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Informed by economic concepts of product competition, this paper uses publicly available and accurate business information on establishment names and addresses obtained from the Yellow Pages of the contemporary Hong Kong telephone book and census socio-economic data backed by oral testimonies, to dispel the myth that the "Kowloon Walled City" was an incarcerated ghetto. The use of this imagery in the title for this City as a built up, politically sensitive zone levelled to the ground to make way for a public Chinese garden shortly before Hong Kong was returned to China, is treated as a form of 'product differentiation' in the academic research marketplace. As a contribution to planning theory, the paper uses the City as a show case of how academic branding, through descriptors, creates images of places and offers a countervailing image. Technically, it demonstrates the immense archival value of telephone directories and business chronicles apart from census data as sources of socially significant data for urban studies and informed re-interpretation of subjective imageries of an urban place. • Challenge dark views of Kowloon Walled City with socio-economic statistics & oral testimonies • Refute representation of Kowloon Walled City as a dark prison • Project a bright picture of Kowloon Walled City [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Public private partnerships (PPPs) have been widely adopted to provide essential social and economic infrastructure and services. However, there is currently no systematic mechanism governing how social concerns should be captured at different stages of a PPP project. This paper, therefore, advocates a rethinking of the pragmatic issues underpinning public engagement and suggests a process framework that puts people as a major stakeholder for implementing PPP schemes. This public private people partnerships (P4) process framework embraces the bottom-up participative strategies which bring the public engagement clearly visible for infrastructure planning and policy making. With this newly developed framework and associated engagement strategies, decision-making power can deviate from policy makers, who are traditionally holding the ultimate decision authority, towards the citizens through proactive engagement. Such strategy can help improve the development process by moderating the risk of unforeseen oppositions, building clear responsibilities and rights, and creating opportunities for public inputs. It is anticipated that formulating such effective and genuine public engagement framework for PPP projects would assist government bodies, not only in Hong Kong but also other parts of the world, to better realise the changing public aspirations and demands for infrastructure planning and policy formulation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The COVID-19 pandemic, an exceptional crisis, sparked the introduction of new digital infrastructure to halt the novel coronavirus's spread. This paper explores how such digital infrastructure's impact might reverberate over the long term, by comparing Singapore, Hong Kong, and mainland China's utilization of digital technology in response to the 2003 SARS outbreak, and their responses to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. We find that advancements in digital technology since 2003 have boosted governments' surveillance and segregation abilities substantially—most dramatically so in China. Even though some of these new digital interventions are ostensibly designed to be temporary ones to address the needs of the immediate crisis, we argue that the resultant extensions of state power experienced during COVID-19 are likely to have profound long-term effects because they fundamentally affect sociopolitical contexts, institutional capabilities, and digital cultures. We also find that the extent to which governments can extend digital surveillance and segregation abilities during the pandemic is contingent on their respective sociopolitical, institutional, and digital cultural contexts. • COVID-19 pandemic sparked calls for a new digital infrastructure. • We compare 2003 SARS outbreak to COVID-19 pandemic. • New digital technologies increased governments' ability to surveil and segregate. • Their impact on surveillance and segregation will persist post COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The port of Hong Kong is a critical component of both the city’s and the region’s economy. However, forecasts of cargo growth and development of the port of Hong Kong have been scarce and the findings conflict, while systematic treatments on the subject are rare. This paper predicts cargo growth and the development of the port of Hong Kong by means of regression analysis. Factors affecting cargo throughput in Hong Kong are identified, qualitatively evaluated and then entered into a forecast model that generates a projection of cargo throughput. Based on the cargo throughput forecast, and an assessment of the Pearl River Delta (the hinterland of the port), the future role of the port is postulated. Further, the current cargo forecast is compared to the official forecast by the Port and Maritime Board, on which policy decisions are based. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]