Citation

La Grange A. Urban Stud. 2011; 48(6): 1181-1200.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Urban Studies Journal Limited, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0042098010370628

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between neighbourhood cohesion and organisation and class in Hong Kong. It draws on a survey of 1200 face-to-face interviews in an up-market private housing estate on Hong Kong Island, a large, neither rich nor poor public housing estate in the New Territories and a mixed-use, low-income inner-city neighbourhood in Kowloon. Four indexes measure interneighbourhood and intraneighbourhood differences—namely, attraction to neighbourhood, neighbouring and psychological sense of community adapted from the Buckner scale of social cohesion, and social organisation developed by the author. There are significant differences between the neighbourhoods. However, these differences are not duplicated between occupation-defined class within the neighbourhoods, although there are some differences based on self-defined social class. The likely explanation lies in the character of the three neighbourhoods, government policy, the effect of private housing management and the low level of spatial differentiation by income across the city.