Hong Kong without a doubt is the densest cities in the world, in fact, it has the highest population and employment density in the world. As of 2011, there are 7 million people for its 1068 square kilometres of land, however, more than 75% of the land comprises no built up areas. (Yeh, 2011)
Source : http://www.gov.hk/en/about/abouthk/factsheets/docs/population.pdf
Stumbled upon an article titled "Hong Kong has enough money and land, but no guts or will to solve its housing crisis" The author of the article highlighted the fact that greedy landlords, unscrupulous property developers as well as gutless governance were the reason that urbanist could not afford a decent home instead of a tiny pigeonholes. Nevertheless, with the high price of land in Hong Kong also contributes to its high-density development. On top of that associating the situation towards the impact of its social fabric.
After further research, it is noted that the author might not be on the neutral ground upon producing the article but instead expressing his unsatisfaction of opinion. Although, high population density is undesirable and often associated with social pathologies and problem, however, studies shown there is little correlation between density and social pathology. (Yeh, 2011) Evidently, the moral of the issue would be to have a clear distinction between 'density' and 'crowing'. While ' density' is used to refer to the physical limitation of space, 'crowding' is the actual psychological perception of the limited space.
Returning to the topic of the living conditions of urbanist that an average home and living space are less than 9.3 sqm in size whereas cage homes tend to be just 1.9 sqm. Resulting in poor living habitat such as poor ventilation, stressful relationships with the community. Despite the quality of accommodation, unaffordable rents. Unfortunately, the HK Government does not approach the issue of housing through a health perspective, (LSECities, 2011) in fact ignoring the issue which forces them to remain for a longer period of time in poor living environment. That said, a triple bottom line approach has to be addressed in order to secure as well as ensure a sustainable development of the city. It is an accounting framework that incorporates three dimensions of performance : social, environmental and financial so that people across the spectrum could contribute towards wider urbanity such as government, decision makers, development agency as well as individual Hong Kong urbanist.
In addition, a top-down approach is equally important to ensure the workability of the triple bottom line approach that engages with a set of opportunities and challenges. In this case, government and public policy have the potential to quickly push through massive change, especially when people recognise a major threat (Zwicke, 2010) Of course, this too questions the roles of designers such as architects to design livable spaces for the community. As described by Rem Koolhaas at the 2016 AIA convention. architecture has a serious problem today, moving from a welfare state to a market economy. Slowly, architects found ourselves supporting, at best, individual ambitions and , at worst, pure profit motives. (Budds, 2016) Without a doubt, it was an interesting read by the Pritzker Prize Winner Architect, Theorist and Provocateur that somewhat reinforced my motivation, about why I chose to be an architect years ago; to make a difference, even for just a group of people with the architecture I create.
Resource:
http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1947676/hong-kong-has-enough-money-and-land-no-guts-or-will-solve
https://lsecities.net/media/objects/articles/high-density-living-in-hong-kong/en-gb/
http://www.gov.hk/en/about/abouthk/factsheets/docs/population.pdf
https://lsecities.net/media/objects/articles/hong-kong/en-gb/
http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/01/imitation-or-creativity/#
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3060135/innovation-by-design/rem-koolhaas-architecture-has-a-serious-problem-today
No comments:
Post a Comment