In recent months there was a lot of media attention in Hong Kong in relation to the "removal" of old, characteristic and often historic landmarks. Whether this were landmarks, buildings or neighbourdhoods.
The latest is the (planned?) removal of protesters of Queens Pier in Central, despite the fact that a courhearing might change things. Although I am not sure about that, since many plans are inprogress and contractors are reade to take down the structure. This would give way to start a reclamation project which will facilitate building another......shopping mall or so. (Click on Queens Pier to read the wiki article, which contains interesting info).
The Standard in Hong Kong has an interesting article about the pier, where it describes that originally it was a heritage and suddenly things changed. The question there is...what happened.
A personal brain spin from me is that there might have been suggestion within the government to change the status. Reason is that the HK Government gets most of its money from landsales. Not being able to sell the (reclaimed) land, means lack of income for the government.
Another area that has been threatened are the old style street markets as can be found in Wanchai, Causeway Bay and the oldest in Central. There are plans to remove many of those streetmarkets, tear down buildings and rebuild the areas.....often with high rise (c0ncrete) buildings that take off light, wind and thus fresh air.
In the plan publications to remove the at Graham and Peel, artist impressions are given. However, they only seem to paint half the picture and forget the high rise part. Interesting info can be found in Hong Kong magazine no 688, Friday 20 July.
To get an impression on atmoshperes in markets and Hong Kong.... look here --->
