The Neighbourhood Series Hong Kong Neighbourhoods: a "Living cities" Perspective Living cities www.grosvenor.com Foreword Grosvenor is a property group committed to This white paper focuses on Hong Kong, a creating, investing in and managing properties city with a spectacular collection of varied and places that contribute to the enduring and unique neighbourhoods; the city where success of cities; a commitment laid out through Grosvenor Asia Pacific is headquartered, and our ©Living cities© philosophy. where many of us call home. Of course, at the heart of all great, successful Though these findings may just begin to cities are thriving neighbourhoods. They are scratch the surface - presenting as many where we work, where we go to meet friends, questions as they answer - we hope they will where we spend time with our families... They further stimulate debate and engagement buzz, they excite, they grow, and they change. among a broad and influential group of stakeholders; a group who - though they may As stewards of the Mayfair and Belgravia estates disagree, contest or even compete with one in London for hundreds of years, Grosvenor has another - all have a vested interest in making long been aware of the importance of creating - Hong Kong's neighbourhoods the best that and maintaining - great neighbourhoods. they can be. In Asia, we have been active for over 20 years. Inspired by our ©Living cities© philosophy, we are Benjamin Cha now looking to delve deeper into the concept of Chief Executive neighbourhoods, exploring what the changing Grosvenor Asia Pacific nature of our cities and their most dynamic districts means for our own business as well our broader community. Foreword 1 Contents - Introduction: Hong Kong as a Living City 05 - 07 1. The Theory: What is a Neighbourhood? 08 - 13 2. Hong Kong's Neighbourhoods in Context 14 - 17 3. Defining Hong Kong Neighbourhoods 18 - 31 4. Public Perceptions of Hong Kong's 32 - 36 Neighbourhoods 5. Conclusions, Further Research 37 - 39 and Acknowledgements - Appendix: Tables and Charts 40 - 52 2 Contents Contents 3 Key Findings Introduction: Hong Kong as a Living City · Grosvenor, as part of our ©Living cities© analysis, · Given there is there is no formal definition of “Whenever and wherever societies have Grosvenor has been at the forefront of this has identified 41 factors to apply to and help the neighbourhoods this paper outlines an approach flourished and prospered rather than thinking through our ©Living cities© philosophy, relative evaluation of city characteristics and on how to define them within the Hong Kong stagnated and decayed, creative and which identifies eight different attributes that performance. context. workable cities have been at the core of the we believe contribute to the sustainable growth phenomenon. Decaying cities, declining and enduring success of cities. These underlying · Our analysis suggests Hong Kong scores well on · Our work suggests Hong Kong is a collection of economies, and mounting social troubles attributes are: living city characteristics, reflective of its status 500-600 different neighbourhoods, reflecting travel together. The combination is not as a global city, though generally better on very different physical, cultural and socio- coincidental.” ©hardware© (infrastructure, provision of facilities, economic characteristics. This diversity across - convenience) rather than ©software© (community, neighbourhoods is a significant characteristic of Climate resilient Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great equality of opportunity). Hong Kong the City. American Cities Connected · Our research conducted with The University · Whilst no two neighbourhoods are exactly the of Hong Kong's Public Opinion Programme same, we have identified a recurring pattern Over the last decade there has been a significant Economically resilient ("POP"), shows the majority of Hong Kong people of seven main types of neighbourhood. move by international real estate investors away believe the city does offer good quality of life. from thinking about activity at country level, Good governance This supports our contentions as transport and · Research with the POP shows the majority of towards a more city focussed approach. This accessibility are identified as key advantages Hong Kong people are generally satisfied in their evolution has been shaped by the realisation that Healthy environment the city has to offer. neighbourhood. They recognise convenience there can be as much, if not more, differentiation (transport, access to necessities) as most between cities within a country as across High-quality place · The city of Hong Kong is really a collection of important but also demonstrate a surprising international borders. Put another way, it can be very distinctive and diverse neighbourhoods appreciation for Hong Kong's green nature. credibly argued that London has more significant Strong community which have evolved through a nexus of market similarities with New York than Manchester. economics, politics, culture, history and · There is a desire