ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the significance of the study of urban movements and its significance to the study of urban politics in Hong Kong which will spell out the method and data used in this study. An urban movement is an individual organization making urban demands. The study focuses on Aged Temporary Housing Area (ATHA) protest and aims to illustrate how political structure, the organizational specificity of the protest and the actors involved shape the character of a housing movement. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book includes the discussion and evaluation of the classical perspective on collective action, the resource mobilization theory, the political process model, and the social construction model. It examines the structure of housing provision in Hong Kong and explores the reasons for the fact that housing problems got worse in the 1980s.
