Planning Perspectives
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Housing the nascent middle class: the first high-rise
planned community in post-war Hong Kong
Carmen C. M. Tsui
To cite this article: Carmen C. M. Tsui (2022) Housing the nascent middle class: the first highrise planned community in post-war Hong Kong, Planning Perspectives, 37:4, 735-759, DOI:
10.1080/02665433.2021.1993971
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PLANNING PERSPECTIVES
2022, VOL. 37, NO. 4, 735–759
https://doi.org/10.1080/02665433.2021.1993971
Housing the nascent middle class: the first high-rise planned
community in post-war Hong Kong
Carmen C. M. Tsui
Department of History, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong
ABSTRACT
KEYWORDS
How have high-density, high-rise planned communities become the
predominant housing choice of Hong Kong residents and a vital feature of
the city’s vertical urbanism? This article reconstructs the history of a gigantic
housing estate called Mei Foo Sun Chuen, which was completed in Hong
Kong between 1968 and 1978 by an American joint venture led by Mobil Oil
Corporation. The estate was redeveloped from a former oil depot into a vast
housing estate of 99 residential towers for 80,000 tenants. By the time of its
completion, the estate was the largest privately financed residential
development in the world, and it was heralded as the first high-rise planned
community in Hong Kong. In studying Mei Foo Sun Chuen, this article
discusses how a mega-scale residential development established a new
dimension of Hong Kong’s new middle-class housing market. It argues that
Mei Foo Sun Chuen’s new idea of a planned community, its modern flat
design, and its comprehensive housing management met the requirements
of a nascent middle class, which demanded a comfortable lifestyle that
Hong Kong’s traditional housing market could not provide at the time. Since
the completion of Mei Foo Sun Chuen, its popular housing model has
proliferated throughout Hong Kong.
High-rise planned
community; middle-class
housing; flatted
development; private-sector
housing history; Hong Kong
housing
Introduction
Since the mid-1960s, high-density, high-rise planned communities have become the predominant
housing choice of Hong Kong residents as well as a vital feature of the city’s vertical urbanism. But
how did this historically overlooked and under-theorized type of residential architecture become so
widespread in Hong Kong, and why did it take its current form? This article studies the history and
design of a gigantic housing estate called Mei Foo Sun Chuen, which was completed in Hong Kong
between 1968 and 1978 by an American joint venture led by Mobil Oil Corporation. Redeveloped
from a 36-acre Mobil oil depot, the estate consists of 99 residential towers, each 20 storeys tall, providing 13,110 residential flats for 80,000 middle-class tenants. By the time of its completion, Mei
Foo Sun Chuen was the world’s largest privately financed residential development. Its American
developers introduced Hong Kong to the concept of a ‘planned community’, providing a comprehensive range of commercial, recreational and community facilities as part of the estate. This article
argues that Mei Foo Sun Chuen’s new idea of a planned community, its modern flat design, and its
CONTACT Carmen C. M. Tsui
tsuicm@ln.edu.hk
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original
work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
736
C. C. M. TSUI
comprehensive housing management met the requirements of a nascent local middle class, which
demanded a comfortable lifestyle that Hong Kong’s traditional housing market could not provide
at the time. Since its completion, Mei Foo Sun Chuen has been hailed as a materialized form of
middle-class aspiration, and many local developers have modelled their middle-class housing
estates after Mei Foo Sun Chuen.
By studying Mei Foo Sun Chuen, colonial Hong Kong’s first planned high-rise community, this
article serves three objectives. First, the article provides a brief history of Hong Kong’s private-sector housing development after World War II (WWII). Early housing studies often blame the private sector for failing to supply affordable homes to the Hong Kong people, thus compelling the
government to directly intervene.1 Notably, they tend to highlight the government’s achievement
of accommodating over a million Hong Kong people in public housing estates.2 For example,
Jonathan Schiffer and Manuel Castells et al. argue that Hong Kong’s economic success is resulted
from discrete government intervention in the city’s public housing sector.3 Other scholars emphasize how the city’s mass public housing programme effectively turned Hong Kong into a predominantly high-rise society.4 By contrast, there is a dearth of scholarly research on the history and
design of Hong Kong’s private-sector housing although the private sector is the city’s major source
of housing. According to the city’s 1971 census, private-sector housing accounted for 48.6% of all
living quarters in Hong Kong, whereas public and temporary housing only accounted for 39.7%
and 11.7%, respectively.5 By 2019, the percentage of private, permanent quarters rose to 56.5%,
with another 14.6% of living quarters belonging to privately owned, subsidized sale flats supplied
by the Hong Kong Housing Authority, the Hong Kong Housing Society, and the Urban Renewal
Authority that cannot be traded on the open market.6 A strong bias towards the study of the public
housing sector, as James Lee rightly points out, reflects not only a gap in scholarship but also ‘a
structural hegemony in research culture aiming at legitimizing the role of state intervention in public housing while trivializing studies on private homeownership’.7 Thus, Lee stresses that more indepth studies should be carried out to understand the spectacular growth of private homeownership in Hong Kong since the 1960s. This article suggests that one of the keys to Hong Kong’s homeownership expansion lies in the willingness of property developers to provide affordable housing
for the mass population rather than concentrate excessively on high-priced accommodation for
the wealthy few.
Second, this article explores how Mei Foo Sun Chuen established a new dimension of Hong
Kong’s new middle-class housing market. Two decades after the end of WWII, Hong Kong had
grown from a refugee city into an industrialized city. The 1966 Hong Kong by-census showed
that 53.8% of the total population was born in Hong Kong. This was the first time since WWII
that more Hong Kong residents had been born locally than had migrated from outside the colony.8
Unlike their grandparents and parents, who had endured the war and who had no choice but to live
in dilapidated housing, the baby boomers born after WWII grew up peacefully and enjoyed the
fruits of Hong Kong’s economic growth. The city’s industrial boom precipitated a rise in salaries
for professional men and skilled workers, thereby closing the historical gulf between the rich
1
Pryor, Housing in Hong Kong.
Liang, From Shelter to Home; Yeung and Wang, Fifty Years of Public Housing in Hong Kong.
3
Schiffer, Anatomy of a Laissez-Faire Government; Castells, Goh and Kwok, The Shek Kip Mei Syndrome.
