Evolution of urban form in Hong Kong : a study of development controls and high-density housing models

Abstract

Rapid population growth and critical land shortage were often considered as the two fundamental forces affected Hong Kong’s high-density urban form. Facing challenges of housing provision, the government of Hong Kong adopted a semi-autocratic operational measure to deal with the demands. This pragmatic approach for urban development achieved enormous success in housing provision to the city, however, the success was also attributed to the disregard of many other development objectives, and its resultant built environment constantly received criticisms usually related to the design concern of human scale, architectural diversity, and public realm which were not taken into the main consideration in the pragmatic urbanization process.

This dissertation attempts to understand Hong Kong’s unique urban form generated by the operational development process. The study chronologically looks into a series of high-density urban models including the component housing projects from 1841 to the present date. It discusses the relationship between their forms and shaping forces especially the development controls laid down by the government. In a broad categorization two kinds of development models are identified in this research. The first one is the models in the main urban areas or Victoria and Kowloon where a physical planning framework was fixed by the dominant city grid, and its typological transformation came about as the successive changes of building types caused by the changes of building regulations. The second one is the models in the new towns where town planning was individually exercised, with each appeared as an incorporated form of a unique layout plan and its component buildings. The structural understanding of Hong Kong’s urban form provides a valuable knowledge that contributes for the conceptualization of a new urban model for the compact city. It also provides planning and design professionals cross-disciplinary insights into the challenges that today’s urban development encounters globally under capitalism and the policy of state.