Border Ecologies. Hong Kong's Mainland Frontier

4

5

SHENZHEN (SZ)

ZONE 2 Inbetweeners

ZONE 1 Enclaves and Codependency

ZONE 4 Scarred Landscapes

ZONE 3 Interstitial Infrastructure

HONG KONG (HK)

ZONE 6 Kinship Economics and Village Alliances

ZONE 5 Invisible Exchanges

6

CONTENTS

TA C T I C S

INTRODUCTION

BORDER ECOLOGIES text by Joshua Bolchover

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TACTICAL FRAMEWORK text by Peter Hasdell

83

97

TIMELINE text by Matthew Hung

26

ENCLAVES AND CODEPENDENCY text by Joshua Bolchover

SHEN KONG: CUI BONO? text by Mary Ann O’Donnell & Viola Yan Wan

35

INBETWEENERS text by Joshua Bolchover

117

THE FRONTIER CLOSED AREA photographs by Bas Princen

48

INTERSTITIAL INFRASTRUCTURE text by Joshua Bolchover

135

7

CONCLUSION

SCARRED LANDSCAPES text by Joshua Bolchover

157

MICRO-TACTICS text by Joshua Bolchover and Peter Hasdell

216

INVISIBLE EXCHANGE text by Peter Hasdell

177

MICRO-BORDERS text by Joshua Bolchover and Peter Hasdell

232

VILLAGE ALLIANCES text by Peter Hasdell

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The Frontier Closed Area: a buffer zone created by the British between Hong Kong and the Mainland in 1951.

BORDER ECOLOGIES

Hong Kong’s border with Shenzhen is incrementally dissolving. By 2047, fifty years after the 1997 hand­ over of Hong Kong, the border will no longer exist.

This will mean the conjoining of the economic, political, and social systems that have so far been able to operate separately under the ‘one country, two systems’ policy. Hong Kong will become fully integrated into Mainland China. Or will it? The uncertainty surrounding what will happen has created huge anxiety for many Hong Kongers.

Citizens are concerned about preserving cultural differences and values, language, freedom of speech, and their right to vote.

Caught within this debate is the Frontier Closed Area, a buffer zone created by the British in 1951 to strengthen Hong Kong’s separation from the Mainland. For sixty years, this closed land has retained a landscape of ecosystems including tidal estuaries, fish farms, primary forests, historic villages, and abandoned military posts. In stark contrast, and in half the time, the village of Shenzhen, across the border, has exploded into an urban metropolis of 15 million plus, becoming the poster child for China’s economic reform era.

SZ HK

Rotating 180 degrees at the border reveals the stark contrast between Shenzhen's urban edge and Hong Kong's natural landscape.

In 2016, Hong Kong’s Frontier Closed Area (FCA) has almost been erased, and with it over two thousand hectares of land have been opened up for future, alternative, uses. The shrinking of the buffer zone and consequent release of land is not simply a question of planning. Originally intended as a political statement of Hong Kong’s physical separation from Mainland China, its current dissolution is the mirror image: a political move indicative of Hong Kong’s closer integration with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). An investigation into the characteristics of the border zone, including the intensity of trans­­actions and people flow that occur across it, and the processes underlying its natural habitat and its spatial occupation, elucidate an understanding of this border zone as a Border Ecology. This is defined as an interwoven set of relationships that emerge as a result of the differences between Hong Kong and Mainland China.

This book explores the unique border ecology of this intermediary zone by describing specific narratives and their spatial effects that have evolved over time. By unpeeling the layers of this uncharted territory, we reveal a complex

set of relationships that operate between macropolicies and micro-conditions on the ground. This introductory article describes the broader political, historical, and environmental context of the FCA, defining how this context can be framed conceptually as a border ecology. It outlines a strategic approach to design, proposing insertions within this ecology offering an alternate form of development that is open-ended to adjust to the uncertainty facing Hong Kong in 2047 and beyond.

POLITICAL AWAKENING Since the 1997 handover, Hong Kong and the Mainland have forged a path of structured connectivity. Economic agreements, infrastructure, and easements of visa restrictions have all worked to strengthen the everyday dependence between the two sides. At the same time, the debate regarding Hong Kong’s future relationship with the Mainland is being contested, driven by what some term Hong Kong citizens’ ‘political awakening’. 1 This awakening reflects a process of defining Hong Kong’s post-handover identity.