4
Drakakis-Smith, High Society; French and Lee, Patterns of Living.
5
Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong Monthly Digest of Statistics, 64.
6
Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong in Figures, 24.
7
Lee, Housing, Home Ownership and Social Change in Hong Kong, 5.
8
Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong Statistics 1947–1967, 22.
2
PLANNING PERSPECTIVES
737
and the poor in Hong Kong. By the 1960s, a group of local Chinese had gradually emerged as a
nascent middle class, a status which had been unknown to Hong Kong before WWII. With
more stable jobs and higher disposable incomes, this new middle class enjoyed an entirely new
set of privileges and consequently made numerous demands for comfortable living that the existing
housing market could not accommodate.
Sherry Rosen’s 1973 sociological study offers an important insight into the attitudes and lifestyle of this nascent middle class in Hong Kong. Rosen points out that residence patterns underwent a significant change in post-war Hong Kong. Increasing financial independence and a
greater awareness of generational gaps due to increased contact with Western culture prompted
young couples to begin living apart from their parents and in-laws as separate nuclear units.9
Rosen selected the residents of Mei Foo Sun Chuen as the subjects of her analysis because this
estate was the first housing development to successfully meet the needs of these young,
middle-income families. Rosen asserts that ‘the success of Mei Foo laid in its early recognition
of a growing number of Chinese who had more money to spend on housing’ and who cared
about certain amenities ‘in spite of the conditions and circumstances may have forced them to
tolerate previously’.10 Little did Rosen know when she conducted her study in the early 1970s
that Mei Foo-type development model would become a prevalent form of residential development in Hong Kong that persists to this day.
Last, this article investigates how the idea of ‘planned community’, manifested mainly in the suburbs of Anglo-American nations, has been applied to a high-density Asian city: Hong Kong. The
notion of a planned community was first influenced by the utopian place-making ideal developed in
the late nineteenth century, as epitomized in Ebenezer Howard’s garden city and Clarence Perry’s
neighbouring unit. Planned communities flourished in North America after WWII as private property developers, most notably Abraham Levitts, began building large-scale, self-sufficient suburban
communities to house veterans who were returning from the war. Most of these post-war planned
communities were low-density developments featuring uniformly designed, single-family homes.
Buyers of these suburban homes, who were usually drawn from the affluent white middle classes,
were attracted to the safe and beautiful living environments of these estates, which were far
removed from overcrowded metropolitan centres. Nevertheless, low-density, suburban planned
communities were not suitable for Hong Kong, as the colony’s large population and land scarcity
necessitated the adoption of high-rise buildings. Pioneering the development of a high-rise planned
community represented a huge challenge to the developers and architects of Mei Foo Sun Chuen.
Therefore, one might find that Mei Foo Sun Chuen resembles Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin in 1925
(although neither the developers nor the architects have directly compared their design to that of Le
Corbusier). That said, key planning features in Plan Voisin, such as the mass production of cruciform towers, the orderly arrangement of buildings, and the separation of pedestrians and vehicular
traffic, could also be found in Mei Foo Sun Chuen.
Private-sector housing in post-war Hong Kong: from tenement cubicles to selfcontained flats
Beginning in the late 1930s, a vast number of Chinese refugees surged into Hong Kong to escape
war and political turmoil on the mainland, dramatically increasing the colony’s population from
9
Rosen, Mei Foo Sun Chuen, 13–14, 178.
Ibid., 11.
10
738
C. C. M. TSUI
840,473 in 1931 to 3,129,648 in 1961.11 This sudden population growth engendered a severe housing shortage along with steep rent increases. In response to this housing crisis, beginning in the
mid-1950s, the colonial government operated two aided housing programmes: it built resettlement
estates for squatters who had lost their homes due to fire, natural disasters or official slum clearance,
and it provided low-rent public housing estates for low-income families. By the mid-1960s, the government had already housed around one million people. This total, however, accounted for only a
quarter of Hong Kong’s population at the time, and most of the people of Hong Kong continued
living in private accommodations. Knowing that public funds were unavailable to house the city’s
entire population in government-aided housing, then-governor Sir David Trench urged private
developers to play a greater role in constructing medium- and low-cost accommodations.12
In Hong Kong, the most common type of private domestic accommodations erected before WWII
were ‘European-type dwellings’ and ‘Chinese tenements’. The former were built primarily for Westerners and affluent people. The common working-class people, on the other hand, mainly lived in
the Chinese tenements, which were three to four storeys tall. A domestic unit in a Chinese tenement
usually comprised a single undivided room with a separate kitchen and water closet as well as, in
some cases, a bathroom (Figure 1). This single room was often deep, with a small frontage, and
was easily subdivided into several cubicles that could be sublet to multiple tenant families. The tenants
and subtenants shared the kitchen and water closet. As a result, these tenements were often overcrowded, unsanitary, and poorly maintained. According to a study by sociologist Keith Hopkins,
by 1956–1957, the average living space per person in Hong Kong’s private tenements was 34 square
feet, but 35% of tenement households had less than 15 square feet of living space per person.13
The majority of people who lived in private accommodations were renters. Hong Kong once
abided by the legal concept that a building could only belong to the owner of the land upon
which it rested. As a result, only wealthy landlords could afford to become homeowners. This situation gradually began to change in the late 1940s, when the government allowed landowners to subdivide the ownership of multi-storey buildings into equal shares. Such a tenure arrangement is
called ‘condominium ownership’ or ‘strata titles’ in Western societies. In Hong Kong, it is often
called ‘flatted developments’ or ‘multiple ownership’. Under this new tenure arrangement, people
could buy an individual domestic flat in a multi-storey building. This arrangement made homeownership significantly more accessible, and it changed landlords’ traditional domination of Hong
Kong’s private housing. The city’s first case of multiple flat ownership was recorded in 1948,
when the ownership of a building was subdivided into five equal shares. Thereafter, flatted developments rapidly became the dominant housing choice of the people of Hong Kong. By 1960, over
10,000 individual flats had been developed in Hong Kong (Table 1). As Keith Hopkins points out,
during the seven years from 1962 to 1969, owner-occupiers emerged as a new and powerful market
sector. Between 1962 and 1966, owner-occupiers purchased only 26% of new housing, but this
figure rose to 46% by 1968–1969. Hopkins asserts that this trend towards owner-occupation served
as ‘one index of the formation of a new middle class with “some stake in the community”, or at least
in political stability and the protection of their investment’.14
While private flatted developments gained in popularity in Hong Kong from the mid-twentieth
century, the problems of overcrowding and flat subdivisions showed no sign of improvement. From
1963 to 1966, Hong Kong government officials regularly discussed whether they should ‘compel, or
11
Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong Statistics 1947–1967, 13.
