Rights and Urban Controversies in Hong Kong

This book examines the "ethics in relation to city and urbanism" by evaluating the strengths and limitations of rights as a conceptual tool from the comparative East-West perspective in resolving urban controversies (involving conflicts of rights between different classes, different groups within the present generation, present vs future generations, human vs animals, human vs plants and nature), thereby facilitating urban policy-making and good urban governance. This book adopts an interdisciplinary approach integrating political theory, ethics, urban studies, public policy, making applications of ethics and political philosophy to social sciences to examine controversial urban issues in the Hong Kong context. It challenges the general conception that philosophy and ethics are detached from everyday life, with the philosophers engaging mainly in abstract intellectual pursuit and some of them even disdaining "pedestrian" applications of abstract thinking. This book makes applications of ethics and political philosophy to real-life urban contexts in Hong Kong, thereby trying to highlight the normative in order to throw new light to the general approach and strategy to deal with practical urban issues, facilitating "out-of-the-box" thinking in the field of housing and urban studies, stimulating scholars, researchers, and students in the fields, urban planners, urban managers, and other professionals as well as urban policy-makers.

Auteur

Betty Yung is Visiting Fellow in the Department of Public and International Affairs at City University of Hong Kong. Her research interests are Normative Dimensions of Public Policy through Applications of Philosophy to Public Policy, Housing Policy and Social Policy, Urban Studies and Housing Studies as well as Hong Kong Studies.. She published a book related to "justice in Hong Kong housing policy" (Hong Kong University Press) and co-edited a book on "ethical dilemmas in public policy" (Springer) and another book on "land and housing controversies in Hong Kong" (Springer). Francis K. T. Mok is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the Education University of Hong Kong. His academic interests lie mainly in applied ethics, with special focus on ethical issues related to admission of immigrants and care workers. His publications include a book monograph on the moral responsibility of civilian participants in the CulturalRevolution of China (published by Routledge) and two book chapters, one on the admission of Mainlanders to Hong Kong and another on environmental justice (both published by Springer). Baldwin Wong is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist University. He holds a PhD in Government from the London School of Economics and Political Science. His academic interests lie mainly in public justification and Confucianism. His works were published (and forthcoming) in American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Journal of Social Philosophy, Philosophia, Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Social Theory and Practice, and Res Publica.