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While Hong Kong is an extremely wealthy city, where one in seven residents is a millionaire, the city also has one of the most unaffordable housing markets in the world. This policy review examines how the development of various housing policies since the 1950s have contributed to segregation and housing inequality. After exploring various aspects of Hong Kong's housing market, we introduce a typology of segregation, the study of which would allow a deeper understanding of the current housing situation. Building on the existing studies of micro-segregation and our recent observation, we further introduce the concept of nano-segregation. Micro- and nano-segregations take place in Hong Kong both horizontally and vertically. They manifest the severe socio-spatial inequalities that result from the aspirations expressed in the policies, and from the benefits to individuals who have gained from the changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By analysing the relevant case law, this article argues that the promise must be understood as a more-than-human practice rather than merely a human affair of exchanging commitments to make agreements. Promise is always rolled into, and complicated by, the heterogenous networks formed up by humans and nonhumans in the world. Within the broader scope of this special issue – to build dialogues between comparative law and legal geography – this article, by analysing the legality and spatiality of promise, unpacks spatio-legal tangles, which are dynamic, contextual, and territorial, producing knowledge about law and society. It assesses three cases of promise in different spatio-legal settings: first, a piece of legislation about seismic risk management in Türkiye; second, a judicial decision regarding land use rezoning in Hong Kong; and, third, some disputes over property rental arrangement during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong. These cases are analysed through three interrelated aspects of making sense of the social world: relationality, materiality, and performativity. Different material objects, which can help relate and unrelate actants, are embedded in the performance of the law's territory. The identification of these three components begins with the provocative vision shared by the scholarship of both comparative law and legal geography that aims to understand how the world is ordered, as well as with the awareness of comparison and spatiality. When using these three notions, the theoretical framing is not only limited to the analysis of the promise, but it can also be extended to make sense of other aspects of law and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tin Shui Wai new town in Hong Kong, known as the "city of sadness," has been narrated by the "Tin Shui Wai Myth" that attributes its urban problems to the planning failures after the colonial government rescued the developers, including a Chinese red capital, from a market slump in the early 1980s. This myth creates misunderstandings, which confuse recent debates about new town development and regional integration with China. To debunk this myth, this article, based on archival research, analyzes the scalar politics of new town planning and explains why the government decided to purchase the land and develop it in a partnership with the developers. It sheds new light on how the regional dynamics in South China after the economic reforms prompted China and Britain to react to the new town proposal at interconnected and contested spatial scales, before the diplomatic negotiations about this British colony's future officially started. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]