“Government Lays Foundation Stone.”
13
Hopkins, “Public and Private Housing in Hong Kong,” 201.
14
Ibid., 207.
12
PLANNING PERSPECTIVES
739
Figure 1. Plan of a Chinese tenement recorded by the Public Works Department in 1907. Source: ‘Chinese Tenement Houses’.
Table 1. Growth of flatted developments in Hong Kong, 1948–1961. Source: Working Party on Sub-divided
Buildings, Report of Working Party on Sub-divided Buildings, 125.
Year
Total no. of bldgs.
Total no. of shares in bldgs.
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
Total
1
1
2
2
7
40
178
417
572
567
670
525
368
353
3703
5
122
14
194
34
246
1328
2787
3707
5302
9955
12,138
10,121
9727
55,680
persuade, private developers to build residential accommodation more suited to Hong Kong’s
gigantic housing problem’.15 They identified several challenges facing private-sector housing development in post-war Hong Kong. The first challenge, according to Commissioner for Housing
J. M. Fraser, was ‘how to prevent the great mass of private enterprise housing now being built
15
“Colonial Secretary to Deputy Colonial Secretary.”
740
C. C. M. TSUI
for the middle class turning into slums’.16 Fraser admitted that the high cost of land in Hong Kong’s
urban areas encouraged not only maximum development, which led to poor planning, but also
intense overcrowding, which led to slum conditions. To prevent high occupancy in private flats,
Fraser suggested that the government encourage private developers to build smaller flats with
self-contained kitchen and toilet facilities, which were difficult to subdivide into cubicles. Sharing
Fraser’s opinion, Director of Public Works Michael Wright suggested that private developers build
self-contained flats along the same lines as those developed by the Housing Authority and Housing
Society (which were usually small and only able to accommodate a single family, with independent
kitchens, toilets and service balconies) instead of large tenement floors for subdivisions into cubicles (Figure 2).17 The self-contained flats developed by these two government-sponsored housing
agencies followed a density ratio of 35 square feet per person.
The second challenge was finding appropriate ways to control high-density housing development.
The post-war housing shortage prompted the government to amend its building codes in 1956, allowing buildings in urban areas to nearly double in height in order to provide more floor space for the
city’s increasing population.18 Unfortunately, private developers exploited the government’s desperate need for housing. For maximum profits, most private developers planned for their buildings
to follow their sites’ footprints almost exactly and to reach the maximum height limit. This approach
often resulted in high-rise buildings with massive footprints erected immediately adjacent to one
other (Figure 3). Realizing these problems, in 1962, the colonial government followed a British practice by introducing plot ratio and site coverage control to Hong Kong. As the building height
increases, the percentage of site area that can be covered by a building reduced. This ensures the provision of open spaces between buildings. The revised building codes, which did not become obligatory until 1966, forced private developers to construct slender high-rise towers with wider intervals
between each other as well as less depth and greater frontage for each flat.
Although the new building codes could affect developers’ profits, Fraser remarked that a site’s
value need not be reduced if the lower floors were designated as commercial premises.19 Indeed,
a 1962 amendment to the building codes included a clause to allow the lowest 50 feet of a building,
if reserved for non-domestic use, to exceed the permitted site coverage percentage.20 This new
clause encouraged developers to vertically zone buildings, using the lower floors as commercial premises while the upper floors served as domestic flats. Since the commercial floors in the lowest 50
feet of a building were exempted from site coverage restrictions, most developers created commercial podiums that occupied almost the entire footprint of a site, with domestic towers sitting atop
the wide podiums (Figure 4).
The third challenge was the lack of housing management and building maintenance of flatted
developments. The introduction of multiple flat ownerships since 1948 gave rise to many difficulties
in keeping the whole building orderly and clean, as owners of individual flats were reluctant to
share the responsibility to maintain the cleanliness of the common areas. Very often, garbage
was found in the entrance lobby, on stairs, and on the roof, and damaged common facilities
often went unrepaired. Although management committees were established in some flatted developments, they had no legal status and depended entirely on the cooperation of the owners.21
“Commissioner for Housing to Deputy Colonial Secretary.”
“Director of Public Works to Deputy Colonial Secretary.”
Hong Kong Government. Building (Planning) Regulations, 1956.
19
“ Commissioner for Housing to Deputy Colonial Secretary.”
20
Hong Kong Government. Building (Planning) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations, 1962, Regulation 20 (3).
21
“Multi-Flat Buildings Maintenance.”
16
17
18
PLANNING PERSPECTIVES
741
Figure 2. Type plans of self-contained flats published by the Hong Kong Housing Society. Source: Hong Kong
Housing Society, Hong Kong Housing Society Annual Report 1961, 30.
Figure 3. Plan of a flatted development completed in 1964, featuring small unit frontage and long corridors.
Source: author.
742
C. C. M. TSUI
Figure 4. Drawing of a residential building sitting on a wide podium. The building, Tai On Building, was completed in 1968. Source: Original sales brochure of Tai On Building.
American investment: turning an oil depot into the world’ largest private housing
development
Mei Fu Suen Chuen is an immense residential project that was initially developed by the American
Mobil Oil Corporation in the late 1960s. One of Mobil Oil’s predecessors, Standard Oil, began its
business with China in the 1880s and adopted the name Mei Foo (translated roughly as ‘beautiful
confidence’) as the company’s Chinese name. A major business of Standard Oil in China was selling
efficient and inexpensive kerosene lamps to working-class people, which won enduring fame as the
‘Mei Foo lamp’.22 Standard Oil opened its regional office in Hong Kong in 1894, and in the 1910s,
the company developed a large oil storage depot on reclaimed land facing Lai Chi Kok Bay, at the
border between downtown Kowloon and surrounding rural areas. Years later, when Standard Oil
became Mobil Oil, the company retained its Chinese name, Mei Foo, in Hong Kong.
