1. Historical Context

Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China, located in the southern part of mainland China, with an excellent harbor and one of the most important free trade ports in the world today. It was briefly under Japanese rule during World War II and then reverted to a British colony after the Japanese surrender until 1997 when sovereignty was transferred back to the government of the People's Republic of China. During this period, Hong Kong was under British colonial rule for a total of 150 years. [1]

This colonial history has helped Hong Kong achieve incredible economic success in a very short period of time, and has contributed to its current image as an extremely densely populated metropolis. Although economic development has been a major topic throughout itsBritish rule, Hong Kong's real period of breakneck growth began after World War II with the boom in real estate market. [2] During this period, Britain saw Hong Kong as a colony that needed to be developed and a gateway to the Asian market, thus assisted the region in the rapid construction of a large number of real estate and public housing projects.

The history of this almost unprecedented real estate development is well documented in a magazine called Hong Kong and Far East Builder . It was a trade magazine published in East Asia between 1941 and 1971, published monthly or bimonthly, in English, and circulated mainly among construction professionals, with the primary function of being a platform for

1. “How Hong Kong's Complex History Explains Its Current Crisis with China.” Culture. National Geographic, last modified January 25, 2022, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/hong-konghistory-explain-relationship-china information exchange within the industry.

2.Wong, Stan Hok-wui. “Real Estate Elite, Economic Development, and Political Conflicts in Postcolonial Hong Kong.” *China Review* 15, no. 1.

The magazine's content is quite mixed, including reports on new projects, news stories, architectural technology, building product promotion, review articles, and a list of approved projects, presenting a "practical information handbook" image. Most of the magazine's articles are fact-based newsletters, but there are also some articles illustrating personal opinions, most of which are written by British architects and academics. During its existence, the magazine expanded in terms of the types of projects it focused on and its geographical scope, for example, in 1962 the colophon pages began to be divided into columns, and in 1965 it began to feature world news from outside East Asia.

Having now a clear view of Hong Kong’s history and status as, not only a British colony, but as well as a place of undoubtedly unique growth in density and population, we try to grasp to what extent this British impact is palpable on the HK architecture. By analyzing the ways in which this influence has been enacted, we can more clearly sort out the history Hong Kong’s urban development and use it as a sample to more thoroughly observe the migration and reproduction of Western discourses and experiences to Asia that have become more pronounced over the last century or two. This essay will therefore analyze the ways in which Britain influenced the construction of Hong Kong's high-density urban environment during the period 1960-1971 by looking at magazine texts and discussing the broader historical implications of these patterns for Hong Kong.