ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author invites urban planners in Hong Kong to revisit their roles as public intellectuals within traditional Chinese culture and to reflect on the relationships between 'scientific knowledge' and 'moral values'. The post-colonial, Chinese dominated Hong Kong has continued to be an unashamedly liberal economy with the Government cautiously handling socio-economic issues such as setting the minimum wage and exhibiting extreme tardiness in placing the issue of comprehensive retirement benefits firmly on the political agenda. Hong Kong's reversion to Chinese sovereign rule in 1997 almost coincided with the bursting of the economic bubble triggered by the Asian financial crisis in 1998. The author challenges the nature of twenty-first century planners to go beyond the elitist nature of Chinese intellectual thought to embrace the collective wisdom of different stakeholders, especially those who are directly affected by the development process.