In 1961, the Hong Kong government announced its plan to develop satellite towns in order to
decentralize the city’s urban population. The first satellite town was located in Tsuen Wan, to the
west of Kowloon, where the city’s population was concentrated (Figure 5). To connect Tsuen Wan
with Kowloon, the government planned to construct a coastal highway across Lai Chi Kok Bay, but
part of the highway would have to run through the oil depot, then owned by Mobil. To facilitate the
government’s development plan, Mobil agreed to surrender 9.3 acres of land from its oil depot for
the construction of the highway and other public facilities (Figure 6). Meanwhile, Mobil was aware
22
Cochran, Encountering Chinese Networks, 12–43; Anderson, The Standard-Vacuum Oil Company, 15–16.
PLANNING PERSPECTIVES
743
Figure 5. Mei Foo Sun Chuen is located midway between Kowloon and the new town of Tsuen Wan. Source:
author.
that keeping its remaining 36 acres of land as an oil depot would have been wasteful in the sense of
lower profits for the company and limited benefits for the city’s population. The location of the proposed satellite town, and the improved traffic upon the highway’s completion, would make this land
more valuable than it had been previously. Therefore, in 1965, Mobil concluded a land exchange
agreement with the government to move the oil depot to the nearby Tsing Yi Island, making the
company’s vast Lai Chi Kok site available for redevelopment.
Thus, taking advice from its American real estate consultant, John W. Galbreath, Mobil decided
to redevelop its oil depot for residential use. Galbreath (1897–1988), a multimillionaire developer,
had plenty of experience in housing and community development. Since 1941, Galbreath had
bought several company towns in the United States, unwanted by their corporate owners, and renovated their houses for sale.23 Galbreath was also involved in building a planned community in Bramalea, a satellite town of Toronto, modelled on the English New Towns being built around
London.24 Unlike many post-war Canadian suburbs, which served purely residential purposes, Bramalea was unique in the sense that it was a completely self-sufficient, balanced and integrated community providing areas for work, home and play. This 8000-acre satellite town had a civic centre
and a commercial core that consisted of a mall, office buildings, department stores, a hotel, a police
station, a city hall and so on. The two residential neighbourhoods in Bramalea provided four types
of housing (detached and semi-detached, townhouses, low-rise and high-rise), thereby offering
plenty of choices for buyers with varied financial capacities. Moreover, a modern industrial park
was developed to provide employment opportunities to the residents.25
Corbett, “John W. Galbreath, Team Owner,” 218.
White, Planning Toronto, 133.
25
Svirplys, “Creeping Diversity,” 14–22; Buchinger, “The Changing Pattern in Town Housing.”
23
24
744
C. C. M. TSUI
Figure 6. Asian Architect and Builder described Mei Foo Sun Chuen as a ‘city within a city’. A highway runs across
the site of Mei Foo Sun Chuen, connecting Kowloon with the new town of Tsuen Wan. Source: Asian Architect and
Builder (February 1974): cover.
As someone who became wealthy from buying and selling homes, Galbreath claimed that he
‘believed in homeownership more than anything else in the world’. He stressed that ‘there’s nothing
more important in a democracy than home ownership’ because ‘when a citizen owns his own home,
PLANNING PERSPECTIVES
745
he has a piece of his country’.26 Therefore, when he visited Hong Kong in 1964, he advised Mobil’s
leadership to redevelop the company’s oil depot into an immense housing estate for the city’s
middle-income group.27 Galbreath claimed that Hong Kong’s housing market had a vacuum
that was in need of filling: ‘The Government takes care of the poor, and the higher income
group takes care of themselves, the middle-class is what we can do most for’.28 He was ‘convinced
that the middle-class people in Hong Kong had never had the opportunity to own anything’ and ‘to
offer them the chance to own homes could be a very profitable venture’.29
The housing estate was named Mei Foo Sun Chuen, translated literally as ‘Mei Foo New Village’.
The Chinese naming of an urban housing estate as a ‘village (chuen)’ was a practice that originated
from mainland China and then spread to Hong Kong. In the late 1920s, many Chinese intellectuals
were fascinated by the quasi-socialistic ‘new village (Atarashiki-mura in Japanese or sun chuen in
Cantonese)’ established by the Japanese novelist Saneatsu Mushanokoji in 1918 at Hyuga. This new
village was a cooperative community where the members worked together and shared their income.
Inspired by the Japanese, many Chinese scholars promoted this cooperative model in newspapers
and magazines, thus popularizing the term ‘new village’. As such, municipal governments and
developers in China started naming their urban housing estates as ‘new villages’ even though
they were not cooperatives. This practice was eventually carried over to Hong Kong, where
many public and private housing estates were named ‘village (chuen)’ or ‘new village (sun chuen)’.30
By the time it was completed, Mei Foo Sun Chuen was not only the largest privately financed
residential development in the world but also the largest American investment in Asia. The project
was worth HK$700 million, and Mobil owned 90% of its share interests.31 Two New York-based
companies that had worked together on several projects in the past owned the remaining 10% of
shares: Galbreath-Ruffin Corporation (presided over by John W. Galbreath) acted as the project’s
real estate consultant, and Turner Construction served as the project’s construction manager.32 The
role of these two consulting companies was to establish design criteria, select contractors and building materials, supervise construction, and control costs, quality standards and time schedules. They
also provided research assistance to local manufacturers in producing quality building components,
such as aluminium windows, which were at that time rarely used in Hong Kong.33
Mobil established a subsidiary company, called Mei Foo Investments Limited (MFIL), in 1965 to
supervise, develop and manage the estate after its completion. MFIL’s management staff mostly
comprised designees of the three shareholders. Besides American specialists, MFIL also recruited
a team of local professionals. The former Commissioner for Housing in Hong Kong,
J. M. Fraser, was appointed as a consultant for the development. Local architectural firm Wong
& Tung and Associates served as the project’s architect. Mei Foo Sun Chuen was the first project
completed by this young architectural firm, which had been founded in 1963 by William Wong, Jr
and Albert K. H. Tung, both of whom had been born in Shanghai but had received training in
Texas.
Mei Foo Sun Chuen’s strong ties to America attracted the attention of many US and overseas
officials. US senators, US consuls-general, an Australian trade commissioner, and a party of foreign
26
Shook, The Entrepreneurs, 10.
“Housing Project for H.K.’s Middle Income Group.”
