IN-PERSON Lisbon Livable Cities. Section A

Abstract

While the car has been a primary driver of urban development in the majority of cities globally since the mid-20th century, Hong Kong has taken a different path. In Hong Kong public transit networks—an affordable and efficient mass transit railway system supplemented by an equally affordable system of buses, minibuses, trams and ferries—evolved largely around the moving human body, forming intricate public transit networks akin to an “ecosystem.” Pedestrian movement is deeply integrated with public transit, and into the designs of all the city’s urban districts. As a result, Hong Kong has grown a complex system of nested mobility networks of different speeds and modalities, blending exceedingly well into an urban pattern that builds around mass transit railway stations. This railway-pedestrian conception has both framed developments of new urban areas such as Shatin and Yuen Long but also retrofitted older districts such as Central and Mongkok. It not only creates a unique urban morphology but also gives rise to an urban culture of residential use that is highly mixed with commercial and communal spaces serving as pedestrian passageways at the same time. In Hong Kong’s “ecology of movement,” density and multiplicity of connection sustains both the vitality of the city and a distinctive sense of urban community.