HK Planning Studio 2011

The MIT Spring 2011 Hong Kong studio focused on a grass-roots arts district around the Cattle Depot Artist Village at To Kwa Wan, near the old Kai Tak airport redevelopment site in East Kowloon. The studio began with a ten-day site visit in January 2011. During this time, we met with a number of interest-groups and public institutions that are either directly involved with the site or play a significant role in Hong Kong’s planning scene. The studio divided into four groups, each analyzing and documenting the site through a particular lens: a) the physical and natural forms of the site, b) the social and demographic characteristics of its inhabitants, c) the transportation and land-use patterns of the area, and d) the real-estate market and regulatory mechanisms that drive the area’s present gentrification.

The results of these analyses are presented as the first part of this work. What emerged from these early investigations, were four high-potential directions for the studio to follow: (1) a bold re-imagining of the Cattle Depot Artist Village, its abutting industrial buildings and outdoor sports fields as both a neighborhood center and a metropolitan attraction for a grass-roots arts and culture movement in Hong Kong; (2) a long-term proposal for opening up the site’s waterfront for local residents and institutions, and connecting the waterfront into an emerging network of public promenades along different parts of Kowloon Bay; (3) a daring re-conceptualization of the site’s streets from their past industrial character to a community oriented and pedestrian-friendly future character; and (4) a realistic proposition for capturing both the market-driven real-estate value in the course of the site’s redevelopment, and implementing a related affordable housing fund that would channel a significant portion of this value to the site’s diverse resident and artist population. The following pages illustrate the group projects that aimed to capture these four opportunities.