Making Places

Contributors, Densities, Essay, Formats, Francesco Rossini, Middle Density, Territory and mobility, Topics, Urban Paradigms.

Active Public Spaces, Bottom-up approach, Citizen interaction, City Planning, Collective identity, Colour, Community, Density, Design strategies, Essay, Hong Kong, Identity, Leisure, Open Space, Participation, Public engagement, Public Space, Residual Space, Sharing knowledge, Temporary Interventions, Territory, Urban environment, Urban Paradigms.

Cresswell, T. (2004). Place: An Introduction: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Cheung, P. (2011). Civic Engagement in the Policy Pro¬cess in Hong Kong: Change and Continuity. Public Ad¬ministration and Development (31), 113–121.

Levesque, L. (2013). “Trajectories of Interstitial Land¬scapeness: A Conceptual Framework for Territorial Im¬agination and Action.” In Urban Interstices: The Aes¬thetics and the Politics of the In-Between, edited by A. M. Brighenti, 21–63. Burlington: Ashgate.

Lydon, M., & Garcia, A. (2015). Tactical Urbanism: Short-term Action for Long-term Change. Washington DC: Island Press.

Rossini, F. (2014). Nuevos espacios colectivos de la ciudad vertical contemporánea: El caso de Hong Kong. PhD diss., Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2117/95321

Rossini, F. (2018). Temporary Urban Intervention in the Vertical City: A Place-making Project to Re-activate the Public Spaces in Hong Kong. Journal of Urban Design, 1-19. doi:10.1080/13574809.2018.1507674

Xue, C. Q. L., & Manuel, K. K. K. (2001). The Quest for Better Public Space: A Critical Review of Urban Hong Kong. In P. Miao (Ed.), Public Places of Asia Pacific Countries: Current Issues and Strategies. (pp. 171– 190). The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

In Hong Kong, the intensive use of the territory and the lack of available land for development have determined an intense form of vertical urbanism where public spaces have never been a key component of the urban development (Rossini, 2014, 2018). Several studies have indicated the importance of public open spaces in creating leisure opportunities as well as in connecting people and the community as a whole. Unfortunately, however, as argued by Xue and Manuel (2001), in Hong Kong, city planning strategies have not been effective in creating comprehensive plans for the development of this critical urban resource. Limited land supply and laissez-faire government policy have adversely affected the availability of open spaces in core urban areas, as well as their spatial qualities. That being said, the lack of an inclusive planning vision has generated several unconventional, unplanned, and residual spaces that may be strategically used to increase the amount of available open spaces in urban areas.