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Playing as a global city, to maintain the economic dynamics and urban vitality, Hong Kong government would like to take urban regeneration in urban core as a kind of urban growth strategy. The government monopolizes land supply for urban development through the leasehold system, while the redevelopment agency is authorized to take land acquisition for urban redevelopment. The transformation of agency from Land Development Corporation (LDC) to Urban Renewal Authority (URA) reflected the formation of a coalition composed of quasi-public redevelopment agency and private developer, which facilitates land and property resumption in urban redevelopment. The URA-led projects often tend to redevelop obsolete communities into up-market neighborhoods, which possibly enables redevelopment agency and developers to gain more economic benefits from real estate appreciation. Nevertheless, evidences from some large redevelopment projects conducted by URA in Hong Kong such as Lee Tung Street, Langham Palace and Kennedy Town have presented that urban redevelopment is closely associated with gentrification triggered by displacement of original neighborhood residents. Hence gentrification in Hong Kong has raised more and more concerns about booming housing price as well as fragmentation of social networks. Through urban regime combined with growth machine approach, this paper will explain the collusion of redevelopment agency and private developers that jointly turns the URA-led redevelopment into neighborhood gentrification. And by examining Kwun Tong Town Centre Project (KTTCP), findings indicate that soaring property value will crowd low-income groups and working classes out from their original neighborhoods; and then those gentrified residential estates will be occupied by rich class. Moreover, increasing rent and operation costs will inevitably eliminate those family-operated small businesses; and then they will be superseded by high-end retailing and services. In this way, urban morphology will be reshaped perpetually through more and more gentrified neighborhoods.

In the post-industrial economies of large urban centers, redevelopment has become the primary engine of economic growth. Redevelopment projects are designed to encourage investment, attract tourism and bring new residents to the city. This form of city building is driven by a neoliberal urban agenda that embraces privatization, and is controlled by the economic interests of private business. In this chapter, we argue that city building under a neoliberal rubric is also a gendered political process, the outcome of which is the redevelopment of urban space in ways that reflect a masculinist and corporatist view of city life. Moreover, both the form of redevelopment and the process itself function to limit public participation in the life and growth of cities, particularly for women and other marginalized groups. In the first section of this chapter, Gendered spaces of redevelopment, we examine how the results of such a process are made manifest in the built form of Canada's largest city, Toronto, with a population of 2.5 million. The city is experiencing a major process of redevelopment and city building that is evident in a massive wave of condominium construction. We suggest that condominium projects, as a particular form of redevelopment, create privatized spaces and encourage privatized services that articulate neatly with a neoliberal urban agenda.

Outlines the urban redevelopment of Hong Kong from the early 1900s to the present day. Obstacles such as: absentee ownership, compensation to owners, resettlement of tenants, financial difficulties, piece‐meal efforts and the lack of a centralized co‐ordination body are discussed. The development of the Land Development Corporation has provided opportunity to address these problems, forming as it does a public/private development partnership.

When Japan's asset bubble burst, the office vacancy rate soared sharply. This study seeks to target the office market in Tokyo's 23 special wards during Japan's bubble burst period. It aims to define economic conditions for the redevelopment/conversion of offices into housing and estimate the redevelopment/conversion probability under the conditions.

The precondition for land‐use conversion is that subsequent profit excluding destruction and reconstruction costs is estimated to increase from the present level for existing buildings. Regarding hedonic functions for offices and housing and computed profit gaps for approximately 40,000 buildings used for offices in 1991, it was projected how the profit gaps would influence the land‐use conversion probability. Specifically, panel data for two time points in the 1990s were used to examine the significance of redevelopment/conversion conditions.

It was found that, if random effects are used to control for individual characteristics of buildings, the redevelopment probability rises significantly when profit from land after redevelopment is expected to exceed that from present land uses. This increase is larger in the central part of a city.

Limitations stem from the nature of Japanese data limited to the conversion of offices into housing. In the future, a model may be developed to generalize land‐use conversion conditions.

