PLANNING THE MIXED CITY

While the New Towns are planned around the basic concept of balanced and self-contained functions, many new town residents currently rely on Hong Kong’s traditional urban core for employment and other activities. As New Towns are developed with large, monofunctional plots, the street vitality and integration is low. A lack of street facing retail and mixed-use pedestrian space further contributes to a lack of walkability and vibrancy.

This project uses the newly planned Hung Shui Kiu New Development Area (NDA) as a case study, to explore strategies to improve the strategic location and civic function of a future town centre. Through planning a higher degree of mixing both in plan and in section, it is aimed to create more flexible, open-ended and dynamic mixed use urban neighbourhoods.

Providing a mixture of live, work, recreation and entertainment functions within close proximity to each other would promote cycling, walking, social interaction and community engagement.

The ‘Mixed City’ project proposes to relocate the newly planned civic hub from the south end of Hung Shui Kiu NDA to the area next to the Tin Shui Wai MTR station, to strengthen the connection between the two New Towns and enhance quality of life of existing residents. Instead of providing basic commercial functions, it emphasizes the provision of cultural institutions and other social infrastructure.

Within the new civic centre area of Hung Shui Kiu and Tin Shui Wai, various community and neighbourhood activity functions are distributed to activate people’s behavior patterns, understanding their purposeful travel behaviour and optional activities. Commercial functions are combined with cultural facilities to activate a series of pedestrian and cycling links.

The project takes advantage of the riverside location to combine a vibrant urban district with high quality landscaped spaces for recreation with access to nature. The broad distribution of social and cultural activity spaces aims at activating locally initiated events and community development.