The Making of Hong Kong
With its island origins, skyscraper skyline and world city status, Hong Kong is often likened to New York. However the comparison soon falters with the realization that Hong Kong’s skyscrapers are only the more visible aspect of a far more complex urban condition. A steep and contorted terrain has ensured that built-up areas are compact, rich in spatial experience, rarely far from hills and water; and connected by an array of public transport that is second to none.
The three authors of The Making of Hong Kong see value in these conditions – a metropolis with a small urban footprint, 90 per cent use of public transport for vehicular journeys, and proximity to nature. Though the compact city is a model that is frequently advocated by urban thinkers, it is one rarely encountered. Here, the evolution of Hong Kong’s intense urbanism is traced from the region’s pre-colonial walled settlements and colonial shop-houses to the contemporary vertical and volumetric metropolis of towers, podia-and-towers, decks, bridges, escalators and other components of multi-level city living. On a site bedevilled by an acute shortage of flat land, Hong Kong is portrayed as the ‘accidental pioneer of a new kind of urbanism’ that commands the thoughtful attention of a wider world.
Barrie Shelton is Associate Professor of Urban Design in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne
Justyna Karakiewicz is Associate Professor of Urban Design in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne
Thomas Kvan is Professor and Dean in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne
Contents
- 1. A State of IntenCity
- 2. Precedents
- 3. Long, Low and Intense: From Possession Point to World War II
- 4. Massing and Rising: The Post-War Decades
- 5. Vertical and Volumetric: Post 1980
- 6. Podium and Tower
- 7. Emerging Volumetric: Components
- 8. Conclusion: Vertical and Volumetric
- Addendum: Advancing the Volumetric on Old District and New Territory Sites
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