Hong Kong 's City Planning

Rapid urbanisation has caused a variety of problems, including transport congestion, lack of sufficient homes and living conditions, sanitary and health care issues, and crime. For all these problems, city planners have attempted potential solutions, each with varying degrees of success. Cities including London, Manila and Mumbai have several of the aforementioned problems, and have each tried their own potential solutions. This essay will discuss how successful these schemes have been in resolving these issues.

Its population increased by 48% within few years. The expansion of cities resulted in destroying unbuilt and farm lands to further the constructions. Landowners with land interfering with “planned residential communities” were forced to give up their lands and see them destroyed. As the author states, families such as Warnes were forced to see their family lands bought and built. Even though such intact lands are rare in the area and beneficial to the population as somewhere to connect with nature, entrepreneurs prefer the economical profit. The suburbs expand and with every new family moving in the area, more cars are purchased adding to the gridlock.

With new malls and excitements in residential areas, communities started to set their minds on forming larger suburbs to bring in more

When the supply of resources can’t keep up with the citizens’ demands, areas are revamped to fit growing needs. Politicians have also chosen to ‘help’ neglected areas when they see a possibility for profit or gain. Throughout the last century, people have been increasingly shifting from rural to urban living. The more people moving into a city increases the need for housing and businesses.

Under this alternative, it is seen that using density bonuses in this region may be an inefficient use of resources. There are often two alternatives when choosing where to put affordable housing. A government may choose to locate it near transit that would provide access to many areas of a municipality (but during limited times) or they may choose to locate affordable housing near central commerce areas; ideally, this would provide individuals with access to jobs and amenities within walking

Before this class I never gave a second to think about how and why people decide where to live. I thought people went looking for houses and bought the house they liked. I didn’t know all the other factors that went into finding a place to live. But truthfully I didn’t really care. I now believe the interaction of economic development strategies and spatial form in urban environments comes down to three things. It comes down to appealing to different people and cultures, segregation and inequality, and the three T’s of development (technology, talent, and tolerance).

Our cities offer close proximity to services, entertainment and employment. Building high density housing within reach of the main sectors of the hub

Gentrification has been a controversial issue both in urban planning and politics primarily due to the displacement of poor people by the rich folks (Shaw & Hagemans, 2015). Many individuals have viewed gentrification as an illegal act that should be avoided at all costs. On the other hand, another group of people believe that gentrification is the way forward to promoting growth and development. With such contrasting ideas, this paper is going to take a look at gentrification from a positive and negative perspective, its effects, and how it can be prevented or contained. Apart from this, the paper will also address the following questions.

Burgess’s concentric zone theory was presented in 1924. He presented a descriptive urban land use model that divided cities in a set of concentric circles expanding from downtown to the suburbs. His representation came from Burgess’ observations of various American cities, especially Chicago. Burgess model assumes a relationship between the socio-economic status of households and the distance from the Central Business District. The further from the district, the better the quality of housing, but the longer the commuting time. Making this Accessing better housing is done at the expense of longer commuting times and costs as well. According to Burgess, urban growth is a process of expansion and reconversion of land uses, with a tendency of each inner zone to expand in the outer zone. According to Burgess’ theory, a large city is divided in six concentric zones, Burgess’s model has its cons according to critics. It is said to be a product of its time. That is, it won’t work the same with present cities. The model was developed when American cities were growing very fast and when motorized transportation was still uncommon as most people used public transit. Thus the concept cannot be applied to those from the second half to the twentieth century where highways have enabled urban development to escape the reconversion process and to take place directly in the suburbs. The model in this case was developed for American cities and is limited elsewhere.

In the book “Hong Kong Cinema: Coloniser, motherland and self”, the author Yingchi Chu describes Hong Kong as “[a] ‘nation’ without sovereignty” (98). It is because of the unique and complicating historical experience that Hong Kong people have been going through since its early beginning. From the early time until before 1842, Hong Kong was considered to be a territory of China. In 1842, China officially ceded Hong Kong to the British after the First Opium War due to the rise of British’s power; and from that moment to 1997, Hong Kong had been remaining as a British’s colony and experiencing the very distinct cultural development and social changes. The year 1997 marked the

Ebenezer Howard created revolutionary concepts with his “Town-Country Magnet” idea. This idealistic paper combines the healthy amenities of the country with the economic machine of the city; two entities that were, at the time, completely segregated. He reinvented this space and called it the “Garden City” (Howard 373). This urban decentralization used a circular plan and designated each ring to a different use, separated by expansive avenues and

New Urbanism, a burgeoning genre of architecture and city planning, is a movement that has come about only in the past decade. This movement is a response to the proliferation of conventional suburban development (CSD), the most popular form of suburban expansion that has taken place since World War II. Wrote Robert Steuteville, "Lacking a town center or pedestrian scale, CSD spreads out to consume large areas of countryside even as population grows relatively slowly. Automobile use per capita has soared, because a motor vehicle is required for nearly all human transportation"1. New Urbanism, therefore, represents the converse of this planning ideology. It stresses traditional planning, including multi-purpose zoning,

The number of towns increased as people migrated to them to find jobs as industrial workers, as the highest populations

The garden city movement, a method of urban planning that was initiated in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard, had a significant influence on urban planning. The theory of urban planning has envolved over the past hundred years, some have attempted to emulate theories from the garden city movement, while others have been revised based on Howard’s original ideas. The Garden City concept spawned many ideas of urban planning. Among these ideas, the Garden Suburb, Satellite City, the New Towns Movement and the New Urbanism are all significant theories in the history of urban planning and had their influence to this day. The integration of town and country, the separation of conflicting land uses and modes of travel, and the ideas of growth management are all elements of the Garden City concept that have made made their ways into plans of most major Western cities.

Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China, is a well-known international financial center with more than 7.3 million populations in 2015 that has more than 1,000 square kilometers of land area, reported statistics from Census and Statistics Department (CSD) (2016). However, according to Tuberculosis and Chest Service, Department of Health (DH), tuberculosis (TB) is still threatening this tiny little place since the nineteenth century (2006). In 2015, Centre for Health Protection (CHP) reported around 5,000 notification cases and approximately 170 deaths in Hong Kong on TB, including Chinese immigrants (2016). One TB patient would be found in every 1,000 persons in Hong Kong, which is around 10 times higher than western developed countries such as the United States or United Kingdom (DH, 2006). When discussing the lifetime risk of developing TB, an individual is affected in every 13 persons during some points of their lifetime (DH, 2006). As a result, the World Health Organization (WHO) concludes Hong Kong bears an intermediate burden of TB within the Western Pacific Region’s area (DH, 2006).