Sonia Lam-Knott: Reclaiming urban narratives: spatial politics and storytelling amongst Hong Kong youths
ABSTRACT
Research on contemporary urban movements analyse how young people assert their right to the city by using street protests and occupations to physically reclaim urban space. Through an ethnographic study of Hong Kong, where the government regulates and monopolises control over urban space, this paper observes youth activists’ efforts to reclaim the intangible aspects – the perceptions and meanings– of urban space through storytelling. It finds that youths celebrate quotidian stories emphasising the nostalgic and emotional aspects of urban space, to dispel government narratives of urban space as being a profit-generating commodity-object, and to prompt vernacular imaginings of alternative urban conditions.