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

General ObservationsLandscapingGenerally speaking, the landscaping of privately-managedsemi-commercialized public open spaces was of a higherquality than that used in spaces intended mainly forresidential users. This is because the amenity value providedby open spaces in a commercial setting brings financialbenefits to the shopping centre operator by attracting andkeeping shoppers. This makes them more willing to payfor good quality landscaping including high-maintenancefeatures such as wooden paving and water fountains. Spacesintended for residential users do not bring commensuratecommercial benefits. These were usually turned over to theLCSD or in a few cases to the URA itself to manage. Asa result, they were more likely to use standardized designsand materials geared more towards ease of maintenancethan to providing a pleasant environment.AccessibilityThe provision of public open space within privatedevelopments resulted in some accessibility problems. TheHong Kong Planning Standards and Guidelines on openspace encourage the provision of public (and private) openspaces by the private sector, which are often provided atpodium level or in places requiring one to pass throughprivate property in order to reach them. This necessarilyintroduces time access restrictions due to security issues.Open spaces in such locations at the sites visited didnot permit 24-hour access, whether they were managedprivately or by the government.Providing open spaces at podium level also results inpractical accessibility problems. Even if those areas arephysically accessible by stairs, escalators, or elevators, thepeople do not necessarily know about them, may not beable to find them, and have little occasion to use themin the course of their daily routines. The Langham Placepodium garden manages to capture some users from thecooked food market and community centre, but the Pawnand the upper levels of the Vision City open space werepractically empty.The Dilemmas ofSemi-Public SpacesThe Hong Kong Planning Standards and Guidelines onrecreation, open space and greening have encouraged theprivate provision of open spaces, both public and private,since the mid-1990s. At the time, this was thought to bea good way of providing more open spaces without greatgovernment expense due to Hong Kong’s severe spaceshortages and high land costs. This model was embraced bythe URA, but was also encouraged in many purely privatesector developments.However, semi-public spaces can be problematic becausethe public’s interest in having maximum freedom to usethe space conflicts with the private manager’s interest incontrolling the space and minimizing maintenance costs.Some spaces are able to mediate these conflicts better thanothers.For a semi-public space to function successfully, thesefactors need to be present:1. The semi-public space is visible and convenientlyaccessible from other public spaces (i.e. the street).The general public should not have to pass throughmuch private property in order to reach it. Otherwise,only those who have a reason to be in the privatespace will have occasion to use the public space. Onlyshoppers will use a shopping mall’s podium garden;other passers-by will not traverse a shopping mall justto reach it.2.3.Heavy use by the general public aligns with privateinterests. A shopping centre courtyard fits thedescription, because shopping centres profit fromattracting many people. The rooftop garden of arestaurant does not, nor does a pedestrian concourselocated in the middle of a residential development. Inparticular, a semi-public space should not be located ina place where the public will compromise the securityor privacy of the building’s private users.There must be a clear and equitable agreementdelineating rights and responsibilities of both themanagement and the public in the space. It mustdescribe the public’s rights of access, and the extentto which the management is allowed to benefitcommercially from the space (if at all). The agreementmust then be enforced.Public spaces that do not fulfil the first condition arelikely to be underutilized, while those that do not fulfilthe second are prone to mismanagement as the managershave an incentive to keep the public out. Spaces that failthe third condition are likely to have conflicts over who isallowed to do what in them. For example, the managementmay attempt to inappropriately rent the space out forcommercial purposes when the developer has already beengranted GFA concessions to provide the space for publicbenefit.Recent controversies over semi-public space have resultedfrom one or more of these problems. These events havepersuaded the TPB to rethink its position on privatelyprovisionedpublic open space, particularly in residentialdevelopments. In 2008, the TPB announced that theDevelopment Bureau should no longer ask it to acceptpublic open spaces in private developments as ‘planninggain’, 172 especially not in residential developments. It saidthat it would “from now on carefully consider the location,design and implementation prospects of public facilitiesproposed under any future planning applications beforedeciding whether such provision would be accepted as aplanning gain.” 17383