Monument, relics and heritage: the scalar politics of Sacred Hill in Hong Kong

Abstract In 2014, the discovery of Sacred Hill relics in the Kowloon City district during the construction of the railway station initiated a fierce debate regarding site conservation, urban redevelopment, and heritage management in Hong Kong’s society. The name ‘Sacred Hill’ gradually transformed from a longstanding informal term for that area into an official title for the heritage site. Drawing on recent scholarship concerning the relationship between heritage-making and the construction of scale, this article provides a case study to show how scale is applied as a strategic method to demarcate, extend, and challenge the temporal and spatial boundaries of a heritage site. This method allows stakeholders to borrow power from different contexts to reinforce the authenticity of their narrative. While the government, developers and cultural institutes use Sacred Hill to legitimise the narrative of district redevelopment, national history, and patriotic education by designating the scalar dimension, the community also employs values from international and national scales to develop local identities and resist urban renewal. The case shows that heritage-making is a scaling process for reworking boundaries and implications.