Challenges to the city imagineering in Hong Kong: Place making and struggle between globalization and local concerns

Cities are increasingly competing with other places for investment, attention, shoppers and tourists. To address globalization and competition, cities have been "commodified" and turned into "commodities for sale" through city branding, imagineering and place promotion strategies. To do this, the Hong Kong government has formulated "Brand Hong Kong" project in order to construct a new image for Hong Kong and employ incentives to "sell" Hong Kong to attract investors and visitors. According to the Policy Address 2007 by the Chief Executive of Hong Kong government Donald Tsang, the Financial Secretary is assigned to formulate strategies to revitalize 'Brand Hong Kong' and step up publicity efforts highlighting Hong Kong as an Asia's world city. Hong Kong people's "core values" will be re-searched, re-engineered, and re-vitalized. In fact, Hong Kong has experienced immense challenges from globalization in recent years, needs serious repositioning and creates a new city identity in order to survive against serious challenges. In order to alleviate the problems, effective governance requires a strategic plan, which includes proper visioning or imagineering that combined city making and place making so as to attain both global competitiveness and local approval. In this paper, we attempt to examine the imagineering efforts of the Hong Kong government in response to the challenges, including their understanding to the challenges, their strategic ways to tackle the challenges, and the outcome of their strategies.