its unkempt urbanism is reinforced by its unrepentant architecture.

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Clockwise from left: the City of the Captive Globe (New York), the Modern Metropolis, the Captive Global City (Hong Kong) and the Medieval Metropolis. Drawing by author.

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Pedestrian parks provide respite within the residential repetition.

Hong Kong is a city of uncertain identity. Recent developments in the pseudo-city-state show how Hong Kong sits at the junction of perhaps too many crossroads. The governing structures left by the United Kingdom atop Cantonese traditions alongside mainland China interact incessantly with global markets. Housing these oft-at-odds views on jungle islands makes Hong Kong a space of ideological overgrowth and intertwining: a living planetary microcosm. The residual people, on their bleak battlefront,^I take variable routes against the towering illiberal force that will inevitably dilute Hong Kong's tropical complexity. In a contest of cultures, however, Hong Kong has shown adaptability: though its architecture may seem monotonous,^J its contents and contexts accommodate anything at all.^K

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A Lennon Wall of post-it notes outlines the democratic principles at stake.

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Conformity towers overhead, but the spaces between provide a sense of individualism.

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The interstitial, improvisational fabric of the Captive Global City.