If, for some, Hong Kong has been an intermediary and temporary location, ‘a borrowed place on borrowed time’, 2 others have begun to reflect on Hong Kong as a unique place with the capacity to make its own decisions on how it should be governed and how to craft its own future. 3 A sequence of events over the last five years have demarcated this emerging concern and the subsequent rise of localist politics.

In 2012, students and activists staged a ten-day protest at government headquarters against a proposed compulsory national curriculum, which drew crowds of 27,000 (police estimate) to 100,000 (organisers’ estimate). The protest was significant as it represented a reaction to perceived meddling in Hong Kong’s educational system by Beijing in order to educate citizens on China’s national history, of which Hong Kong was a part. Deemed by many as a propaganda tool, the chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, abandoned the plan amidst the controversy. The event contributed to the alliance of different protest groups, including pro-democracy and student organisations that united against the notion of Beijing’s interference.

In September 2014, citizens took to the streets in what became known as ‘the Umbrella Revolution’.

The protest was initiated in response to Beijing’s proposal on how universal suffrage should be implemented for the 2017 election of Hong Kong’s chief executive. Beijing offered that the public could vote on a preselection of candidates made by its own nominating committee of 1,200 members. This assertion of control caused consternation, and Beijing was considered to be reneging on its agreement to enable open elections by 2017. Initiated by a student activist group, Scholarism, the protest commenced with a boycott of classes, and was followed by a rally at the Tamar Building, government headquarters.

The police forcefully dislodged the students with pepper spray, which ignited public indignation at their heavy-handedness. On September 28, the

1 — Benny Tai, interview by Joshua Bolchover, Hong Kong University, November 23, 2015.

2 — Richard Hughes, Borrowed Place Borrowed Time: Hong Kong and Its Many Faces, London: André Deutsch, 1976.

3 — Benny Tai.

14

‹ 1840

1842

1860

1898

1951

1980

1997

2010

2047

Hong Kong's border has changed over time.

defined by an artificial cleft, a straight line that cut across the peninsula as Boundary Street. In 1898, the British negotiated a ninety-nine-year, rent-free lease of the New Territories, taking advantage of China’s weakened position after the First Sino-Japanese War, and the border was established along the natural boundary of the Sham Chun River. At this point, the border was porous, allowing fluid exchange between the two countries. Given that Bao’an County was predominantly agricultural and sparsely populated (268,310 people in 1949), 13 there was no pressing need to control the frontier. The situation was radically altered by the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in 1939, which began a period of militarisation that continued past the end of World War II. The Communist Revolution of 1949, followed by the fledgling state becoming embroiled in the Korean War, cemented Cold War divisions between East and West, between Communism and Capitalism, and as a result the border crossings were shut down. By 1951, layers of fences had been constructed, armed personnel were stationed on both sides, and the British established a second line of defence in the form of the Frontier Closed Area (FCA), essentially a no-man’s land, stretching and thickening the border along its length. This

13 — L. Jiang, ‘Population and Sustainable Development in China: Population and Household Scenarios for Two Regions’ (PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam, 1999), 60.

period of heightened control was maintained throughout the Mao era, albeit with intensive influxes of migration, particularly at moments of extreme hardship, such as during the Great Leap Forward.

Deng Xiaoping’s opening-up policy of 1978 named Shenzhen as one of five Special Economic Zones (SEZ). The SEZs sought to become ‘Windows on the World’ 14 to allow China, closed to outside investment since 1949, to undertake limited and controlled exchange with the outside world and to generate competitive advantages through deregulated enclaves. Shenzhen provided the outlet for outsourced production and assembly industry, with access to land, labour, and financial incentives for industrial growth, whilst Hong Kong injected capital and business acumen, and provided a conduit for foreign investment. This is synonymous with the global trend of economic structuring towards decentralised production networks with key nodal cities providing control services from financial and legal sectors. 15 This development model linked Hong Kong with the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region in a system that thrived off an unending influx of migrant workers to factories in the Mainland and locational flexibility; businesses

14 — Windows on the World also refers to a theme park in Shenzhen, named after Deng Xiaoping’s proclamation.

