Land as situated spatio-histories: A dialogue with global urbanism

The framing of ‘southern urbans’ poses urbans as a diversity of ‘landing sites’ constituted around ‘local’ political economies, under capital’s planetary condition. However, tongbian philosophy connects to the complexity of land tenure beyond such implied colonial cartography. Colonial urban history reveals how land tenurial under colonial administrations remained unsettled and politicized sites: in Bombay; urban sites across Canada, such as ‘Turtle Island’; and Palestine Australia; Niger, among other sites in Africa; and Indonesia. While people recognize the importance of the philosophy of internal relations in itself, the tongbian philosophy is central to emphasize spatial complementaries and problematize contradictions in land transformation. According to the tongbian epistemology, knowledge is developed within the context. Unlike others around the world, the Hong Kong government has always been under the command of the British government at a distance while living with the Chinese within, as well as outside, the city boundary.