Lawrence W C Lai
Biographic Data
| ID | 1473691 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lawrence W C Lai |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lawrence W C |
| FAMILY NAME | Lai |
| SIGNATURE | LAI L W C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Hong Kong |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8960-2766 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 73 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 263 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 73 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Reinterpreting the Kowloon Walled City
The Kowloon Walled City (City), as curated to the world in the media, emerged in the 1960s and 1970s as the world’s most densely populated and “lawless” neighbourhood, but was demolished in the early 1990s to make way for a public park. It was institutionally unique: de jure once a Chinese exclave in Hong Kong under jurisdictional dispute, but a territory where few of Hong Kong’s and none of China’s laws or regulations were enforced. What resulte…
The disappearing town planner and layout
This commentary discusses two rules for town planning proposed by economists; explains that these rules need to be contextualised in terms of the role of a government planner, as well as the institutional and physical constraints posed by town layouts; and points out that rules are essential for planning
Walls do not a prison make, nor are grids cages
This commentary addresses the characterisation of the grid as a product of power in relation to researchers’ search for meaning of land use patterns
Coase’s ‘The Lighthouse in Economics’ revisited
This interdisciplinary article follows up on a discussion of the lighthouse as a public good in terms of planning in this journal by elucidating the neo-institutional economic proposition that views of building facades along streets are common property and are public goods in the sense that their consumption is mutually non-exclusive. Hence, planning interventions are justified from an economic point of view to ensure the adequate supply of this …
Reconsidering faith in town planning
This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by-nc-nd/4.0
Is ‘island study’ but a form of land study
This article discusses the problem of island studies, predicated on the notion of ‘islandness’, as a field apart from land studies by showing that as a unit of recognition an island is only a highly specific kind of land. For every island its ‘islandness’ is unique, but only in the mode that all highly localised inhabited land is. The discussion finds the case of proponents of island studies for any significant re/ordering planning practice wanti…
Power is not rights
As a novel contribution to the application of economic concepts of property rights to resource management as a fundamental planning issue, this paper analyses the dichotomy (the Barzel thesis) between “economic property rights” and “legal property rights”. In lieu of Barzel’s dichotomous distinction, an alternative account of “de facto property rights” as a fraction of “ de jure property rights” is presented. The paper uses three case studies on …
Sustainable Development as A Win–Win Development
This empirical study of the value‐enhancing effects of a new innovative hub for art, culture, and heritage experiences (arts hub) reusing the heritage buildings of an old prison, an ex‐police station cum detention centre called “Tai Kwun” (Big Station), on neighboring residential properties, treats sustainable development as a developmental process to achieve a “win–win” production of two originally mutually exclusive environmental goods by trans…
A commentary on Feistauer and Wisbey’s (2024) research on the pre-history of a Chinese fort
This commentary reviews the work on the Kowloon Walled City by Feistauer and Wisbey (2024). The key idea is that the original Kowloon Walled City, precisely because it has long been destroyed, can only be a palimpsest, understood as a built area that has been reused or altered but still bears visible traces of its earlier form. The approach of the critical review is to indicate that such institutional devices as sketches and maps can shed light o…
An opinion regarding the grid layout as a goal and parameter
Remembering walls by map naming and planned attempts to eradicate and salvage a wall-less “walled city”
Innovative planning for sustainable development
Predicated on the theoretical foundations of Coasian and Schumpeterian economics, this analytical work adopts a broad view of planning as resource management. It involves the zoning of land or sea with an aim to contribute to sustainability by justifying a micro policy model of sustainable development, unambiguously defined as win-win development via technological and institutional innovations. The paper positions a micro model within the literat…
Land management of paths in the countryside
A great misunderstanding about the nature of property and property rights
Discovery flows from mapping for conservation planning