15 — See Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.

15

FCA BREAKDOWN

Previous FCA boundary

Current FCA boundary

Development constraints

Sandy Ridge cemetery Fish-ponds

Site of specific Site of specific scientific interest

NENT

scientific interest

Landfill

(stream)

(marshes)

Site of specific scientific interest (egretry) Wetland conservation area Fish-ponds

Development potential

26

PRE-1842: SINOCENTRIC WORLD ORDER

1837 Painting of Hong Kong Island viewed from the north.

Captain Sir Edward Belcher first landed in Hong Kong to claim the island for Great Britain in 1841, marking the start of Hong Kong’s international relevance. At the time, Hong Kong Island was a barren rock populated with a few fishing and agricultural villages; its only significance had been as a salt producer during the Sung Dynasty (960–1297). 1 Prior to the British arrival in Hong Kong, the early and mid-Qing dynasty (1644–1842) was a period when China considered itself to be the centre of the world. 2 Geographically protected and surrounded by more primitive tribal societies, China did not engage in any significant cultural exchange in its early history, 3 and this had led to the development of a unique world view.

This was challenged when the Portuguese arrived in 1514 and established trade relationships in

1 — Julia Wilkinson, ‘A Chinese Magistrate’s Fort’, City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City, ed. Ian Lambot (London: Watermark, 1999), 60.

Canton (later Guangzhou in Guangdong province).

The British came later, in 1637. Foreign trade was permitted by China, but officials from trading nations were required to pay tribute missions to the emperor. These symbolic rituals, designed to affirm the superiority of the Chinese world order, were despised by foreign traders. 4 Measures were put in place to limit the influence foreigners might have on Chinese society, and these were later developed into the Canton System in 1757, a strict set of rules that required all overseas trade to be conducted through just thirteen Chinese merchant guilds, severely restricting contact between foreign traders and locals. These tight controls limited foreign entrepreneurial activity; however, the increasing European demand for Chinese goods still made trading under such restrictions lucrative.

2 — Li Zhaojie, ‘Traditional Chinese World Order’, Chinese Journal of International Law 1 (2002), 20–58.

3 — Ibid.

4 — Ibid.

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1842–98: U N E Q U A L T R E AT I E S

1845 Painting by Major G. Martin of the visit of Keying, imperial Chinese commissioner to Hong Kong.

Circa. 1840 The destruction of opium by official Lin - Anon.

Hong Kong History

Chinese tea gained popularity in Britain from the mid-seventeenth century onwards, but there were few goods that Britain could offer China in return.

This chronic trade deficit led the British to cultivate tea in India in an effort to break China’s monopoly, and they begin trading opium following the annexation of Bengal.

With a reversal in the flow of silver and in the face of increasing opium consumption, the Chinese emperor took decisive action. In 1839, Chinese opium dealers were arrested and foreign traders in Canton were forced to hand over all the opium in their possession. These events led to the First Opium War (1839–42).

The British emerged victorious, and the ending of the war was marked by the signing of the Treaty of Nanking. The terms of the treaty sought: compensation for the destroyed opium and war reparations; the liberalisation of trade by the removal of the restrictive Canton System and the

1898 Outpost on the boundary between British and Chinese territory, (following the line of presentday Boundary Street).

opening of four additional ports to foreign trade; and the ceding of Hong Kong Island to become a British trading base.

The Second Opium War (1857–60) started as a result of China’s reluctance to renegotiate the Treaty of Nanking. Following another British victory, the Convention of Peking forced China to further liberalise trade, provide indemnity, allow embassies in Peking, and cede Kowloon Peninsula opposite Hong Kong Island.

With China weakened after its loss in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory was signed in 1898. The British were worried about the proximity of the border and the defence of the colony, and the convention sought to create a larger buffer between the island and China. A ninety-nine-year lease to Britain was agreed for the territory north of Kowloon, called the New Territories.

Wax figurine tableau of the 1984 meeting between Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher, 69th floor, Diwang Building. The tableau clearly articulates the idea of 'Shen Kong' and its ideological underpinning the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty.

