Renewal with arrival

Abstract

Hong Kong is an immigrant city. Over 30% of population nowadays are immigrant from mainly China mainland, Malaysia, Philippine and UK (CSD, 2017). Sham Shui po is a typical arrival city that had successfully accommodated several generations of immigrants and help them rising to the local city middle class. Sham Shui Po is developed in 1920s. Its small housing, density and streetscape help them to frame a social supporting network and create more low-skill job opportunity. However, these urban renewal projects are damaging the existing immigrant community’s social mechanism that helps them to move upward to better income social status. What’s more, with the growing awareness of property right and community movement, the counterviews from neighborhood residents, including migrant tenant, property owners and other stakeholders, were getting stronger and lead to radical rise on financial and administrative cost of redevelopment process. This research is aiming to use participatory planning and design to fulfill urban renewal’s economic and social goals while maintain, as well as improve, the supportive mechanism of immigrant neighborhood, in terms of better affordable living, accessible job opportunity, sense of community and cultural identity in Hong Kong. It is based on the theory of migrants’ city, which addresses on migrants’ life and spatial need. Another theoretical column is participatory planning and design, which claims to include users and stakeholders voice in design and planning process. With research on participation practices in Asian cities, a participatory are proposed as a tool for planer to engage and intervene on participatory planning. It is constituted by a strategy plan, community engagement and neighborhood design toolkit.