28
“75,000 Will Live Here by 1972.”
29
Shook, The Entrepreneurs, 14.
30
Tsui, “Regulating Urban Living,” 252.
31
“Mei Foo: the $700m Giant Takes Shape.”
32
“Mei Foo Builders Meet Today’s Needs and Tomorrow’s Potential.”
33
“City within a City,” 11.
27
746
C. C. M. TSUI
officials visited the housing estate during its construction and after its completion. MFIL also
named various places in the housing estate after famous American landmarks. The main internal
street was called Broadway, and the major mall was named Mount Sterling Mall, after Mount Sterling in Ohio, where Galbreath was born.
Although the MFIL leaders were primarily American, they tried to show their respect for Chinese culture. In the fall of 1966, before the construction of the estate commenced, MFIL invited a
renowned feng shui master to visit and appraise the site as a convenience for potential traditionalminded Chinese buyers. MFIL translated the geomantic appraisal from Chinese to English.34
A gigantic planned community built on podiums
Although he had developed over 30 communities in North America, Galbreath had never been
involved in a housing project as big as Mei Foo Sun Chuen. He observed, ‘I don’t know any housing
project in the US – or anywhere else in the world – as big or as exciting as this’.35 With Mei Foo Sun
Chuen’s 99 20-storey towers, the estate’s whole construction lasted a decade, with the first and last
stages completed in 1968 and 1978, respectively. The colonial Hong Kong government was particularly enthusiastic about this mammoth housing project because Mei Foo Sun Chuen’s huge American investment would boost confidence in Hong Kong’s economy, which had suffered an
unfortunate decline during the mid-1960s, following a banking crisis and stock market collapse
as well as a series of uprisings that had challenged British rule in Hong Kong. As the director of
Mobil, Charles G. Mortimer, claimed, Mei Foo Sun Chuen was ‘an effective and enduring witness
of our confidence in the economy of the future and our belief in its future’.36
The government welcomed Mobil’s development not only because it contributed handsomely to
Hong Kong’s economy and employment but also because such an immense project could steadily
supply flats to Hong Kong over a relatively long period, releasing pressure on the government to
provide housing. Speaking in 1966 at the estate’s foundation stone-laying ceremony, Governor
Sir David Trench claimed that ‘we shall all watch the development of the scheme with very great
interest’ because the estate would ‘make a very substantial contribution towards the solution of
the colony’s housing problems and is therefore greatly to be welcomed’.37 Trench again stressed
the need for private developers to construct more medium- and low-cost housing schemes to
solve Hong Kong’s severe housing shortage. The governor believed that the Americans’ decision
to invest in a project of such magnitude represented ‘a switch in thought amongst developers
from over-concentration on high-priced accommodation for the few only, to the construction of
a type of dwelling which is more within the reach of the ordinary Hong Kong family’.38 Trench
also suggested that Mei Foo Sun Chuen could provide an example to other private developers in
Hong Kong.
While the governor blamed local developers for failing to supply inexpensive flats to the middleincome bracket, Galbreath, on the other hand, criticized local developers’ low-quality housing: ‘It
seems local landlords are eager to make a fast buck. They build their buildings and that’s that,’ he
said. ‘They don’t care for the continued satisfaction of the tenants’.39 Galbreath was keen to bring
34
Mobil Oil Corporation, The Story of Mei Foo Sun Chuen.
“Housing Project for H.K.’s Middle Income Group.”
“Foundation-Stone Laying Ceremony.”
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid.
39
“HK Company to Build Planned Community.”
35
36
PLANNING PERSPECTIVES
747
the American idea of a planned community to Mei Foo Sun Chuen, creating a ‘relaxing seaside
atmosphere with an urban convenience’.40 He planned to provide almost everything residents
needed in their daily lives right at their doorstep – from recreational facilities, such as parks and
playgrounds, to social amenities, such as schools and markets. Residents who did not wish to travel
to the city centre for shopping, entertainment and leisure would be able to stay home and enjoy the
same type of facilities.
Making Mei Foo Sun Chuen a virtually self-contained community was not a utopian idea but,
rather, a response to a practical concern, since traffic was the biggest problem for this housing
estate. Most of the people of Hong Kong worked in the downtown areas of Kowloon and Hong
Kong Island at the time, and commuting long hours was uncommon. To entice people to move
to the suburban Mei Foo Sun Chuen, both the government and MFIL made substantial efforts
to improve the estate’s transportation system. An elevated highway, which ran across Mei Foo
Sun Chuen, was completed in 1968. The government developed a public transport interchange
under the highway (Figure 7). In addition to public buses, MFIL operated express bus services
between Mei Foo Sun Chuen and the city’s central business areas. An air-conditioned water taxi
also brought residents to Hong Kong Island. For residents who preferred driving, 4500 parking
spaces were planned in the estate.
Neither the developers nor the architect had any experience creating a planned community of
such a scale and density. Their solution was to make creative use of elevated podiums. The huge
housing estate was divided into eight stages of development, with internal streets kept separate
from one another (Figure 8). At least one podium was developed at each stage, and residential
towers were built atop these podiums (Figure 9). This tower-on-podium design started to gain
popularity in Hong Kong following the 1962 building code amendment that exempted non-domestic floors in the lowest 50 feet of a building from site coverage restrictions.41 Clear vertical building zoning resulted in Mei Foo Sun Chuen, with the podiums serving as commercial premises and
the towers reserved exclusively for domestic flats.
The architects of Mei Foo Sun Chuen sought to foster a neighbourhood atmosphere within each
stage of the estate. They called the podium in each stage a ‘town square’.42 The podiums’ roofs
included landscaped gardens, each consisting of a fountain or water feature in addition to planting,
pergolas and shaded seating areas (Figure 10). In most stages, a significant artistic sculpture or
mural was installed near the water feature for each podium. One of these sculptures, created by
an Italian artist, was named ‘Oil for the Lamps of China’ to represent Mobil’s history in East
Asia. The lower floors of the podiums were designed to accommodate ‘neighbourhood shopping
facilities’ and provided central air-conditioned spaces for shops, grocery stores, restaurants,
banks, kindergartens, schools and car parks.