35

SHEN KONG: CUI BONO? As an adjective, ‘Shen Kong’ refers to Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and the former colony of Hong Kong – a geopolitical referent that invokes Mandarin and Anglo-Cantonese cultural identities. In fact, the end of the colonial era has been one of the most important ideological referents for Shenzhen identity. On the sixty-ninth floor of the Diwang (地王 , literally Land King) Building, for example, is a photo gallery and Lan Kwai Fong-style eatery to commemorate Hong Kong’s return. In this obviously dated tableau, wax figures of Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping sit next to each other, anticipating the vindication of the Opium Wars, gunboat diplomacy, and Britain’s colonial legacy in south China. Likewise, in Nantou there are antiopium exhibits, and the Shenzhen City Museum dedicates a large section to anti-colonial installations. 1 In fact, until 1997, Shenzhen residents eagerly anticipated the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty (回归 ), and erected buildings and neighbourhoods that were literally called Shen Kong (深港 ). Nevertheless, even as the importance of the handover has faded and Shenzhen and Hong Kong have continued to negotiate border protocols and levels of integration, so too the meaning of Shen Kong has continued to shift. 2 This chapter unpacks some of the key moments in the ongoing construction, dismantling, and repurposing of the Shenzhen–Hong Kong border, with an eye towards understanding the complex relationships between the cartographic border (with its checkpoints

1 The British occupation of Hong Kong took place through a series of three treaties: the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, the 1860 Treaty of Beijing, and the 1898 Convention between Great Britain and China Respecting an Extension of Hong Kong Territory. The border at stake in this essay was established in 1898. However, the sense of outrage about the fact of Hong Kong begins in 1840, when the British decided to fight a war to force the Chinese to allow the sale of opium within their borders. William Gladstone argued against Britain’s role in the First Opium War, saying, ‘A war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated to cover this country with permanent disgrace, I do not know and have not read of … The British flag is hoisted to protect an infamous traffic; … we should recoil from its sight with horror.’ Quoted in Rey Chow, ‘King Kong in Hong Kong: Watching the “Handover” from the USA’, Social Text 55 (1998), 96.

2 See Joshua Bolchover’s contribution to this volume, ‘Interstitial Infrastructure’, for a discussion of how the meaning of the Shenzhen–Hong Kong border has changed since 1997.

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RESOURCING / DYNAMICS Resourcing / Dynamics

Resourcing / Dynamics

Resourcing / Dynamics

Resourcing / Dynamics Looping / Augmenta-

LOOPING / AUGMENTATION Looping / Augmenta-

Looping / Augmenta-

Looping / AugmentaActivation / Catalysation

Activation / Catalysation

ACTIVATION / CATALYSATION

Activation / Catalysation

Activation / Catalysation Adaptation / Succession

Adaptation / Succession

Adaptation / Succession

ADAPTATION / SUCCESSION Adaptation / Succession

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TA C T I C A L F R A M E W O R K F O U R K E Y S TA G E S

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considering how the different scales of flow impact on specific locations and their dynamic potentials.

This is particularly important as the metabolic conditions are not only understood as belonging to natural systems but may relate to existing land practices, urban informal development patterns, social or cultural practices, or external pressures on urban and speculative development. This step is therefore context dependent and derived from the understanding of the dynamic factors of the local context.

Tactical Framework

The looping process activates existing dynamics into programmatic ecologies and metabolic relationships in the micro-ecology. Through the reconfiguration and integration process, it also incorporates new processes that encourage and enrich further augmentation and development of multiple development pathways. As existing practices are metabolised or become redundant, the original prototype catalyst can augment or feed the ecosystem dynamics in a repeated cycle. The looping and augmentation processes therefore allow for the fine-tuning of the micro-ecology, in effect becoming a regulator or self-regulator of the system. The metabolic loops may vary in number, impact, or scope but are nonetheless intrinsic to the micro-ecology, and are derived from the natural environmental conditions, from the man-made environment, and from the urban, economic, social, and cultural practices present.

