In attempting to further refine my interests, I picked up <Drifiting: Architecture and Migrancy> edited by Stephen Cairns. The article by Ackbr Abbas Building Hong Kong: From migrancy to disappearance, made me realize the unconscious struggling truth about Hong Kong. It is clarifies the difficulties one has when asked "what is Hong Kong like?"

"Hong Kong has gone through a series of mutation and reinventions, moving from local manufacture to global finance." the built up of Hong Kong as an international finance center, is really due to the constant influx of visitors and immigrants. The dependency or importance of the service sector (on all levels: from servants to stock trade) has brought about people of all types and for all purposes.

One particular sentence that stood out was "Migrancy means not only changing places; it also means the changing nature of places." which got me to think about the development of HK. Instead of focusing on the migratory path of immigrant and emigrants (or their purpose of departure and methods of comfort), it is the transformation/ evolution of the city as altered by these people. Whether people come or go, the experience of migrancy is unavoidable as its footprint is traceable / imprinted in the landscape.

As new trend and hotspots arise, Hong Kong's anonymous urban vernacular (local) areas, once unremarkable and unfashionable become gentrified. Local areas become infiltrated with Western culture alterations yet preserved in some way, and if anything are designed indifferent to its surroundings and dislocated from the Local. These series of small dislocations, help articulate homeland nostalgia's (hence the generation of ethnopolis - places such as Little Tokyo, Chinatown and in HK - Soho).

Architecture by migrants is not located just in Hong Kong. It occurs everywhere else too.
The aspiring desires of these spaces provide a false sense of belonging - being in Hong Kong, Europe and America all at once.

...to be continued...