The podiums in Mei Foo Sun Chuen provide freedom of movement to pedestrians above major
roads, parking corridors and service drives. They are interlinked by elevated walkways that form an
extensive pedestrian network across various stages of the estate’s development (Figure 11). People
can walk on the podiums’ roofs from one end of the estate to another without crossing the streets,
which are reserved primarily for vehicles. This design transformed Le Corbusier’s advocacy for separating pedestrians from vehicles into a reality. Such a planning idea appealed to many parents,
since their children could play safely on the podium’s roof gardens without the risk of being struck
“Community Centre for Housing Estate.”
Tsui and Au Yeung, “Tower-on-Podium,” 47–51.
42
“A ‘Village’ of Town Squares.”
40
41
748
C. C. M. TSUI
Figure 7. Transport interchange under the Lai Chi Kok highway. Source: author.
Figure 8. Mei Foo Sun Chuen was divided into eight stages of development. Source: author.
PLANNING PERSPECTIVES
749
Figure 9. Sections showing the podiums of Mei Foo Sun Chuen. Source: ‘Planned Community for 80,000 at Mei
Foo Sun Chuen’, 17.
Figure 10. The roofs of the podiums are landscaped gardens. Source: author.
by cars. This feature was a selling point when the developer advertised the housing estate to potential buyers (Figure 12).
In addition to the podium-turned ‘town square’ in each stage, Mei Foo Sun Chuen includes a
comprehensive range of commercial, community and recreational facilities. An attractively decorated pedestrian mall, Mount Sterling Mall, was planned between Stage Five and Stage Seven.
Flanked by shops, this open mall features a large fountain at its centre as well as benches and
large planters with tall trees and heavy shrubberies on both sides. A major shopping centre –
750
C. C. M. TSUI
Figure 11. The podiums are linked to form an extensive pedestrian network. Source: author.
Figure 12. Safety and security were two key selling points promoted by MFIL in the sales brochure of Mei Foo Sun
Chuen. Source: Original sales brochure of Mei Foo Sun Chuen.
housing an 1800-seat cinema, a four-storey department store, and a 24-lane bowling alley – opened
near the transport interchange to accommodate customers visiting from outside the Lai Chi Kok
area. Mei Foo Sun Chuen was also the first private housing estate in Hong Kong to include schools
PLANNING PERSPECTIVES
751
on its premises. Since children form a large and important part of the estate’s community, three
kindergartens, four primary and secondary schools, playgrounds, and recreational areas cater to
their needs. The estate also provides other community facilities, such as a community centre, a market, a post office and a police report centre. The residents of Mei Foo Sun Chuen can also partake in
the ‘relaxing seaside atmosphere’ that Galbreath sought to provide. A traffic-free, landscaped promenade runs along the entire seafront of the estate. Exercising, swimming and fishing along the
seafront are favourite pastimes for both children and adults.
Unlike most flatted developments in Hong Kong before Mei Foo Sun Chuen, which were linear
in shape, the domestic towers on the estates’ podiums employ a repetitive cruciform design, a shape
that offers a larger external wall surface and window space. The cruciform tower plan emerged in
Hong Kong in the late 1950s. North Point Estates, the first public housing project undertaken by
the Hong Kong Housing Authority, was one of, if not the first, housing projects in Hong Kong that
adopted the cruciform tower plan. Later on, a few private housing developments, such as Fung King
Building (1964), Yuet Wah Mansion (1965) and Man Kee Mansion (1966), followed suit. Nevertheless, it was not until the launching of Mei Foo Sun Chuen that the cruciform plan was extensively used. The longer external wall surface means that flats in Mei Foo Sun Chuen include
plenty of windows and a bright, airy interior, differing notably from the dark and stuffy tenement
floors of Hong Kong at the time of their original construction. The flats radiate outward from a
central core that houses an intimate lobby, lifts, fire stairs and a refuse chute. This arrangement
eliminates the need for long, dreary corridors, which had once been a standard feature of Hong
Kong’s flatted developments (Figure 13).
The tower’s cruciform plan also allows for variations in flat size and layout, thereby permitting
greater diversity in family size. In most cases, each floor has four to eight flats, which range in size
Figure 13. Plan of the cruciform towers of Mei Foo Sun Chuen. Source: Original sales brochure of Mei Foo Sun Chuen.
752
C. C. M. TSUI
Table 2. Allocation of flat mix by number of bedrooms and by area. Source: Compiled by the author from Mobil
Oil Corporation, The Story of Mei Foo Sun Chuen.
Flat Mix by Number of Bedrooms
One Bedroom
Two Bedroom
Three Bedroom
Four Bedroom
Total
Number
Percentage
975
8%
4866
37%
6705
51%
564
4%
13,110
100%
Percentage
400–500
7.2%
500–750
67.6%
Flat Mix by Area (sq. ft.)
751–1000
16.2%
1001–1200
4.3%
1201–1500
4.7%
100%
from one bedroom and one bath (450 square feet) to four bedrooms and one-and-a-half baths
(1375 square feet). Of the 13,111 flats completed, 37% are two-bedroom flats and 51% are threebedroom flats (Table 2). The concentration on flats with sizes ranging from 500 to 700 square
feet (accounting for 67.6% of the total flat number) was in alignment with the average family
size of 5.7 persons recorded in Mei Foo Sun Chuen in 1972.43 The remaining 12% of the flats
have one or four bedrooms, thereby catering to the needs of families with varied size, affordability
and domestic spatial requirements.
Modern living for the new middle class
Before the construction of Mei Foo Sun Chuen, private developers in Hong Kong had concentrated
their investments on developing either luxury European-style dwellings for the rich or crude Chinese tenements for the poor. They failed, however, to construct low-cost accommodations that
appealed to the vast majority of the population. The Fast East Economic Review points out that
the sheer scale of Mei Foo Sun Chuen is indication enough of the profitable opportunities local
developers lost through short-sightedness and conservatism.44 From the outset of the project,
MFIL wanted to meet the housing needs of middle-income residents earning US$150–650 per
month (approximately HK$900 to $3000) in 1965 dollars.45 The targeted buyers were not eligible
for Hong Kong’s public housing, which was intended for families with incomes below HK$900.46
By 1971, the median monthly household income of Mei Foo Sun Chuen residents was within the
HK$1500–1999 range, which was much higher than that of the general Hong Kong families who
earned a median monthly income of HK$708.47
The flats in Mei Foo Sun Chuen were sold at between HK$30,000 and $120,000 each.48 Initially,
Mei Foo Sun Chuen was financed entirely by MFIL, which offered various deferred payment plans
with down payments as low as 10% and 10% payments during the construction period, with the
balance due over 12 years at an interest rate of 11%. These payment plans made buying a flat
more affordable, and as a result, the estate received a great response on the market. Unfinished
flats sold at a rate of two per day.49 About 60% of flats in Stage One sold before completion.50
43
Mobil Oil Corporation, The Story of Mei Foo Sun Chuen, 49.