III ACTIVATION / CATALYSATION The activation of the micro-ecologies occurs through the input of catalytic prototypes. These prototypes are primarily programmatic and spatial insertions that are architectonic in scope and scale, aimed towards the disruption of, or interference within, existing patterns to permit the reconfiguration of the former discrete and separated linear systems into metabolic systems and feedback loops. Their positioning and operational logic is usually considered as a function of two or more aligned metabolic loops, so that the prototype can activate exchanges and flows between these – bridging between, for example, social amenity and infrastructural ecology or between informal landuse pattern and the emergence of new ecological landscape. Their role is therefore strategically and dynamically positioned rather than a purely spatial configuration, and is determined from conditions on either side of the border.

Drawing on the dynamic processes already present and identified in a location, the insertion of spatial and programmatic catalysts initiates the proposed ecosystem in order to create new symbiotic relations and complexities by bringing in new socio-economic conditions, environmental factors, and activities that contribute to the development of metabolic flows.

Once the ecology is operational, they continue to function as augmentations serving to moderate the various micro-ecologies’ metabolisms. This regulates development through the alteration of the inputs and outputs of the metabolic loops towards a desired practice, allowing for continual adjustment of the micro-ecology.

IV ADAPTATION / SUCCESSION Succession refers to the evolution and transformation of the system through successive stages of development towards ecosystem and sustainable development stability. Within singular instances of micro-ecology, the determining factors may be too weak to have longer-term sustainable impacts. The propagation of the micro-ecologies therefore allows for mutually beneficial larger ecologies that have impacts for larger areas and territories in which the processes of adaptation, growth, and expansion of micro-ecologies to wider contexts may generate succession potentials.

As an ‘infill’, micro-ecologies link to the originating ecosystem in loosely planned or unplanned ways that help to generate multiple development pathways, and diverse scenarios and outcomes.

Succession therefore needs to consider the interrelation to other micro-ecologies as potential constituents of a larger evolved territory or plan that results from the combined metabolism and choreography of flows across the whole border.

Given the instabilities of the macro flows of the border, the inbuilt resilience is critical to the evolution and development of the micro-ecology.

4. COMPOSITION AND ASSEMBLAGE Border Ecologies' baseline analysis of the Hong Kong–Shenzhen border consisted of a series of speculative propositions testing the reprogramming of the Frontier Closed Area. This approach takes into consideration the overall understanding of the macro flows and dynamics of the border region, its different habitats, its developed areas

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Residential enclaves such as Fairview Park at Hong Kong's north western edge are embedded within the existing landscape of fish-ponds, wetlands and other forms of aquatic agriculture.

ENCLAVES AND CODEPENDENCY

The western edge of the Frontier Closed Area at Deep Bay presents a pattern of highly contrasting landscape and urban forms. Islands of suburban residential enclaves sit within a wetland surface of aqua-cultural ponds. Linear canals of water extend out to the estuarine mudflat, where they meet with fringes of mangrove. This morphology is a historic register of the changing uses of the land and of the dialogue between human intervention and natural processes. Underlying this diversity is the estuarine ecology, characterised by the unique dynamics that exist at the threshold between the sea and the land, and when salt water meets fresh water.

Although Shenzhen’s transformation from farmland to urban fabric represents an obvious, and welldocumented, artificial change in land use, Hong Kong’s landscape has also undergone multiple reconstructions. This is pronounced in the Deep Bay area, which has been subject to sequential alterations that have each harnessed the uniqueness of the wetland environment. However, the current condition is a moment of uneasy stasis, a quiescent landscape that belies the contradictory pressures of development versus preservation.

Hong Kong’s limited size intensifies this pressure. The demand for affordable real estate coupled with the excessive profit margins of developers is pitched against government measures to preserve country parks as natural escape valves. Rather than disputing whether the use of this land is a choice between natural and

urban forms, this article will conceive of this territory as an example of an urban nature, 1 a conjugation that means that the distinction between the terms is no longer productive. The landscape results from human intervention aimed at increased agricultural and economic productivity. Yet at the same time, the territory has evolved into a unique ecological habitat.

As the political debate over the future use of these lands becomes more immediate due to the opening up of the Frontier Closed Area (FCA), we will argue for a strategy that restarts the process of transformation of the land. The essay contends that the current stasis will ultimately result in the demise of the environment, and so our aim is to enhance and alter the existing dynamics of the site in order to create an alternative economic driver that is reliant on, and derives from, the current ecology at the site.

