Voices of the people : post-occupancy social impact assessment for enabling community sustainability under the blue house cluster revitalisation

Abstract

Shophouses are a significant part of Hong Kong’s built heritage. They embody a wide range of social values – neighbours’ attachment, community network, and working class lifestyles. Conserving shophouses helps to retain their historical and architectural significances, but the impacts on the social values often receive less attendance. There is at least one exception in Hong Kong – the highest UNESCO conservation award winning Viva Blue House project. This is a conservation project of the Blue House Cluster in the rapidly redeveloping and gentrifying Wanchai district. Upholding the pioneering concept “Conservation First, Community Always,” this project is renowned for conserving the shophouses and the people at the same time. Some original tenants have chosen to stay in the conserved shophouses, while new neighbours are introduced under the Good Neighbour Scheme to support the re-building of the Blue House community. The operator, St. James’ Settlement (SJS), has also turned the Blue House Cluster into a hub for its social programmes serving the local community. Two years after the completion of the restoration and repair works and the official launch of the Viva Blue House project, this research studies whether SJS’s social programmes are working or not in the eyes of the residents of the Blue House Cluster. This is a kind of Social Impact Assessment (SIA) undertaken at the post-occupancy stage of a project, which is uncommon, given that SIA is conventionally adopted at the planning, design, and implementation stages of a development project. It is widely recognised that public participation is essential in projects with social impacts. While there is no recognised methodology of assessing the social impacts of heritage conservation projects, this research explores whether the level of public participation could be used as an indicator of how a project is working or not as intended. Reference is made to an internationally recognised standard, the Public Participation Spectrum, which has been developed by the International Association for Public Participation Federation. This proposed methodology may also help the government to assess the post-occupancy phase social impacts of the conservation projects under the Revitalising Historic Buildings Through Partnership Scheme (R-Scheme), under which the Blue House Cluster has been revitalised and the Viva Blue House is now operating.