Tomorrow’s City – Mechanisms in Creating Better Urban Places

Leading global cities are significantly rethinking the planning and design of the urban realm in the wake of a deluge of newly available knowledge having become available as a result of technological innovation, global pandemic, and data from climate and environmental crisis. These cities seek to create adaptability and resilience in the face of upcoming and unknown challenges whilst addressing concerns with ageing population demographics, social equity, health, safety, pollution, and waste. New means of conceiving, delivering, and managing urban realm development is being undertaken as a means by which to create better places to live, with local mayors increasingly advocating for new urban solutions. Every city has its own pathways to change, formed from a cultural, statutory, and topographic hinterland. The session will explore how change for better places is happening around the world and whether knowledge, approaches, and techniques can be adopted to suit Hong Kong.

Learnings

• Why can’t Hong Kong make significant urban change as being evidenced around the world? What’s stopping us?
• With lots of new development areas in Northern Metropolis on the way, what can be expected there, and what more needs to be done in the established areas of the city?
• Could whole-system, structural mechanisms for the city be effected to replace the current siloed nature of implementation and management agencies?
• Are there new indexes and measurements that could lead to a quality driven consideration of the urban environment in Hong Kong?

Post-event Actions

• Consider how new modes of consultation, communication, and decision-making might lead to better quality outcomes in the design and management of urban space.
• Explore new methods and timelines of accounting and project or programme appraisal to reconsider the traditional cost-benefit approaches to project implementation.
• Ascertain whether business-as-usual approaches to urban management are acceptable in keeping Hong Kong competitive in the face of global competition for better places to live and work.
• Develop key recommendations to be further developed and shared with the professional community and political decision-makers.