Rather than follow binary oppositions of nature versus culture, development versus preservation, building versus landscape, the aim is to create a social, ecological assemblage that offers an alternative political and ecological position for the future occupation of this territory.

1 — Maria Kaika and Erik Swyngedouw, ‘Cities, Nature, and the Political Imaginary’, Architectural Design 82 (2012), 22–27. The authors describe urban nature as ‘a process of continuous de-territorialisation and reterritorialisation of metabolic circulatory flows’.

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The strategic plan for the Loop showing the composition of parts: the university buildings; shared facilities; village expansion areas and wilding areas.

R E L AT I O N S H I P S B E T W E E N C O M P O N E N T PA R T S Shared Higher Education and Village Facilities SHARED HIGHER EDUCATION AND VILLAGE FACILITIES

Village uses shared university facilities

Public/Private

Research and PUBLIC/PRIVATE Development RESEARCH AND Facilities DEVELOPMENT FACILITIES

Village uses shared open spaces of R&D facilities

Distributed shared campus

University faculties engages in knowledge share

Startups jointly develop marketable technologies Village uses rewilded courtyards for recreation

University Faculty Buildings with Rewilded UNIVERSITY FACULTY Courtyard

Housing for the students provided by the village

BUILDINGS WITH REWILDED COURTYARD

Village and university exchange

Relocated Village Expansion RELOCATED VILLAGE Areas EXPANSION AREAS

Future connection to existing BCP

CONNECT TO EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE

Connect to Existing Infrastructure

Connect to existing BCP

132

Overview of the development strategy for the Loop.

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Inbetweeners

134

View from Lo Wu in Hong Kong showing left-over meanders created by the straightening of the river and Shenzhen's high rise development.

Since its conception, Hong Kong’s border with the Mainland has evolved from a barrier allowing the British colony to turn its back on China to a highly connected interface for exchange. From a previous position of autonomy and self-reliance, Hong Kong is now completely dependent on the Mainland for essential supplies of energy and water. Other systems – waste, food, economy, and transportation – are also interwoven, furthering the integration of the two sides. In purely pragmatic terms, this seamless urban metabolism stretching across the border renders any question of Hong Kong’s dissociation from the Mainland moot. However, political and cultural differences remain, dividing opinion regarding Hong Kong’s future role come 2047 – the expiry date of the fifty-year agreement that guarantees Hong Kong’s capitalist system will remain unchanged. In the interim, the ‘one country, two systems’ policy has provided the perfect foil to increase forms of cooperation, initiating further dependency though without needing to accommodate the sticky and problematic issues of democracy or cultural identity.

INTERSTITIAL INFRASTRUCTURE Since 1997, this process has accelerated through legal accords and major infrastructural projects.

In the context of this ongoing cooperation, the Frontier Closed Area (FCA) appears an archaic relic. Its dismantling is symbolic, yet the legacy of how it was conceived in spatial planning terms remains: people-flow within the zone was limited to access roads for trapped villages and police posts; electricity pylons and overhead cables were positioned for efficiency; and large water supply pipes were installed above ground. As the land is now being opened up, planners are confronted with a disjointed territory that can be described as an interstitial space that separates the two territories but allows essential infrastructure to connect the two sides.

This article focuses on the area surrounding the border control point at Lo Wu, a site that is criss-crossed with numerous forms of infrastructure, resulting in a fractured landscape.

Our strategy is a device that combines architecture and infrastructure to promote a diversity of future uses. It challenges the zone – a tool that has become a major driver of urbanisation in Mainland China – to create incentivised conditions promoting entrepreneurial activities and economic partnerships. This interstitial infrastructure is tactically placed on pieces of leftover land created by the straightening of the Shenzhen River during the 1990s. These anomalies are effectively micro-versions of the neighbouring Lok Ma Chau Loop that exist in an ambiguous

196

Aerial view of Starling Inlet and Sha Tau Kok pier with Sha Tou Jiao behind.

The eastern section of the FCA enfolds within its boundary both Starling Inlet, a shallow tidal estuary, and the cross-border market town of Sha Tau Kok. Around Starling Inlet, a series of agricultural villages and country parks are situated.

