Transportation Megaprojects, Globalization, and Place-Making in Hong Kong and South China

This paper draws on an argument presented at the 2005 TRB Annual Meeting by one of its authors claiming that traditional methods of evaluating transportation megaprojects (TMPs) are outdated in the new globalized world. Although planners understand the importance of conventional techniques of forecasting, appraisal, cost funding, and so forth to ensure that a project attains desired levels of operational efficiency, they are less familiar with the impact such projects have on places and communities in the name of enhancing competitiveness. In the context of Hong Kong and South China, this paper examines whether TMP experts are in the process of duplicating past errors of urban transport planners, but on a massively larger scale, by introducing new TMPs in a manner that restructures whole regions to meet the “operations efficiency” of networks above all else and, in so doing, benefits global (corporate) interests more than local, even though their patrons often have local and national governments meeting the lion's share of financial, social, and environmental costs (as well as risks).