Community planning : as an empowerment process? : case in Hong Kong

Abstract

In the arena of planning in Hong Kong, the doctrine of community planning is still an abstract idea and has not been formally adopted by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government. Be that as it may, the word “community planning” or “community participation” was always mentioned in strategic dimensions of planning in Hong Kong in recent years. On the other hand, the discussion among community planning around the global asked for a higher and higher participation level in community planning process, shifting from participation to empowerment. Thus, this dissertation attempts to fill this research gap, analyzing the degree of empowerment under the planning frameworks and institutions in Hong Kong and how effective is community planning to empower citizens in Hong Kong.

The community engagement elements within the planning related institutional frameworks in Hong Kong were reviewed and analyzed, in order to figure out the extent of empowerment of the community engagement elements in these frame works. On the other hand, a local planning concern group, which adopts community planning based approach, was used as a contextual study of analyzing the effectiveness of community planning based practices to empower citizens in Hong Kong. It was found that the extent of empowerment of the community engagement elements in planning frameworks of Hong Kong is limited, and community planning based practices is effective in empowering citizens.

Thus, if planning in Hong Kong is to empower, but not disempower citizens, community planning approaches should be adopted. A series of empowering community planning process was recommended in this final part of this study.