The Greater Bay Area, known as the GBA, ultimately incorporates 11 main cities (consisting of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), the Macao Special Administrative Region (Macao SAR) as well as the municipalities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Huizhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Jiangmen, and Zhaoqing) into an urbanised population of over 70 million people. It represents a significant opportunity to shape the future of the Pearl River Delta region.

In the last decades, this region has experienced an unprecedented rise of urbanisation and a rapid economic growth positioning itself as the future centre of global economy. However, the uneven development has been the reason behind several environmental and socio-spatial challenges that threaten the future of this mega region. The research intends to comprehend these issues under the fragmentation perspective, by classifying and analysing the challenges within three main themes (Society, Economy and Environment) in three different scales. Furthermore, the research proposes that the integration of bio-physical infrastructures (Green and blue network) respecting the natural ecosystem and the delta conditions throughout the whole process of development and urbanisation, will help redefine the future of globalisation in the GBA. In order to achieve that, an explorative method using the ‘strips game’ was used as a method to produce a vision and urban scenarios on multiple scales providing functional and spatial distributions. This method was conducted in Hong Kong to give access to the feeling and environment in question.

This project displays an explorative attempt at redefining the megablock planning concept. The Greater Bay Area (GBA), as the site of interest, is undergoing rapid metropolization, with a risk of resulting in the formation of indistinguishable, generic urban structures. The fast development and the migration process have defined a region with multiple identities and diverse groups of people living in it. The social and spatial implications of the metropolization process reflect a segregation between the actual planning system and the diverse people that live in this region. The proposal aims to transform the megablock, a traditional, structural form of planning that is a form of de-contextualized, top down planning based around an economic, private-driven market, into a planning tool that enables the cohabitation of multiple lifestyles that creates social networks of interaction, activates spaces of the existing context and relates them with new developments. Therefore, the redefining of the megablock intends to find how rapid urbanization and the enhancement of distinct local and external identities can go hand-in-hand in a multiplicity of urban contexts, creating a balance between quantity and quality and creating a process of place making that allows the enhancement and strengthening of the notion of identity in a local, urban and regional scale. The Megablock becomes a sustainable prototype for future urbanization and a morphological spatial structure that re-establish a spatial order and framework for the transitions and relations between diverse places and people.