This is the first study to specify the process of land‐use adjustments that emerged during the bubble burst. This is also the first empirical study using panel data to analyze conditions for redevelopment.

This chapter discusses the Brazilian redevelopment policy denominated urban operation. First implemented in São Paulo in the 1980s, it was included in the Brazilian federal urban legislation in 2001 as an instrument to promote the redevelopment of great urban areas through public–private partnerships. On the one hand, the local public administration would provide incentives to investments in a given project, especially by selling construction rights; on the other hand, the value captured would be reinvested in the same area, following a list of works that may include urban infrastructure and services. The main benefits expected are structural change without onus for the public administration; a more balanced urban growth, estimulating higher density in areas well served by urban infrastructure; and real estate valorization. Nevertheless, this chapter critically analyzes its early experiences in São Paulo, demonstrating an entrepreneurial and speculative logic of spatial production. In this sense, the chapter is structured in four parts. The first one presents the legal instrument, while the following two sections explore the two main aspects of its functioning: great urban projects and public–private partnerships. In the final section, the Urban Operation Faria Lima will be assessed, especially on its attempts to promote São Paulo as a global city. If it is not possible to generalize from this particular experience, it exposes the necessity of discussing how the instrument, now a federal policy, may be implemented in other Brazilian cities, which type of redevelopment it may promote and for whom.

Many States in America have enacted laws to encourage redevelopment of contaminated urban properties. The laws attempt to do this by addressing one barrier to redevelopment, the environmental liability attached to contaminated urban properties. In general, the laws attempt to remove or reduce the significance of that barrier by reducing or eliminating the environmental liability risk attached to these properties. Our hypothesis was that these efforts cannot encourage significant redevelopment because they fail to address non‐environmental barriers to urban redevelopment. To determine whether this legislative focus on environmental liability is misplaced, we conducted a survey of Northeast Ohio businesses which had decided, since the enactment of Ohio’s brownfields law, either to move to a new location, or to expand at an existing location. The survey asked businesses to rank the relative importance to their relocation decision of environmental and non‐environmental factors. The results of the survey show that numerous non‐environmental factors were of equal or greater importance to decision‐makers than the environmental status of the property. Therefore, legislative efforts to encourage redevelopment of contaminated urban properties must be expanded to address non‐environmental barriers to redevelopment

The aim of this paper is to: study reviews of the urban renewal practices in Hong Kong and London; compare the perceptions of the design professions in both cities on the importance of different urban design considerations when defining urban renewal strategies; and verify the applicability of London's experiences in achieving sustainable urban renewal in Hong Kong.

A comprehensive literature review was conducted to compare the urban renewal practices in Hong Kong and London. Questionnaires were sent to design professions in both cities who were actively involved in Hong Kong's and London's urban (re)development projects. ANOVA was adopted to compare the perception patterns in both cities.

The survey and ANOVA analysis revealed that the urban design considerations short‐listed for this study could contribute towards the sustainability of economy, environment and social equity. It was noted that the distinctive features of cities of various locations do have impacts on certain perception patterns of the professionals.

This article adds to the limited literature in this area and will be of interest to those involved in urban redevelopment practices.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate compensation and related welfare issues in the case of the expropriation of land for urban redevelopment in China.

A mixed methods quantitative and qualitative approach was selected to undertake the research. This involved a wide ranging qualitative review of the academic and policy literature to explore the relevant arguments and issues, combined with a quantitative regression analysis of survey data collected from research subjects.

The research identified the complex and changeable phenomena of urban village redevelopment in China, and the variable compensation arrangements used. The research found that monthly family income before land expropriation, monthly family expense before expropriation, the location of the housing expropriation and family unit size are important determinants for the property holders chosen methods of compensation. It also found that an increase in family size leads to a decreasing probability that the expropriated farmers choose the single monetary compensation relative to the alternative option of housing compensation. The degree of satisfaction with compensation, changes in monthly family income and expense are found to be significant determinants for changes in life satisfaction.