to see further improvement This shift in thinking has led to an increased focus Sustainable resources circumstance. Having established a base for how in transport and community facilities as well on economic structure and dynamism, transport Hong Kong performs as a Living City, we wanted as the quality of the built environment in provision, and demographics as a way of defining cities which can be expected over the long term to to try to identify how persistent or variable neighbourhoods. Across each of these eight attributes are 41 out-perform by a large variety of metrics. certain ©Living cities© factors are across different sub factors which can be used to give a city a neighbourhoods. relative rating. Hong Kong is well established as a global city on a number of different metrics and consistently scores highly in surveys of global cities; Table 1 in the appendix shows a selection of various recent City indices where on a simple weighting, Hong Kong ranks 11th. Hong Kong scores highly for economic and competitiveness factors but generally lower on ©liveability© factors such as healthy environment or strong community. 4 Key Findings Introduction 5 Our ©Living cities© analysis generally confirms these 2 See for example: Whilst some of the factors that aggregate together To do this we have first wrestled with the thorny findings on Hong Kong; we score Hong Kong on our http://www.iofc.cuhk.edu. to make our ©Living cities© rankings are consistent question of what a neighbourhood actually is, and hk/news-events/work-in- ©Living cities© framework as below: progress/225-centre-of-land- across a city, for many factors there may be then developed an approach to help define Hong resource-and-housing-policy- significant variations across neighbourhoods. Hong Kong's neighbourhoods based on a combination progress.html Kong is a large, diverse and hugely complex city. of planning and constituency areas, and individual When asked "what is Hong Kong like?", the answer estates. We then provide our own classification of is very much shaped by the "part of the elephant the different types of neighbourhood we see in you touch". Put in a more practical way, the view Hong Kong - what we believe to first of its kind of of a middle-aged Western white-collar worker with the city. Economically Resilient an office in Central and a flat in the affluent Mid- Levels suburb, is going to be very different from an From there we sought to gauge general ethnically Chinese retiree living in public housing satisfaction of the Hong Kong population in their LOW in far-out Shatin. neighbourhoods, the factors they most value in High Quality Place Good Governance neighbourhoods, the positive factors that exist The distinctiveness of neighbourhoods is shaped and the things they wish were improved. For this MEDIUM by a huge number of complex factors - history, research we have collaborated with the University topography, environment, politics, planning, of Hong Kong's highly respected Public Opinion culture, economic structure and evolution, to name Programme ("POP") to specify and undertake a a few. Nonetheless we would argue that without representative survey of Hong Kong people. We the curation of dynamic neighbourhoods, a city's gauged a large (1000+) sample of Cantonese HIGH vibrancy will be severely limited. This curation speaking residents, representing every Hong Kong Strong Community Healthy Environment may come via strict government planning and district and over 300 individual Constituency efforts, via private sector forces, or - as in the case Areas (what we deemed a suitable neighbourhood of Grosvenor's custodianship of the Mayfair and proxy). Belgravia estates in London - a combination of the two. And the first step in understanding how We present our approach and analysis in the first to promote and support the distinctiveness and part of the report, outlining how and why we vibrancy of neighbourhoods is first to understand define Hong Kong's neighbourhoods in the way we what a neighbourhood is and how it functions. do, identifying factors that we believe are the most Sustainable Resources Connected significant in this definition. We then compare In this, the first of an intended series of white these to the POP research to ascertain average papers evaluating neighbourhoods across key Hong Kong resident perceptions of both the quality Asian cities, we have been studying Hong Kong's of life Hong Kong has to offer and satisfaction with Climate Resilient neighbourhoods to ascertain how they function, its neighbourhoods. Whilst this is not the first such differ and meet the needs of Hong Kong people. study for Hong Kong, we believe it is among the This will, we believe, help us understand Hong more comprehensive commissioned to date.2 Kong better as a ©Living City©. We have sought to examine the ways in which Hong Kong's rich history and culture, combined with its 1 topographical constraints, has shaped the face of William M Rohe, Lauren As we continue to develop our thinking around our There is a popular apocryphal story of Indian its urban areas.