Border Ecologies. Hong Kong’s Mainland Frontier
Research by Joshua Bolchover and Peter Hasdell. With a photo essay by Bas Princen. Book design and typesetting by Thomas Dahm.
Hong Kong’s border with Shenzhen is dissolving. By 2047, the border will likely not exist. Integration with the Mainland will remove distinctions created by the “One Country Two Systems” policy. The uncertainty surrounding what will happen has created anxiety relating to law, identity, freedom of speech, and voting rights. Caught in this debate is the Frontier Closed Area, a buffer zone created by the British in 1951, and an inaccessible landscape of eco-systems including tidal estuaries, fish farms, primary forests, historic villages and abandoned military posts. In contrast, Shenzhen, poster-child of China’s economic reform era, has exploded into a metropolis of 15 million plus.
The book explores this unique border ecology that evolved as Hong Kong and the Mainland transformed. Design strategies inserted within this eco-system promote alternate forms of development. Through unpeeling the layers of this territory, a complex set of relationships that operate between macro-policies and micro-conditions on the ground are revealed. The example widens the discourse on borders to raise critical issues that impact the contemporary city.
Published by Birkhäuser
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View project on dahm.nl
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View project on dahm.nl