The research made the following four recommendations based upon the qualitative and quantitative analysis: that local governments should pay closer governance/ political attention to changes in the welfare of the farmers/ villagers whose property has been expropriated; that central and local government should aim to improve the compensation system for rural land and property expropriation, to make the compensation policy be perceived as fairer and more reasonable by citizens; that a broad National standard of compensation be used within a pragmatic locally focussed regime; that the Chinese Central, Provincial and Local governments can devise improved policy tools and make more effective policy interventions by learning from the experiences (both successes and failures) of other countries approaches to this topic. It also suggested that further research be undertaken investigating the multitude of local level policy experiments, as a way of developing better National compensation standards based upon those compensation standards that appear to be working – and have citizen support – at the local level.

The literature review identified recent developments in Chinese urban studies and originally synthesised both recent and longstanding work on the issue of urban villages in China. The research also suggested changes to the National and Local legal and policy framework for compensation cases in urban redevelopment expropriation scenarios.

The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of revitalization of old industrial buildings on the market value of the neighbourhood residential properties. Hong Kong’s economy has undergone a remarkable transformation in the past three decades. The most visible phenomenon in this transformation is the relocation of traditional manufacturing activities from Hong Kong to China since the 1990s. This has led many of the old industrial buildings in Hong Kong to be empty/underutilized and dilapidated. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government launched the “Revitalizing Industrial Buildings Policy” to revitalize these underutilized properties with the aim to provide suitable land and premises to meet local’s economic and social needs.

The study used a hedonic price model to determine whether there is a relationship between revitalization projects and neighbourhood residential property values and the influence of revitalization programmes on the residential property price if there is such a relationship. The study is based on a sample of 4,015 residential transactions obtained from the residential developments located near three large-scale revitalization projects in an old industrial district, Kwun Tong.

Empirical findings suggest that revitalization programmes have not brought net positive price effects on the value of neighbourhood residential properties. This is in line with findings of some previous studies. However, it reveals that both the mode and scale of revitalization projects have different impacts on the neighbourhood: wholesale conversion has less negative impacts compared with redevelopment, while the larger the scale of a revitalization programme, the greater are the negative impacts on nearby property values. The study also finds that negative externalities generated by the revitalization during and post-revitalization stages are almost similar in magnitudes.

The results imply that industrial revitalization projects located adjacent to residential developments both reduce the value of the latter and discourage potential property buyers. The negative public perception of these properties diminishes their value and hence decreases the value of the property.

The paper raises the concern about the importance of adequately addressing issues of planning and zoning to minimize the negative externalities arising from urban renewal projects.

This research paper is first of its kind to analyze the effects of revitalized industrial buildings on the value of neighbourhood properties in Hong Kong. The tangible benefits identified in this study would be incentives, or otherwise, to motivate the revitalization policy in general.

This paper aims to review multiple historical perspectives on urban regeneration interventions while also serving as a prologue to and the rationale for a Special Issue of the Journal of Place Management and Development (JPMD) on Placemaking and Sustainable Urban Regeneration in Japan.

The paper reviews the literature on city center regeneration, with particular attention to the USA and the UK contexts. The emphasis is on comparing and contrasting what have become known as the North American and European regeneration models. This background is helpful to place the Special Issue in a broad international context.

The key finding is that the history of planning city centers appears to be largely a response to urbanization and the problems it has brought forward. The papers in this JPMD’s Special Issue exemplify this finding with cases from Toyama, Kanazawa and Tokyo.

Cities are transformed as their centers grow and develop. City centers represent important anchor points in every community. However, evolving functional decentralization has occurred mostly due to changes in flows of capital, people, materials and other socio-economic transformations. The review shows how urban regeneration programs tend to be implemented to correct and or improve physical, socio-economic and environmental problems associated with functional and programmatic decentralization.