Treating the Symptoms - A Critical Review of ... - Civic Exchange

Left: Sheung Wan Fong, located a block south of Western Market, was created by realigning part of a road around a traffic island. It has become a gathering place for the neighbourhood’s elderly residents.RevitalizationRevitalization is the least clearly defined aspect of the URA’s 4Rs strategy. The URA’s websitestates that “revitalization is the deployment of appropriate means of renewal to revive andstrengthen the economic and environmental fabric of different districts”, which is a broadenough description that it could conceivably cover all four Rs. However, in practice, itsrevitalization projects have had far narrower goals.The URA’s list of revitalization projects (only five to date) include three street beautificationprojects and two heritage preservation projects (the Blue House, and the Mallory Streetproject) which are also on its list of preservation projects.Since heritage preservation has already been discussed above, this section will focus mainlyon the beautification projects. These projects take place within the URA’s nine target areasand are modest in scope, which mostly involves improving the physical appearance of placesby installing new street furniture, repaving, repainting, and planting.117The biggest revitalization project so far conducted was the beautification of the areasurrounding Western Market in conjunction with the market’s own refurbishment. Itinvolved the improvement of street furniture, tree planting, renovating a footbridge, andconverting a nearby traffic island into a small public piazza named “Sheung Wan Fong”.Other, smaller-scale beautification projects have been implemented in Tai Kok Tsui and inSheung Wan, including repaving, pavement widening, and the installation of street furnituresuch as better lighting, greenery and railings. While these small scale projects improvethe quality of the public realm in targeted areas, they do not have a major effect on localeconomies or environmental quality as they cannot make changes to land uses, permeabilityand accessibility.