This article develops MacEachren’s summary of contemporary approaches to cartography as communication as a one-way flow of map information. The Hong Kong experience shows that large-scale government survey maps can be used by non-specialists to (re)discover and identify, for conservation planning purposes, very small Second World War defence structures not annotated on those maps. By accumulating information and field studies, non-specialists can…
The Credibility Thesis meeting the Coase Theorem in terms of form and function
From fish to land grabbing - a note on the transition of the concept of “common property” in property rights research under two traditions
This essay begins with a trialogue on the definitions of “common property” and introduces two “traditions” of interpreting property rights. The older, traced to Gordon (1954) and propagated by Cheung (1970), distinguishes common from communal property; the younger, to Ciriacy-Wantrup & Bishop (1975) and made popular by Ostrom (2000), calls “commons” (communal in the sense of the older tradition) “common property. With the help of three matrices, …
Museums for ex situ tangible heritage conservation
Pro profits or non-profits? A principal-agent model for analyzing public sector planning decisions and empirical results from planning applications in Hong Kong
Ring up for an appointment”
Post-colonial conservation of colonial built heritage in Hong Kong
Based on government appointed specialists’ (Antiquities Advisory Board or AAB’s) assessments of the heritage value of more than 1400 heritage items in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, we found no evidence of nationalistic bias against British or Japanese built military heritage buildings and structures after the handover of Hong Kong to China in July 1997. We also found no evidence of bias in favour of imperial Chinese architecture in…
A centennial literature review (1919–2019) of research publications on land readjustment from a neo-institutional economic perspective
The effects of ‘publicness’ and quality of publicly accessible open space upon user satisfaction
There is a worldwide trend for planning bodies to allow, require, or encourage developers to provide open spaces in their properties for public enjoyment to complement the open spaces on government lands. The two types of privately owned open space and government-owned open space, both accessible to public, can influence on people’s quality of life. Whether and how the land ownership of open spaces would influence their performance and, in turn, …
A Dialogue on Town Planning and Boundary Delineation
This is another dialogue on planning. Its novelty lies in its potency in discovering new cutting edges in planning theory and education by examining the roots of planning in real world practices. This invokes the meaning and necessity of a definition. It recalls that surveyors were bona fide town planners in all former British colonies
A race between urban growth and regulation
Urban renewal and redevelopment
The informational dimension of real estate development
Ambiguous Property Rights
This paper explains the nature of David Li’s concept of ambiguous property rights and three angles to see right ambiguity from a Coasian-constrained choice-theoretical perspective and elaborate on that ambiguity in terms of five scenarios of de jure and de facto rights. The case of indigenous village housing in post-colonial Hong Kong under a mature system of the rule of law is used to demonstrate the ambiguities due to a gap between de jure and …
Informal land registration under unclear property rights
Where to draw the line?” That is a land use planning question for the land surveyor and the town planner
Inspired by the pioneering work of Bleakley and Ferrie (2014) informed by Libecap and Lueck (2011), this paper develops the thesis of Lai, 1996, Lai, 1997 that spatial partition of land is a basic land use planning activity, whether by governments or private bodies, which involve decisions on boundary delineation. The primaeval foundation of this activity is laying out private property boundaries, which is a metonymic land unitisation exercise th…
As planning is everything, it is good for something!” A Coasian economic taxonomy of modes of planning
Against two extreme forms of thinking, which have influenced planning theory, this article argues, in the context of a looming amount of literature generated in a movement for private planning, that the distinction between private planning and public planning is a valid one, but one in need of tweaking. However, the plan–market dichotomy (i.e. the assumption that state and private planning is mutually exclusive) is fallacious. Informed by the neo…
The Fourth Coase Theorem
This article elucidates a novel and powerful Fourth Coase Theorem using Coase’s own reasoning and extending the First Coase Theorem. It holds that state rules, which include, but are not limited to, property rights, can enlarge a market. This theorem lends support to state planning insofar as it establishes rules that enable and promote market transactions and illuminates the operation of the market’s spontaneity, subject to constraints. Seven co…
Sustainable development of heritage conservation and tourism
This paper uses primary economic concepts to discuss, with reference to Hong Kong colonial heritage sites, the possible, but not deterministic, convivial, and antagonistic relationships between heritage conservation and heritage tourism as economic activities recognized by the state. Depending on the level of use, the enabling institutional framework and mechanism, and the mindset of stakeholders, both activities can be mutually exclusive, compat…
