Comparative study of public participation in Mainland and Hong Kong urban renewal

Abstract

Urban decay has become a serious problem in many countries around the world, and urban renewal has been widely adopted as an important national strategy to encounter such problem. After decades, public participation as a soft part was taken into account to supplement the physical reconstruction. In developed countries and regions such as Hong Kong, Singapore, U.K., etc, the spirit of public participation has permeated in the whole society, and has been applied in the urban renewal process, while in developing countries such as Mainland China, public participation is more like a slogan. In the real practice, to complete urban renewal as fast as possible, participation is generally ignored by the government, and the public do not have the consciousness of participation. General conditions and specific cases of public participation in urban renewal in both Mainland and Hong Kong are illustrated.

In this dissertation, however, unlike most scholars’ judgment, advantages of Mainland’s mode are confirmed, and disadvantages of Hong Kong public participation are a little different from common argument. Based on literature review and international best practices, four factors are extracted to establish an ideal framework of public participation in urban renewal, namely special executive agency, comprehensive and detailed legislations, public’s consciousness of participation and rich free social resources, which mainly refers to non-government organizations. Recommendations to both Mainland and Hong Kong will be proposed on account of the model in the end of the dissertation.