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

Recreational Public Open SpacesQuantityQualityOne of the URA’s goals is to provide badly needed open space in congested older urbanareas. The Urban Renewal Strategy sets the goal of providing 60,000m 2 of open space withinthe first 20 years. After 8 years, the URA has built 11,675m 2 of public open space. Whenprojects under planning or construction are included, the number rises to 30,729m 2 .While site visits found no examples of severe mismanagement, the quality of open spacesvaried in terms of accessibility and design. The sorts of problems found are typical of publicand privately-managed open spaces in Hong Kong and are not specific to the URA. Overleafare observations about some of the more notable sites.However, this is actually quite a small percentage (15%) of the 202,157m 2 that the URA hasredeveloped/is planning to redevelop in total. The individual open spaces created are smallto medium sized sitting-out areas.2• The smallest two open spaces are 250m each, located in Sham Shui Po.• The median URA-created open space is 1,150m 2.2• The largest created by the URA so far is the 3,700m courtyard in the centre of TsuenWan’s Vision City project. The URA is planning to create 8,700m 2 of open space as partof the enormous 53,500m 2 Kwun Tong Town Centre project.As the URA’s method of creating open space depends on setting aside a portion of itsredevelopment sites, this means that the amount of open space created is determined by thesize of the site and its profitability. The largest open space created through redevelopmentwas not by the URA, but by the former LDC which set aside 6,000m 2 of the 8,818m 2 sitefor its flagship project, The Centre, in Central. The 73-storey commercial skyscraper wasbuilt on a narrow base so as to leave more open space available at ground level. 168 However,as prime commercial sites became less available, the URA was no longer able to set aside sucha large percentage for open space.Most URA spaces fall under the Planning Department’s definition of “local open space” —small sitting-out areas intended for neighbourhood use, as opposed to “district open space”or “regional open space” which serve larger catchment areas.