The Transformation of Open Urban Space and Increasing Building Density in Hong Kong since the 1970s

Abstract

The narrow concept of open space (OS) present in land-use statutes cannot cover all new kinds of open urban space (OUS), however they must take responsibility for various open spaces in real-life cities, especially in contemporary high-density built environments. Open urban spaces are inserted into buildings or their accessibility is controlled by gated systems. A systematic and comprehensive approach to studying and evaluating the way in which OUS is changing is still lacking — especially from an architectural perspective. We put forward the Level-Type (L-T) framework to analyse the OUS system in central area of the Wan Chai and Yau Tsim Mong Districts, according to an expanded concept of OUS. In this paper, we illustrate the empirical studies from the first level of our research, to demonstrate how to use the new approach to evaluate the impacts of increasing density in the pattern of OUS. This study is fundamentally a qualitative study, however some data analyses act as auxiliary references to interpret changes observed in spatial planes and models. Following a three-step comparison of the changes in spatial forms and relevant data available since 1975, we found that all types of OUS are influenced — to different extents — by increasing trends and the speed at which they occur. Four kinds of relationships between increasing density and the transformation observed in the pattern of OUS are revealed. Moreover, with exception to the fourth kind of relationship — in which the changes observed in OUS are hardly a result of increasing density or the rate at which it occurred — we extract three main characteristics of OUS transformation from the remaining three kinds of relationships, which increase in density respectively. Furthermore, these characteristics of transformation can also explain the current recognition conflicts surrounding OUS from different perspectives and scales. This study method and resultant findings could prove very useful for managing and analysing the OUS system in high-density cities.