ABSTRACT
Urban Studies debates have recently been dominated by Euro-American-centric, universalised theories such as planetary urbanisation (and its derivative, planetary gentrification). One underlying problem of this literatura is its reliance on the concept of dialectics. Implicit in the latter is the dualistic philosophy. Unlike it, the Chinese tongbian thinking of dialectics does not conceive of polarities as dualistic. Polarities do not exclude each other; logically they entail each other and their complementarity and contradiction constitutes a totality. They always involve correlation and continuity over time. Negation of the negation does not mean clear separation, but continuity of one event before and another one after. Town is mutually embedded in the country, and the converse is true. This tongbian thinking of town-country relation is empirically elaborated by deciphering Hong Kong’s high-density (re)development as a product of the spatio-temporality of British colonialism. Urban (re)development is accordingly conceived in this light. Capital and the Government could manage to privately appropriate the exchange values of land (re)development because the Government has been able to administer the production of urban space within the somehow frozen mutually embedded town-country relations. In sum, it is the ‘hegemonic’ manipulation of these relations, neither planetary forces nor the worldview gentrification, that can articulate an emphatic account of urban (re)development in Hong Kong.