‘Home Sweet Home’: Making the Discourse of Housing Space and Quality in Hong Kong 1930s-1990s

In postwar Hong Kong, rapid urbanisation has generated enormous demand for land use and housing since the 1960s. To attract the emerging middle class to purchase apartments, private developers began to form different social narratives (e.g. leisure space, transport, size, or facilities) to identify the housing space and quality for defining the social class and status. These narratives in newspapers or developers’ advertisements highlighted the transformation of idealised living space and quality in Hong Kong society. This article examines different newspapers, sales brochures, government reports, and TV advertisements from the perspective of new cultural history to deconstruct examples of private housing space and quality in Hong Kong. It also explores how the concept of idealised home space is imagined and transformed into an everyday context. The research outcome proves the significant impact on the long-term development of Hong Kong housing policy and develops a new perspective on the influence of imagination and social discourse on urbanised society in the late twentieth century.