Public Open Space Provision in Private Developments

Download or read book Public Open Space Provision in Private Developments written by Wan-In Chun and published by Open Dissertation Press. This book was released on 2017-01-27 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation, "Public Open Space Provision in Private Developments: the Case of Urban Renewal Authority Redevelopment Projects in Hong Kong" by Wan-in, Chun, 秦蘊妍, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Public open space (POS) within a city acts as an important breathing and recreational space for the urban population within a proximate distance by providing economic, social, psychological and environmental benefits to human settlements. In a city like Hong Kong (HK) adopting economic-centred development, land is be maximized for monetary use especially under land scarce due to topographical constraint. Hence, compact development is resulted especially in urban areas. Past study had found that the proportion of open space zoning undergone a downward trend across the territory as time moves on and a gap was observed between planned and actual open space provision (Tang and Wong, 2008, p. 261). On the other hand, some POS were created within residual development land in the urban area which are of poor locational quality. Taken into account of early POS provision inefficiency, the government sees the opportunity in gradual neighbourhood decay as a mean to encourage POS provision within new private developments. This idea originated as a planning policy since 1980s which tries to overcome shortcomings of POS provision in districts by means of requiring or encouraging POS provision within private developments. However, while this policy contains certain benefits, it is not without issues and problems from the design, social, economic, institutional and policy point of view. This dissertation therefore aims to examine POS provision within URA redevelopment projects in HK where district renewal is one of the sources of newly built private developments containing POS provision. The study aims to find out POS contribution, performance, as well as to unravel potential benefits, issues and concerns associated with the provision, given existing context of regulatory policies and operational guidelines. The term "URA redevelopment projects" used in the dissertation, covers a longitudinal review of all completed projects containing POS provision that were taken place between the Land Development Corporation (LDC) and the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) period, in which the URA was established to supersede and continue with the LDC's renewal work in 2001 due to organizational inefficiency. The study hopes to give implications on future POS provision within URA redevelopment projects so as to enhance POS functionality and usability through policy, development control and governance perspectives. There are a total of 25 redevelopment projects containing POS provision during the LDC and the URA period, out of which 16 of them are completed by the end of June 2014. The study found that the spatial location of the completed and future POS provision among the redevelopment projects positively correlates with local open space (LOS) and district Open Space (DOS) deficit spatially. Among the completed projects, POS performance varies in aspects of functionality, aesthetic value, privacy, accessibility etc. In considering POS provision on top of planned requirement, additional floor spaces are also granted for several cases without maximizing the efforts in enhancing POS use value. Furthermore, some cases also demonstrate potential uncertainty in POS provision and rights of entry. Overall speaking, policy aims are partially meet. By means of employing planning, economic as well as institutional perspectives in analysis, performance variations are attrib