Waterfront Regeneration and Vitality in Hong Kong Central

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is a settlement comprising the Kowloon Peninsula and over 250 islands, which has led to many urban areas of Hong Kong having a coastal edge. With the city’s history of sea trade being such an integral part of its formation and growth, these coastal edges are vital to its cultural identity, offering its inhabitants a sense of belonging and place. For the general public to derive this sense of place and belonging from these coastal edges, they must be able to access them. However, as this region has some of the world’s highest land values and coastal sites are considered premium, the ‘exchange value’ of these coastal urban edges and districts often takes priority over the ‘user value’, and only around 10% of this region is currently protected as public open space.

In recent years, Hong Kong has experienced a reduction in the functional requirements and utilisation of its coastal edges for transportation and shipping purposes, which includes the former Kai Tak Airport site being repurposed for mixed-use development and the market share of the Kwai Tsing Container Terminal reducing as the Greater Bay Area development increases the accessibility and preference for direct shipping routes to and from China via alternative ports in Shenzen and Guangzhou. This transition in the urban coastal edge from the functional to the under-utilised can be observed in many cities worldwide, including Sydney, Hamburg and Baltimore, which has marked the growth of waterfront regeneration projects.

While such regeneration projects increase the assignation of coastal edges as public spaces, other factors such as air quality, accessibility and proxemic facilities affect the usability and vitality of waterfront public open spaces (WPOS). Without properly considering these factors in waterfront regeneration, there is the risk of an under-utilised infrastructural space becoming an under-utilised public space. Thus, by focusing on recently completed WPOS in Hong Kong, this chapter defines the characteristics of a WPOS that contribute to its de-cline in usability and vitality.

These criteria encompass quantitative variables such as functional density, point of interest (POI), site location and user interaction indexes, among others, which give expression to the vitality and characteristics of a WPOS.