“Mobilising Development.”
45
Mobil Oil Corporation, The Story of Mei Foo Sun Chuen.
46
Hong Kong Housing Authority, Annual Report of the Hong Kong Housing Authority, 3, 27.
47
Rosen, Mei Foo Sun Chuen, 49; Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong: 25 Years’ Development, 13.
48
“Planned Community for 80,000,” 11.
49
“Modern Flats for HK People.”
50
“Big Housing Scheme in Lai Chi Kok.”
44
PLANNING PERSPECTIVES
753
By the 1970s, most of Hong Kong’s leading banks and financial institutions also participated in
financing Mei Foo Sun Chuen buyers.
These buyers were predominantly young Chinese couples with children. A survey conducted
in 1971 showed that 40% of the Mei Foo Sun Chuen residents were adults aged between 20 and
40 years and another 30% were children below 15 years. Both their income and education levels
were higher than those of the general Hong Kong population. Majority of the wage earners were
classified under three occupations: clerical and sales workers, administrative or executive
workers and craftsmen and labourers. Surprisingly, only a small number of the residents
were professionals.51 A local sociologist, Lui Tai-lok, reminds us that the early middle class
that emerged in Hong Kong in the 1960s deviated from our present-day definition of the middle
class as people with professional, managerial or executive positions. Instead, this nascent Hong
Kong middle class was a small social group that was capable of leading a more affluent life due
to the Hong Kong’s industrial take-off.52 As one buyer interviewed by Rosen in 1973 pointed
out, living in Mei Foo Sun Chuen was ‘a sign that you are at peace with your financial
situation’.53
Mei Foo Sun Chuen’s modern flat design appealed to these young, middle-income buyers, who
typically demanded a higher standard of living. Several features in the flats were significant
upgrades from the previous private accomodations in Hong Kong. Each flat was partitioned into
a living and a dining room, a large master bedroom for the parents and smaller bedrooms for
the children, a kitchen and one or more bathrooms. Occasionally, a servant room was incorporated
in large flats. The living room had a large picture window, which was fitted with a flower trough that
ran the length of the window. All of the flats were provided with convenient laundry spaces and
service balconies. For those who came from Chinese tenements or public housing flats that usually
comprised a single undivided room and, sometimes, without private cooking and bathing facilities,
moving to Mei Foo Sun Chuen meant that each family member can enjoy not only more space but
also more privacy.
The buyers of Mei Foo Sun Chuen could readily occupy their flats, since each flat was fully
furnished and equipped with various amenities that had seldom been provided in Hong Kong
apartments at the time. Such amenities included imported bathroom fixtures, built-in plumbing,
stainless-steel kitchen sinks, storage cupboards and concealed wiring for telephones and televisions. Whereas most Hong Kong households at the time used bottled gas in their homes, MFIL
fitted Mei Foo Sun Chuen with the world’s largest liquefied petroleum gas system, which distributed fuel from a central plant to each flat’s kitchen and bathrooms, providing residents
with fuel for cooking as well as hot water for showers. A typical bathroom in Mei Foo Sun
Chuen contains a bathtub from Australia, mosaic and ceramic tiles from Japan, a water closet
from the United Kingdom, light fixtures from Europe, and a plywood door from the
Philippines.54
Another major selling point for Mei Foo Sun Chuen, which its American developers repeatedly
emphasized, was the estate’s continued management and maintenance. MFIL entered into an
agreement with the Hong Kong government to undertake the provision of a complete management
system for the estate. To keep the estate running smoothly, MFIL established a separate Estate Management Department, which was advised by elected representatives of the flat owners who formed
51
Rosen, Mei Foo Sun Chuen, 24, 49.
Lui, “Rearguard Politics,” 164–65.
53
Rosen, Mei Foo Sun Chuen, 50.
54
“Housing Project Helps Local Industries.”
52
754
C. C. M. TSUI
the Consultative Council. This department was responsible for enforcing the Deed of Covenant,
ensuring standards of cleanliness, adequately maintaining facilities, and handling the myriad problems and needs arising on the estate. Flat owners had to pay a monthly service fee and management surcharge in the range of US$8–17 in 1974 dollars. Interestingly, they showed a strong
motivation to protect and maintain their property. Such motivation might have been generated
by the fear that without property management, their homes would turn into a low-cost slum, as
some of the private flatted developments had become. Rosen noted that ‘without constant vigilance
to maintain and uphold this [middle-class] image, residents feel it might slip away, sending them
back into the “low-cost housing” way of life which so many just left’.55
At the ceremony marking Mei Foo Sun Chuen’s completion on 26 October 1978, Secretary for
Housing Hon. A. J. Scott described the estate as ‘more to a home than simply four walls and a roof’
and ‘a distinguished addition to the excellent amenities and the ingenious use of space’. Mei Foo
Sun Chuen reflected, Scott said, ‘the requirement in Hong Kong, due to land scarcity, to reach
upwards with our building, but in doing so not to abandon grace and form’. Scott also praised
the developers, who had ‘realised that people who buy their own flats have a very real interest in
maintaining the value of their property’ and ‘have demonstrated their belief in good management
and maintenance’.56
The thriving of the high-rise planned community in Hong Kong
Mei Foo Sun Chuen opened the door for the American joint venture with Mobil, GalbreathRuffin, and Turner to enter Hong Kong’s real estate market. The Americans were keen to
develop a second Mei Foo Sun Chuen in Hong Kong. In November 1973, when Mei Foo
Sun Chuen was only half-completed, Galbreath-Ruffin approached the government to propose
redeveloping its 50-acre Mobil-Gulf oil depot on Tsing Yi Island into a private housing estate
for 60,000 people.57 The government was equally interested in another Mei Foo-type development in Hong Kong. Considering the Tsing Yi scheme, Governor Sir Murray MacLehose explicitly told other government officials that ‘after all, the more we can get private enterprises to
tackle of the colony’s housing needs the better’ and that ‘we cannot afford to pass up private
investment in housing for 60,000 people, while at the same time retarding our own housing
programme’.58 Unfortunately, the government had to reject Galbreath-Ruffin’s proposal upon
advice from the Environmental Branch, on the grounds that the Tsing Yi waterfront area
should be reserved for industries that needed deep-water berthing facilities.59 The government,
on the other hand, persuaded Galbreath-Ruffin and Mobil to develop a reclaimed site, also 50
acres in size, at Shatin New Town, which was under construction at the time.60 Nevertheless,
after a lengthy negotiation with the government, Mobil pulled out of the Shatin project. Galbreath-Ruffin tried to find another joint venture investor, but their efforts were ultimately in
vain.61
Galbreath-Ruffin was eager to repeat its success with Mei Foo Sun Chuen, but it could not
advance either its Tsing Yi or Shatin schemes. Instead, other developers emulated the Mei Foo
55
Rosen, Mei Foo Sun Chuen, 29.
