Evaluating Hong Kong's open space planning by using GIS

Abstract

There is growing interest in open space planning in city, which is believed to be one of the important factors in affecting the livability and sustainability of city. Open space planning is indeed a multi-dimensional topic that involves different aspects of research focus. However, it is found that there is a research gap in the morphological analysis of Hong Kong’s open space with its adjourning zoning. Morphological analysis is essential in achieving a deeper understanding in the relationship between open space with its adjourning zones, which ultimately relates to urban justice that whether there is serious geographical difference in the provision of open space. Hong Kong’s case is notably of high research value because of its hyper-density both in terms of population and buildings which comes from the scarce developable land resource, creating financial incentive for the government to put lower priority to open space which is a non-revenue generating zoning.

This paper first collects the statutory zoning data from the 131 Outline Zoning Plans and then analyzes it on the Geographical Information System, which in result can record the size of open space and its adjourning zones within the 50m buffer area of every open space in Hong Kong for subsequent morphological analysis.

Based on the morphological analysis, this paper confirms that road (31%), high density residential development (22%) and government, institution and community zone (14%) are three zoning type comprising most of the area in the adjourning zoning of open space. Moreover, result shows that planners tend to provide mini-size open space, whose size is lower than the recommendation of local open space in Hong Kong Planning Standards and Guidelines (HKPSG), to decrease the deficit of local open space provision in order to achieve the provision standard set out in HKPSG. This study also confirms that planners are more generous in providing large-scale open space in New Development Areas than New Towns, which is regarded as an improvement in open space planning. Result also shows that planners have intentionally planned the harbourfront land to be open space as evidenced by the high ratio of zoned open space in the 50m buffer zone of harbourfront.