Hong Kong: Wallpaper* City Guide

In good condition - has markings from use - due to differing weights in books, postage maybe adjusted at checkout.

The Changing Face of the Urban Scene

Hong Kong has its history,of course (and even in the face of the government's rapid 'urban renewal' programme,it is starting to show some sensitivity to the best parts of its architectural heritage), but it feels like a place that came into existence only yesterday or, if such a thing were possible, that came into existence tomorrow, before being somehow projected back to the present.

Hong Kong doesn't feel at all exotic in the way of other Asian cities, but the feeling of familiarity feels unfamiliarly new. What we have here is not the radiant city of Le Corbusier but a neon city of super-modernity. Hong Kong reminds us that we are living through a great renaissance of the skyscraper. Those early ones by Louis Sullivan actually seem archaic, almost Victorian, compared with the gleaming cyber-style that has taken deep-root in Asia.

To see Central lit up like a Christmas tree, the HSBC building flashing like a pinball machine and triangles of white light leaping up the Bank of China tower is to see into the future. In Hong Kong, even when the past really is on display - in the double-decker buses and WWII-inflected trams that clunk their way through the city - it still doesn't look like a part of the past so much as of some post-future, when the resources that made this glittering utopia had run out and old stock had to be coaxed back into service. And that's what's so great about Hong Kong: it really does look like the future, even though it's looked like this for quite a while.