The hilly terrain forms a backdrop that limits settlement and development to water edges and river valleys. Across the border, the former village island of Sha Tau Jiao has grown into an urban settlement since the Opening Up period, becoming the container and logistics hub of Yantian. This links Shenzhen’s growing conurbation eastwards around Mirs Bay towards the leisure zones of Dameisha and Tai Pang Peninsula. The region has a complex history of contested territorial conditions, where the FCA and geopolitical changes wrought by the border have strongly impacted development.

VILLAGE ALLIANCES

As the only cross-border urbanised part of the border, Sha Tau Kok, an enclave contained within the FCA, is a unique spatial condition. Its complex relationship with Sha Tau Jiao occurs through the shared Chung Ying Street market, which straddles their common border. Although not large in scale, the complexity of this spatial anomaly means that Sha Tau Kok and its surroundings can be understood as a Petri dish

for many cross-border issues and problems that occur within the larger border context.

The concepts of flow and regulation on the one hand, and transaction and control on the other, are fundamental to an understanding of the area’s land use, ecological balances, social patterns, and economic development. This dynamic has been in place throughout its history,

200

2

3

1

1 ‘The Government idea for ecological tourism is to open only the STK Pier, using shuttle bus and getting directly onto the ferry, they couldn’t even go to the toilet because that’s trespassing in the restricted area. We are not happy and want to allow tourists to shop around local shops and visit some heritage buildings. It is like a departure area, after checking in visitors will be waiting in the STK area where toilets, restaurants and duty-free shops area provided.’

Mr Siu Hon-cheung, (former Principal Sha Tau Kok Primary School), and with Mrs Tsang (cleaner), Sha Tau Kok, February 13, 2014.

Interview by Brian Wong and Peter Hasdell.

2 ‘In the mid-1990s prosperity started to decline. Instead of going to STK / Chung Ying Street, Mainlanders would go directly to HK through other boundary control points.

Before this time Mainlanders came over with a huge box of cash and make a deposit in the local STK bank.’

Wan Wo Fai (North District Council Elected Member), Sha Tau Kok, May 24, 2014.

Interview by Brian Wong.

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5

Village Alliances

SZ

4

HK

3

4

‘The Official Border Crossing Permit issued by SZ costs $7000+ on the Black Market.

If you have connections, the discounted price is $3000+.

However it is possible to get all the way over to SZ side, because the SZ Control Point Officers do not tend to check people's permits, as long as you look like a local resident or Chinese they’ll let you pass.’

‘The border history in STK is complicated ... In 1899, both sides tried to establish the border line using the Ng Tung River, they used the river banks to mark the sides and the river bed was the shared area. Residents of the Tong Wo market secretly rearranged this to the current site of Chung Ying Street. It has always been a kind of duty-free area.’

Mr Siu Hon-cheung, (former Principal Sha Tau Kok Primary School), Sha Tau Kok, May 24, 2014. Interview by Brian Wong.

Wan Wo Fai (North District Council Elected Member), Sha Tau Kok, May 24, 2014.

Interview by Brian Wong.

5 ‘Previously throwing “parallel goods” across the border or from tall buildings was common, but only when the FCA was not as strictly guarded as it is today, cable systems and tunnels for petrol were used too.’

Mr Siu Hon-cheung, (former Principal Sha Tau Kok Primary School), Sha Tau Kok, February 13, 2014. Interview by Brian Wong and Peter Hasdell.

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Village Alliances

MICRO-TACTICS

The differences that exist across borders create the impetus for exchange through trade, infrastructural networks, or migration. Yet, concurrently, they display highly articulated tools of control; digital databases of identification and goods tracking, and physical checkpoints that filter customs and immigration. The duality of borders – as charged spaces of both separation and connection – produces emergent and unique urban conditions. These result both directly and indirectly from mechanisms that manipulate differences, not towards states of stable equilibrium, but rather in ways that exploit these distinctions as key drivers of exchange.

For example: currency and tax policies, trade tariffs, freedom of movement, and access to social welfare.

The example of the Hong Kong–Shenzhen border demonstrates how the dynamics of exchange have produced an urban ecology that is both natural and synthetic. The forces shaping this ecology are the political dynamics between Hong Kong and the Mainland and the particular condition of the Frontier Closed Area as a residual, archaic landscape. The resultant

network of relationships links systems of economy, labour, water, waste, and energy with biological and landscape processes.

