IN-PERSON Barcelona. Section A

Abstract

Green urbanism has emerged as a popular strategy of community design over the past decades in global. Most governments are exploring sustainable approach of green urbanity to moderate domestic social, economic, and environmental reciprocals, it also has gained prevalence in Hong Kong. This paper argues for the necessity of investigating the effectiveness of various green urbanization approaches to identify a sustainable strategy within green urbanism. Based on such arguments, this paper selects a few of greening cases in Hong Kong as an empirical source for theoretical elaboration and discourse. The study begins by raising questions about the Hong Kong’s conventional green urbanism method. Additionally, it evaluates whether a social innovation-based method of green urbanism could be an ideal alternative to assist Hong Kong’s future sustainable development, considering participatory action research perspective. Comparing the efficiency and participant autonomy of two different approaches, to highlight the challenges in current community design. Furthermore, this paper argues that in such information-advanced society today, traditional top-down urbanism approaches are untimely. Conversely, relying solely on a ‘bottom-up’ approach to promote green urbanism also reveals insufficiencies. Consequently, this article emphasizes that a one-way green urbanism approach, either ‘top-down’ or ‘bottom-up’, is insufficient for maintaining sustainable development within communities in Hong Kong. Thus, this paper proposes a hybrid approach to community design— “Sustainable Social Labs” aimed at facilitating continuous development. This model emphasizes collaboration, integration into daily life, and a more localized approach, positing it as more viable path toward achieving a sustainable future in Hong Kong.