Transaction cost reduction and innovations for spontaneous cities
In urban spatial economic analysis, two largely disjunctive pro-market approaches influenced by Ronald Coase and Joseph Schumpeter have emerged in the discussion of spontaneous cities. They are transaction cost–based Coasian analysis and innovation-based Schumpeterian analysis. As an original attempt to contribute to planning theory using Coasian and Schumpeterian economic concepts, this article reviews the relevant literature, elucidates the con…
Hayek and Town Planning
Although Hayek was unquestionably an intellectual giant who persistently condemned central economic planning as a comprehensive social system, his The Constitution of Liberty reveals that at one stage he supported the market-failure theses of social cost and public goods. Hayek's concepts on social cost, public goods, and other issues pertinent to theorization for planning intervention are discussed with reference to the works of Hayek, Popper, N…
Repeated planning applications by developers under statutory zoning
Un-forgetting walls by lines on maps
Creation of property rights in planning by contract and edict
This article advances the proposition that the creation of property rights, whether by contract-upon-negotiation or edict, is far more significant than what has been described as “ Coasian bargaining” in effecting sustainable development. By “creation” we intend the neo-institutional economist’s sense of establishing a degree of exclusive property rights for common property or devising new contractual arrangements in which private property rights…
The Coase Theorem and squatting on Crown Land and water
A Probit Analysis of Development Control
This paper uses a probit model to evaluate a total of 1353 sets of cross-sectional development control (planning application) statistics not previously published for 3 classes of statutory residential zones in Hong Kong over a period of 24 years from 1975. As far as the selected zones are concerned, the findings refute the critical view that the Town Planning Board process in Hong Kong generates significant rent-seeking activities in favour of la…
A catallactic framework of government land reclamation
Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage”
Farms are not zoos
This paper explains the importance of distinguishing de facto from de jure property rights, confused by some economists, in heritage conservation planning. A comparative study on three Hong Kong examples of British colonial military buildings is used to show how neither de jure private property rights nor de facto close access is a solution to the problem of open access to heritage buildings. Also, a government museum is only a partial solution t…
Segregation legal and natural
Using Probit Models in Planning Theory
As a contribution to the theorization of the planning process, this article gives a brief account of the probit model and its applications to Hong Kong; a review of the literature on the use of development control data in planning research; advances the argument for the use of statistical methods that do not operate on aggregate sampling data; and demonstrates the applicability of the probit model in development control studies. Possible applicat…
Land use rights reform in China
The production and consumption of land use planning
Rational development under uncertain de facto jurisdictional boundaries
Squatting by the privileged? A Hong Kong study on the innovations and ambiguity of property rights of irregular development
The final colonial regional plan that lingers on
Density policy towards public housing
Land use rights reform in China
Hayek and Town Planning
Although Hayek was unquestionably an intellectual giant who persistently condemned central economic planning as a comprehensive social system, his The Constitution of Liberty reveals that at one stage he supported the market-failure theses of social cost and public goods. Hayek's concepts on social cost, public goods, and other issues pertinent to theorization for planning intervention are discussed with reference to the works of Hayek, Popper, N…
Low-rise Residential Developments in Green Belts
This paper is an econometric study of the planning application statistics for a special category of permissible land use in Hong Kong in green belt zones. The permissible use in question is that of the house, which refers to both the 'small house' for 'indigenous villagers' and ordinary houses that require building permission. The existence of such permissible residential use obviously distinguishes the idea of green belts from the UK concept as …
A Probit Analysis of Development Control
This paper uses a probit model to evaluate a total of 1353 sets of cross-sectional development control (planning application) statistics not previously published for 3 classes of statutory residential zones in Hong Kong over a period of 24 years from 1975. As far as the selected zones are concerned, the findings refute the critical view that the Town Planning Board process in Hong Kong generates significant rent-seeking activities in favour of la…