By pulling these overlapping layers apart to examine more precisely how specific local conditions have been conditioned and altered by the border, we have then been able to create design strategies that harness, augment, and intensify these forces towards new objectives and scenarios. As tactics, they are designed to be open-ended and are subject to further alteration and adjustments within the dynamics of ecological change. If an ecology can be considered as the relationships and interaction between different component parts, then tactics can be considered as tools to enable and structure new relationships and new cycles of exchange.

The tactics evolve from a specific context but their fundamental organisational principles are in many ways universal, and can be applied and adapted to other situations. Diagramming is used as a means to reduce and understand complex relationships and distil spatial and programmatic propositions. As tools, the diagrams are

MESHWORK

DESCRIPTION

SCENARIOS

The Meshwork is a nonhierarchical network that promotes bottom-up shared interests or negotiates planning conflicts. Initially composed of a series of ‘acupuncture’ nodes, the Meshwork allows for the gradual development of a common ground through interlinking territorial, environmental, and social issues.

Eventually this crystallises into a series of alliances, pathways, and interconnections that can leverage larger policies and common ecological approaches.

The Meshwork therefore is developed from the tactical without recourse to top-down strategic planning policy and allows for the development and localisation of bottom-up planning approaches.

S

APPLICATION Applicable to situations where territorial entities have a series of conflicting border or microborder conditions resulting in the need for a concerted joint approach, yet only local initiatives are possible. Through the gradual agglomeration of issues, larger common planning approaches become possible.

1

GUANG MING URBAN FRINGE, SHENZHEN, CHINA The Guang Ming area is a migrant farming and light-industrial community on the northern periphery of Shenzhen. As a fringe area, it faces development pressures from the urban expansion of both Shenzhen and Dongguan, and is increasingly bisected by infrastructure that divides its agricultural and waterway systems. On a larger scale, this fragments the northern green belt of Shenzhen’s municipal boundary. Development in this area is characterised by unregulated aggregation and chunking together of small landholdings and the consequent removal of the former landholders, who have very few means to resist such pressures. This results in events such as the 2015 landslide in the area that killed sixty-nine people. The Meshwork can be deployed as a means to aggregate the small landholders who, by sharing resources and working cooperatively, could allow for new forms of planning regulation and environmental management systems.

At the same time, developing communal agricultural enterprises could eventually contribute to economies of food sovereignty in Shenzhen.

Further, when applied to entire urban fringe areas, an ecological boundary zone could be maintained along Shenzhen’s northern edge as a planning entity.

2

NORTH PHILADELPHIA GARDEN NETWORK, USA A predominantly migrant and Afro-American inner-city zone, formerly an industrial area, North Philadelphia is characterised by forms of urban blight, including race riots, drugs, workplace evisceration, population flight, and general neglect as part of an ongoing decline that has lasted for over forty years. At present there are more than thirty thousand vacant lots. The gap-toothed urban fabric that was previously a battlefield for drug peddling and other illicit activities has in recent years become a series of over thirty urban infill community-run gardens, greens, and mini-parks. These gardens, developed through community initiatives and a tactical approach to urban improvement, have contributed to lot stabilisation, community cohesion, and engagement, and by aligning community needs with these amenities they have had positive impacts in the reduction of street crime. However, they remain largely disconnected. The Meshwork could allow for the combination and linking of different community gardens into larger common collectives, generating a unique urban pattern, with amenities such as cycle tracks, safe pedestrian routes, farmers’ markets, and a range of different gardens and play spaces constituting new kinds of green infrastructures. The synergies gained can influence forms of planning for the municipality’s Green City Strategy for Philadelphia.

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4. Villages become hub for communal agricultural enterprises

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5. Areas with high risk of pollution rezoned for agricultural enterprises

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Micro-Tactics

3. Networks of farmers leveraged to alert authorities of pollution from nearby industry

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Industrial agriculture

2. Villagers are incentivised to keep agricultural smallholdings active due to higher profits from organic produce Agricultural smallholdings

factory Potential expansion area for small-scale agriculture

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Agricultural small holdings

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1. Demand for organic products increases as China becomes more affluent