A tale of two public housing estates : a study of heritage interpretation and presentation in Shek Kip Mei and Ngau Tau Kok Estates

Abstract

Public housing estates are homes of many Hongkongers, which ties with the ‘collective memory’ of a board, basic and grass-roots group of people in Hong Kong. Though Hong Kong has a rapid development in many aspects, the demand on public housing stays in a relative high level due to many social reasons. For example, new immigrants from mainland China, who marry to local Hongkongers, this puts quite a loading to the public rental housing, which application is around 500 to 600 thousand of each from the total six categories.

In contrast, the investment immigration and also international investor also boost the real estate market that makes the residential flat much more unaffordable, which also resulted in higher demand on subsidized housing. This can be reflected in the breakthrough number of applications1 for public rental housing as announced by the Hong Kong Housing Authority (HKHA). The shortage of land for both the new public rental housing and subsidized housing, as well as the high maintenance cost to keep those old ones with relative low plot ratio, which resulted in great pressure of demolition and redevelopment. So does it means all old housing shall all be removed to suit the “development” of the city?

To ease the pressure of actual needs, as well as to achieve the vision and mission, the HKHA shows her effort on balancing the demolition and redevelopment of public housing with the rise of public awareness in heritage conservation. In view of the numerous hot protests against the demolition of Star Ferry Pier, Queen’s Pier, CGO West Wing, etc., and also the spontaneous interest group formed in the social-media platform, for the memories of the old public housing estate, the HKHA implement a series of program and activities to response to the public concern of ‘preserving the ‘collective memory’ of Hong Kong’s public housing’ during their planning of redevelopment in Shek Kip Mei and Ngau Tau Kok Estates.

In this dissertation, the different conservation approaches that HKHA has exercised in the two focus estates will be studied. The key research enquiry of this dissertation is about what has been done and the message delivered by the HKHA may have gone through an inevitable process, the interpretation and presentation. So what is the objective of doing all these conservation works from HKHA? Is it the goal or intention to help preserving the ‘collective memory’ of Hong Kong’s Public Housing? If yes, does it effectively achieve? What is the criteria and procedure that the HKHA has set up and follow? Who is responsible for the assessment? What makes the differences between the two cases and why? Is it because of the grading declared by the AAB or just because of the noise comes up from the public in particular estate? What should have to be done helping to guide the future conservation works of Hong Kong’s public housing?

1 Number of applications and average waiting time for public rental housing, refers to HKHA’s website, http://www.housingauthority.gov.hk/en/about-us/publications-and-statistics/prh-applications-average-waiting-time/index.html. ---------------

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