Alan Smart raises serious questions about the standard view that Hong Kong's mass public housing programme was a direct and humane response by the Government to the Shek Kip Mei fire. Rather he argues that the Government's response to that fire was grudging and incremental rather than a sharp and radical turning point, and that the security and stability of Hong Kong weighed as heavily, possibly more so, in the decisions than the predicament of the fire victims. His research shows that a whole sequence of major fires after Shek Kip Mei, and the political costs of the Mainland sending comfort missions to fire victims both before and after were needed to bring about the final commitment to provide mass public housing. In his critical examination of the conventional position, Professor Smart bases his case on a thorough reading of government records and provides a careful investigation into the origins of the public housing policy in Hong Kong. This volume makes an important contribution to the postwar history of Hong Kong and is a significant addition to the study of its modern development.

Singapore housing has often been held up as a success story, especially the development of its public housing. This book aims to document the research and publication on this aspect of Singapore's development. Covering the periods prior to and after 1960, the annotated bibliography brings together in one volume both published and unpublished works.

An exciting explosion of urban expansion is occurring in East Asia: cities such as Singapore, Taipei, Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing, and Shanghai are expanding at a prodigious rate and bringing widespread change to the region. Peter G. Rowe's East Asia Modern is a timely comparative analysis of urban growth in this rapidly evolving part of the globe. A renowned scholar on East Asian architecture and urbanism, Peter G. Rowe examines how the unique modernizing process of East Asian cities can be most usefully understood. Rowe offers a historical assessment of the region, chronicling the cities' development over the last century and setting into context their individual paths toward becoming modern. Rowe explains what the modernizing process has meant for the cultural diffusion of predominantly Western ideas, how East Asian urban regions have developed a distinct type of modernity, and what lessons can be gleaned from the contemporary East Asian experience. Refuting many common misconceptions about contemporary East Asian life, East Asia Modern offers a readable critical assessment of life in modern East Asia while also pointing to possibilities for the future.

This book gives an account of Hong Kong's medical and health development from the Second World War to the present day, investigates how medical and health services grew and adapted as Hong Kong's political and the socio-economic landscape—and the world beyond it—changed, and continued changing. The author is a clinician-scientist rather than a social scientist, her writing is therefore based on her first-hand knowledge of the changes in the Hong Kong medical and healthcare scene during the period 1942–2015, and the book has also been enriched by her meticulous research via the archives of available government publications, other literature, and media reports. This book is a sequel to A Medical History of Hong Kong: 1842–1941. "k presents an unbiased and scientific analysis of events which prompted the authorities and the public to consider, evaluate, and ultimately implement policies that resulted in the gradual improvement of the healthcare system in Hong Kong."–Rosie T. T. Young, The University of Hong Kong.