Using Probit Models in Planning Theory
As a contribution to the theorization of the planning process, this article gives a brief account of the probit model and its applications to Hong Kong; a review of the literature on the use of development control data in planning research; advances the argument for the use of statistical methods that do not operate on aggregate sampling data; and demonstrates the applicability of the probit model in development control studies. Possible applicat…
The private supply of and public demand for planning
If conditions are being imposed by planning authorities; but not enforced adequately; and not checked in detail when property changes hands; is there not an awful lot of effort being wasted in impo
Government Transport Land-use Planning and Development by Implicit Contract for Franchised Buses and Ferries in Hong Kong, 1933–1972
As a contribution to policy research on monopolies in planning for public utilities and the role of the state in ordering the coordination of land use and transport in a market economy, this paper evaluates a couple of hypotheses informed by the Coasian economic concept of an implicit contract. There have been public subsidies to franchised bus and ferry companies in Colonial Hong Kong in the form of concessions in kind with spatial land-use tran…
Segregation legal and natural
Commentary
The Great Urban Transformation
Surrendering the environment for capital gain and Olson’s group theory
The Fourth Coase Theorem
This article elucidates a novel and powerful Fourth Coase Theorem using Coase’s own reasoning and extending the First Coase Theorem. It holds that state rules, which include, but are not limited to, property rights, can enlarge a market. This theorem lends support to state planning insofar as it establishes rules that enable and promote market transactions and illuminates the operation of the market’s spontaneity, subject to constraints. Seven co…
Transaction cost reduction and innovations for spontaneous cities
In urban spatial economic analysis, two largely disjunctive pro-market approaches influenced by Ronald Coase and Joseph Schumpeter have emerged in the discussion of spontaneous cities. They are transaction cost–based Coasian analysis and innovation-based Schumpeterian analysis. As an original attempt to contribute to planning theory using Coasian and Schumpeterian economic concepts, this article reviews the relevant literature, elucidates the con…
Acquisition and redevelopment of bus depots
As planning is everything, it is good for something!” A Coasian economic taxonomy of modes of planning
Against two extreme forms of thinking, which have influenced planning theory, this article argues, in the context of a looming amount of literature generated in a movement for private planning, that the distinction between private planning and public planning is a valid one, but one in need of tweaking. However, the plan–market dichotomy (i.e. the assumption that state and private planning is mutually exclusive) is fallacious. Informed by the neo…
The informational dimension of real estate development
The Coase Theorem and squatting on Crown Land and water
Private property rights not to use, earn from or trade land in urban planning and development
The final colonial regional plan that lingers on
A catallactic framework of government land reclamation
Ambiguous Property Rights
This paper explains the nature of David Li’s concept of ambiguous property rights and three angles to see right ambiguity from a Coasian-constrained choice-theoretical perspective and elaborate on that ambiguity in terms of five scenarios of de jure and de facto rights. The case of indigenous village housing in post-colonial Hong Kong under a mature system of the rule of law is used to demonstrate the ambiguities due to a gap between de jure and …
Creation of property rights in planning by contract and edict
This article advances the proposition that the creation of property rights, whether by contract-upon-negotiation or edict, is far more significant than what has been described as “ Coasian bargaining” in effecting sustainable development. By “creation” we intend the neo-institutional economist’s sense of establishing a degree of exclusive property rights for common property or devising new contractual arrangements in which private property rights…
Where to draw the line?” That is a land use planning question for the land surveyor and the town planner
Inspired by the pioneering work of Bleakley and Ferrie (2014) informed by Libecap and Lueck (2011), this paper develops the thesis of Lai, 1996, Lai, 1997 that spatial partition of land is a basic land use planning activity, whether by governments or private bodies, which involve decisions on boundary delineation. The primaeval foundation of this activity is laying out private property boundaries, which is a metonymic land unitisation exercise th…
Unclear’ initial delineation of property boundaries and the third Coase Theorem
Political science (50 works) · Economics (49 works) · Law (38 works) · Law (34 works) · Business (31 works) · Geography (29 works) · Property rights (21 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Engineering (20 works) · Transaction cost (20 works)