Abstract:Taking Chongqing as an example, this paper investigates how Hong Kong’ s ‘toweron-podium’ model impacted the modernization of mainland China’ s urban landscape in the 1980s-1990s. Influenced by the reality of Hong Kong’ s land resource shortage, overcrowded population, and market-oriented construction mode, Hong Kong’ s ‘toweron-podium’ mode has the characteristic of prioritizing efficiency. It tends to develop into a self-contained area to avoid interference from the surrounding urban environment on its efficiency of service and commerce, reflecting the tendency of insularization. When such mode spread to Chongqing in the 1980s, its prioritization of efficiency and selfcontained tendency were weakened for a time due to the absence of a real estate market in Chongqing. In the 1990s, as the real estate market in Chongqing was established, the ‘on-podium tower-on-podium’ , to some extent, brought the modernity of Hong Kong characters (pragmatism, ’ tendency to prioritize efficiency and siloing has resurfaced. The ‘towerprioritizing efficiency, secularization, and commercialization) to Chongqing but also resulted in a fragmented urban landscape modernization process due to its self-contained natur.