In collaboration with Designing Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong Centre of Community and Place Governance, PJA organised a two-panel webinar forum themed ‘A human-oriented approach to street design in Hong Kong’ last week.
Both panels of the webinar forum attracted over 400 viewers from different backgrounds, including government officials, built environment professionals, academics and students from Hong Kong, Australia and other regions.
Being one of densest cities in the world, Hong Kong has embraced a transit-oriented approach to keep its people moving. While nearly 90% of commuting trips in the city are made by public transport, its solution on a surface level is one that often prioritises car usage and motor traffic efficiency, which tends to overlook the vibrancy of street life and people’s health and well-being.
In the forum’s first panel, our chairman Phil Jones, Professor Peter Jones and Anna Rose from Space Syntax were joined by local experts Paul Zimmerman and Julian Kwong in discussing ways to design streets that prioritise people’s liveability. Despite there being unique local challenges in Hong Kong, speakers were able to reach consensus on some common place-based interventions that give more priority or consideration to people walking, including lower speed limits, road space reallocation, decluttering as well as reducing severance.
It was also agreed amongst the speakers that car use is particularly inefficient in a space-constrained context like Hong Kong but this realisation may not be common knowledge amongst the general public. It was suggested that small-scale on street trials may be a good way to demonstrate to the general public the feasibility and benefits of human-oriented street design. The ‘Link and Place’ street classification matrix was also introduced as a tool to redesign streets appropriate to the context.
The second panel focussed on how better street design could facilitate placemaking and well-being in the local context. Skye Duncan from Global Designing Cities Initiative introduced key concepts and international case studies on how to rethink streets as liveable places. Lucy Saunders introduced the Healthy Streets Approach that emphasises well-being and human experience, with Professor Mee Kam Ng also discussing how the quality of places around us contributes to our sense of place and our social and mental health. TW Ng and Chin Chin Lam from the Hong Kong Institute of Planners’ Healthy City Task Force, and Benny Chan from the Hong Kong Institute of Urban Design also discussed the need to change ‘vehicle-first’ mindsets in the city’s management.
Streets are not only how we get from point A to point B, but also an important part of our public realm. It is essential to design streets that are welcoming, accessible and equitable for all. To facilitate this shift, it would not only require a change of mindset, but also the collaboration of engineers, planners and designers, as well as other personnel relevant to the management of the streets in Hong Kong.
Watch the recorded sessions:
Panel #1 – Street design and planning: Alternatives to the car-oriented approach?
Panel #2 – Placemaking and well-being: How does street design fit in the agenda?
For more information, please contact: [email protected]
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