Urban decay is among the most urgent problems in Hong Kong today. There are more than 3,000 blocks of building are considered sub-standard and 110,000 families are living in these homes. Despite the Government's immense effort in undertaking its own renewal projects for many years, Hong Kong Housing Society (HKHS) was the earlier urban renewal agent whom was invited by the Government to undertake redevelopment in the urban areas. In light of the rapid ageing of Hong Kong' building stock during the last two decades, HKHS has further assisted the Government with its own resources and expertise by implementing a 10-year maintenance incentive named "Building Management and Maintenance Scheme" (BMMS) since 2005. The BMMS aims at encouraging property owners to improve safety and hygiene of their living environment, it is administrated by HKHS with the provision of professional advice and financial assistance for publicizing proper building management and timely maintenance. HKHS has exerted all its strength to promote the BMMS for seven years, the research is to gauge the effectiveness of HKHS for the achievement and shortcomings in the aspect of offering building maintenance incentives, particular in the launch of BMMS. The evaluation will focus on the three aspects, including the scheme performance, scheme design process and implementation process. An opinion survey was conducted in June 2012 for the data collection purpose and survey results correlates with the goals and objectives of the study are comprehensively discussed in Analysis I & II. The findings show the effectiveness of HKHS in offering building maintenance incentives much depends on what stage does the scheme undergo, whilst the BMMS in general is operated effectively to address the problem of urban decay, with the exception of running it at the outset of the scheme design stage. In the course of time, the recommendations pursuant to the weakness of the BMMS and the highlights in survey findings are drawn up at the end of the study, in order to make the building maintenance incentives more effectively in solving the urban decay problem. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

Under the transformation from “rural China” to “urban China”, cities in this country are confronting with the increasingly complicated problems of urban decline, not just physical decay as well as functional deterioration. The approach prevalently adopted, however, is of tearing down the old and starting the new from scratch, which relies on immediate measures of physical construction but neglects the objectives of social inclusion and heritage protection. For Chinese cities, it is necessary to reconsider the issue on urban regeneration from a more holistic and multidimensional perspective. Since the late 1990s, a new concept—creative industries—has attracted interest over the world. In recent years, many big cities in China, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, have clearly seen a rapid growth of this new industrial sector; a variety of creative industrial clusters (CICs) have emerged in these cities, showing wide potentials for promoting urban regeneration. The recent rise of creative industries and CICs may provide us a new perspective to rethink the issue on urban regeneration in Chinese cities. This study tries to explore the relationships between creative industries, CICs and urban regeneration in Shanghai. Through the exploration, it expects to find an effective approach to promote comprehensive urban regeneration in Chinese cities under the transformation context. As “creative industries” is a relatively fresh concept and the boom of creative industries and clusters just happened in China in recent years, there is a big lack of research related to creative industries in the Chinese context. The research that links creative industries with urban regeneration is much less. This study is an effort to fill this research gap. Around an analytical framework developed from the understanding of three key concepts—creative industries, CICs and urban regeneration, this study conducts two-level analyses. Firstly, it discusses some key issues on urban regeneration, creative industries and clusters respectively at the municipal level. Secondly, it carries out the case study of M50—a CIC in Shanghai—at the local level, based on questionnaire survey and deep interviews. Through the two-level analyses on Shanghai, this study suggests that the policy makers in Chinese cities should recognize the complexity of urban decline problems and view the issue of urban regeneration from a more comprehensive, holistic and multidimensional perspective. Considering the significant implications of the creative industries and CICs for urban regeneration, this study also suggests that the policy makers should adopt the creative industries and CICs as an important strategy to promote urban regeneration, and produce an integrated and systematic plan specifically on CICs that is oriented to urban regeneration and incorporated in the city’s master plan. / published_or_final_version / Urban Planning and Design / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Landscape Architecture

The urban renewal outcomes have long been criticized as undesirable. Issues like involuntary displacement, uprooting communities and violating local citizens’ views remain unsolved after series of institutional reforms in the late 1990s. The academia thus turned to seek for more public engagement channels and considered engagement as the key to achieve desirable urban renewal outcomes. But repeated failures of new public engagement platforms seem to be inconsistent with the theoretical predictions, creating an impasse in local discussion. The study tries to explain the impasse with Lacanian subjectivity of lack and desire. To fill the existential lack, as metonymical displacement, subjects continuously desire for a complete symbolic explanation. But with the existence of Real, the lacking subjects fail to capture everything under the symbolic, leading to incompleteness and anxiety. To paper over such anxiety, the fantasy of spatial planning delivers a triumphalist imagination that future time and space can be fully manipulated by omnipotent subjects of planning practitioners and conquered by the symbolic (the plan). Thus, the subject behaviors and identifications of planning practitioners and community members are shaped by the Other to sustain such fantasy. Through case study of Ma Tau Kok 13 Streets, the study argues that the main concerns of DURF is not the fulfillment of public aspirations, rather, the recommendations by DURF are solely designed for sustaining the spatial planning fantasy. The issues on urban renewal in 13 Streets are highly complicated and unpredictable, involving entwining conflicting of interests and factors beyond the control of DURF. The inability to control implies incompleteness and insecurity. Therefore, in the final plan of DURF, the complexities are deliberately simplified or bypassed, so that the fantasy and identification of planning practitioners can be sustained and the command of the Other is fulfilled. However, such self-deception fails to provide meaningful recommendations towards the community aspirations from public engagement process and even acts against the interests of local citizens in 13 Streets neighborhood, despite the more balanced composition and democratic procedures of DURF. To overcome the identifications and resulting distortion in public engagement, the curse of fantasy has to be traversed. Planning practitioners has to reavow the existence of the unpredictability of the reality and admit the fundamental limitations of their symbolic. The uncontrollable factors in the reality which has been repressed should be deliberately emphasized with the support of Bottom-Up Geographic Information System (BUGIS). In moral terms, the planning practitioners should consciously bear the condemnation from the Other of not performing as ‘problem solvers’. Besides, the community members should also be educated to bear greater responsibility in forming feasible recommendations in planning process, rather than assuming themselves as idle believers. Thus, other than traditional institutional and structural reform paradigm, a new theoretical outlet derived from subjectivity is provided for the impasse of Hong Kong. / published_or_final_version / Urban Planning and Design / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Architecture

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Architecture

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Architecture

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Social Sciences

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Architecture