“Speech by Hon. A. J. Scott, JP.”
57
“Secretary for Housing to Governor,” February 20, 1974.
58
“Governor to Secretary for Housing and Colonial Secretary,” February 23 and May 16, 1974.
59
“Secretary for Housing to Governor,” April 29, 1974.
60
“Secretary for Housing to Governor,” September 26, 1974.
61
“Secretary for Housing to Governor,” July 5, 1974.
56
PLANNING PERSPECTIVES
755
Figure. 14. Taikoo Shing, Whampoa Garden and Laguna City have similar planning schemes as Mei Foo Sun
Chuen. Source: author.
Sun Chuen development pattern by converting large industrial sites into gigantic housing
estates. As most areas in Hong Kong’s urban centres had been developed, there was an urgent
need to expand the urban areas and decentralize the population. These industrial sites had originally been located in remote rural areas, but due to Hong Kong’s rapid urbanization after
WWII, they were close to the city’s urban centres at the time. Besides, they were already connected with necessary infrastructure, such as roads and water supply. Thus, they could yield
higher value upon redevelopment and provide homes to a large population in a relatively faster
fashion. For example, Taikoo Shing (literally, ‘Taikoo City’) was a large housing estate converted
from the 53-acre Taikoo Dockyard in 1977. Designed by the same architectural firm that
worked on Mei Foo Sun Chuen, Wong & Tung and Associates, the estate consisted of 61
high-rise residential towers that provided 12,698 flats. Other examples of Mei Foo-type developments include Whampoa Garden, which was converted from the Whampoa Dockyard in
1985, and Laguna City, which was redeveloped from an oil depot owned by Shell Oil in
1991 (Figure 14). As these housing estates were located at the urban fringe, the sale price of
the flats was not as high as those in prime urban locations. This attracted the young middle-
756
C. C. M. TSUI
class families who were aspiring to become homeowners but could not afford the high housing
costs in the urban centres. Notably, these housing estates shared the same challenge that Mei
Foo Sun Chuen encountered in meeting the daily needs of a large population who resided
far from the urban centres. Again, they followed the scheme adopted by Mei Foo Sun Chuen
and became self-sufficient townships, supplying everything the residents needed in their daily
lives right at their doorstep.
Galbreath-Ruffin did not achieve its ambition of developing a second Mei Foo Sun Chuen
until the late 1980s. The company partnered with Caltex Oil and local developer New World
Development to convert Caltex’s 15-acre oil depot in the satellite town of Tsuen Wan into a private housing estate named Rivera Gardens. The estate was also designed by Wong & Tung and
Associates, and it adopted the same idea of a ‘high-rise planned community’ as Mei Foo Sun
Chuen, albeit at a much smaller development scale. Rivera Gardens comprises 19 residential
towers of 30–40 storeys, as well as podiums, an eight-storey commercial centre, and extensive
gardens. It was completed in 1988, the same year John W. Galbreath passed away in Ohio at
the age of 90.
Conclusion
Mei Foo Sun Chuen was developed at the time of Hong Kong’s transition from a refugee city to
an industrialized city with a vibrant economy. The estate filled a vacuum in the city’s housing
market and made investors realize the potential purchasing power of local Chinese people. The
success of such a mammoth project encouraged investment in low-cost, high-density – but
high-standard – housing; this shift not only helped solve Hong Kong’s massive housing shortage
but also enabled a larger population of homeowners. Owning quality flats in Mei Foo Sun
Chuen helped a new group of young Chinese families gain societal recognition as a nascent
middle class unknown to Hong Kong before WWII. These families were no longer refugees
who had fled from their native homes in China but rather a group of clerical and skilled
workers with stable jobs and more disposable incomes who were prepared to settle permanently
in Hong Kong. They demanded not only shelters with four walls and a roof but also decent
homes for raising their children and enjoying life. This new middle-class group had an entirely
new set of privileges and demands that the existing housing market, which did not acknowledge
their right to comfortable accommodation, could not meet. Mei Foo Sun Chuen offered advantages and amenities that had not been previously available to this group. With the estate’s completion, individuals and families realized they could aspire to better living conditions and a
better way of life.
Mei Foo Sun Chuen embodies an entirely different concept and approach to residential architecture design. The high-rise planned community has become the ideal housing model for highdensity cities like Hong Kong. This estate has imposed a higher standard on Hong Kong’s housing
market because any developers hoping to compete in the middle-class housing market must now
meet the standards set by Mei Foo Sun Chuen.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks the two interviewees who shared their stories of becoming first-time homebuyers when
they acquired their flats at Mei Foo Sun Chuen in the early 1970s. She is also grateful for the research assistance from Martin Fung, May Ho and Ophios Chow.
PLANNING PERSPECTIVES
757
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
The work described in this article was fully supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the
Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. CityU 21607215).
Note on Contributor
Carmen C. M. Tsui is an Associate Professor in the Department of History, Lingnan University. She obtained
her Ph.D. in Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley with a specialization in the history of
architecture and urbanism. Her research focus has been on the housing history of China and Hong Kong,
built heritage and conservation, urban history, and architectural modernism in Asia.
ORCID
Carmen C. M. Tsui
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5771-8345
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