The communal meaning of a temporal cultural heritage : investigating the street mural as a community placemaker

Abstract

Placemaking approach has been widely applied to Hong Kong through redevelopment which led to a loss of cultural significance sometimes. A new placemaker, street mural, raises public awareness of local culture and history in the recent years. Although street mural is temporal in nature, it is a doubt whether a temporal object could act to amplify local significances like the spirit and culture of the place in a long run. People’s attention on the street mural created by international artists in overseas countries has led to the transformation of street mural into part of the communal heritage asset.

There are quite a few overseas cases that we can benchmark or make reference to understanding the development of street mural. This dissertation is to examine representative cases in Hong Kong, on its impact to local significance especially for those situated in old urban area which are facing threat of redevelopment. Even when redevelopment and urban regeneration take place, the cultural significance of the local community should be retained. Considering the potential impact of street mural to the community, local context including how street mural to be developed in Hong Kong should be analysed to examine the effectiveness of this people-oriented placemaking approach in Hong Kong.

Similar to Hong Kong, Singapore has diversified culture within an urban area, further setting on its application of street mural to urban regeneration should be considered in order to review the current street mural progress in Hong Kong and to provide recommendation on the way to improve how the placemaker can foster social cohesion and identity of the place.