December, 2007

Building Cultural Metropolis and Citizenship?
The West Kowloon Cultural District project in postcolonial Hong Kong

Stephen C.K. Chan

(The author is the professor of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University, and the convenor of People’s Panel on West Kowloon.)

As postcolonial Hong Kong aspires to be the Asia “world city” of the 21st century, I always wonder what cultural policy and strategies we have in place to bring our city life to live up to this ambition. What is our overall plan for the next decade, and beyond? And what does all this mean for the people living here, in our local communities, from the perspective of cultural citizenship?

Short of offering a convincing answer to the above, the HKSAR government is nonetheless proposing to inject HK$21 billion into the West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD) mega-project. Now the community expects this grand project to focus on the development of arts and culture, allowing for mixed land use for public space, residence, commerce, entertainment and tourism. To date, however, the concern as to what our cultural policy is (i.e., what sort of cultural vision we project as we put together the WKCD plan) remains largely un-answered by the Government. Our senior officials in charge of cultural affairs often suggest that we have got a cultural policy, and hence little need for further work on it. For sure, we have all read the Policy Recommendation Report of the defunct Culture and Heritage Commissionin 2003, and might even assume the existence of something like a cultural portfolio on the government drawing board, despite the lack of a policy-making body capable of providing direction, coordination and forward-looking plans for culture in this to-be Asian metropolis. But can we honestly say that Hong Kong has a public policy on culture as firmly in place as the WKCD will be for the development of our cultural future into the next decade and beyond? I doubt this very much.

Cultural policy today is a set of strategic local urban responses to globalization. Creative industry portfolio and urban infra-structural development combine to shape policies that would develop what is resourceful locally. Nurturing local culture (its talents as well as industry) becomes the strategy many would adopt today to meet the challenge of the global “knowledge economy”. Culture must first be recognized as the symbolic resources embodied in the material form of cultural products and practices. Ironically, under postcolonial capitalism, it is increasingly evident in public eyes that accessible public places are fast disappearing. The privileging of property managerialism has been a result of a fiscal policy instituted in Hong Kong since the colonial days based almost entirely on a super-high-cost land policy. This has given rise to the widespread value represented by the urban center of our central business centre, the Central. In the face of the dominance of the value of Central, local cultural needs at the community and neighborhood level are thus always compromised, as a matter of rule.

In light of this, although the Government has made huge moves to re-package the controversial WKCD project into an acceptable plan, community concerns have continued to be neglected. We must ask now how cultural planning in WKCD may actually help develop strategies for grounding and enhancing creativity in our community? The People’s Panel on West Kowloon (PPWK), a local civil society alliance, has in 2005 called for a people-driven, community-based approach to WKCD. In an “Open Letter to the People of Hong Kong” (Hong Kong Economic Journal, 3 March 2006), it outlines a range of key concerns, as follows:

• The cultural development of WKCD must provide for both software and hardware, be implemented in stages according to needs, and contribute to capacity building of the local communities and districts of Hong Kong.
• WKCD must be a cultural district of a cultural metropolis, not a property development packaged with consumer and entertainment interests.
• There must be clear aims to develop a blueprint for WKCD, which must be based on sound policies and research in culture and urban planning.
• The public’s aspiration for the integrated planning and environmental enhancement of Victoria Harbour must be given a high priority.
• The WKCD project must go beyond West Kowloon. It must be part of a cultural vision and urban planning vision for the whole of Hong Kong.
• Only when civil society owns WKCD can the WKCD blueprint have “life”, and be a sustainable project for Hong Kong.

In cultural planning, creativity plays a key role in shaping our social priorities for the media and cultural industries, the arts and cultural policy, education and individual development. It is crucial to our consolidated attempts to upgrade our collective values for humanistic concerns (in contradistinction to the values of Central) and develop new, sustainable cultural/economic values in our city life. In carrying forth the project of WKCD, we should therefore ask what cultural planning and strategies are needed to ground and develop creativity in the community, where most of our talents will have to come from? Hence, at the core of a cultural policy with vision, we will have to address a crucial issue: the cultural democracy involved in the process of developing a cultural metropolis out of WKCD.

A democratic process to re-define West Kowloon for the people

The formulation of any collective cultural vision is a complex, cross-sectoral public policy-making process, in which broadly based social and community participation is necessary. Government must take the lead to enable coordination among various departments and sectors, and facilitate the deployment of adequate resources to make planning feasible. Looking ahead to 2008, civil society groups (such as PPWK) will have to monitor closely what proposal the Government will present to the legislature.

In my view, the future West Kowloon governing body should properly be called the Hong Kong Cultural Metropolis Development Council (HKCMDC). The HKCMDC’s governance should be tri-partite-based (civil society, government and business sector), with multi-stakeholder representation and participation. It will be a full statutory body whose primary mandate is to develop a cultural metropolis for the people of Hong Kong, which is deeply rooted in the people’s culture and community. The composition of this statutory body should consist of a wide range of representatives in the civil society including the art and community groups, cultural and creative industries and other professionals, through a representative and possibly electoral process to be developed in conjunction with civil society itself.

The formulation of the cultural vision being a cross-sectoral public policy-making process, full tri-partite participation must be anchored with a solid representation of community interests in the Council membership make-up (e.g., 15% strong). Only this can ensure that the cultural rights of all people in the community of Hong Kong will be addressed and taken seriously. Furthermore, with an emphasis on research, development and public engagement, the HKCMDC will involve the community at every stage of WKCD’s development, including the design of hardware and software. Its core strategies in cultural planning will be twofold: (i) the linking of cultural clusters (communities) to community cultures; and (ii) the nurture of cultural and creative talents in the long term.

Cultural development is a long-term social investment. The outreach of the WKCD project cannot be contained with the 40 hectares reclaimed land in West Kowloon. To address the significant vacuum in cultural policy in Hong Kong, it will integrate local with global perspectives in understanding and promoting the shaping of contemporary cultures. Moving toward the aim of Hong Kong becoming a genuinely open, democratic and diversified cultural metropolis, the PPWK has long called for the governance structure to be firmly based in the civil society, and its establishment and operation to work with due adherence to democratic procedures. The effects must be sustainable urban planning and forward-looking cultural development strategies. For contemporary cultural policies today take account of both the economic and cultural value of the outcomes it seeks to attain. Any serious urban cultural plan will have to aim strategically for the joint maximization of economic and cultural value. Hence, to provide a solid ground for continual cultural planning and development, postcolonial Hong Kong must move beyond the straitjacket of colonial governmentality - with vision for a metropolis in which all its people live with the pride of a cultural citizen. Here and now in Hong Kong, cultural democracy is an indispensable and undeniable key to this vision.