Beyond the Blueprint

• To identify possible industrial sites for redevelopment into residential areas:

As the population of Hong Kong gradually increases, the problem of overcrowding is also arousing. Therefore, the demand for residential areas is on the rise. Redeveloping the industrial sites may be a solution for it.

• Industrial areas provide the potential for significant redevelopment.
• They usually have large spaces and pre-existing infrastructure (Roads, Water, and power supply). It is an easier solution to provide more building units.
• Redeveloping industrial estates is a faster and more sustainable solution comparing to reclaiming land and building residental estates on green belts.
• It closely relates to environment, social development and governance in Hong Kong.

Here are some examples that also turn industrial land use to residential land use:

To fulfil our objective, we targeted to answer the following questions:

1. What are the suitable criteria for residential development?
2. Which industrial land use match with the criteria?

There are multiple criterias as...

• Accessibility
• Healthcare Facilities
• Commercial Facilities
• Recreational Land Use

Each buffer size for criteria is different, the size will be mentioned in the description. Yet, they are all set by the estimation from walking speed (1.7 m/s) and driving speed (60 km/h).

The following maps will represent the areas overlaid by each criterion. Areas coloured in BLACK represent that they ARE overlaid with the criterion layer; areas coloured in DARK BLUE represents that they ARE NOT overlaid with the criterion layer.

Refer to the legend. Different colours represent the number of criteria met in an area. Check out the slides for more details.

We can estimate the number of flats provided after redeveloping these areas. According to the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, the average size of a flat is 553.2 sqft in 2019 and 544.9 sqft in 2020, so we will take 550 sqft for the approximation. According to the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, the average number of floors in a residential building is 25.9 floors in 2019 and 27.7 floors in 2020, so 30 floors will be taken for the approximation. With the approximation data, the number of flats provided in the area in Kwun Tong and the area next to Hau Cheung Street will be 31443 and 5072, which sums up to 36515 flats altogether. According to the Department of Census and Statistics, the average household size is 2.7 persons in the first quarter of 2023, so 36515 flats will be able to provide a home for approximately 98590 people.

The problem of overcrowding is increasing significantly in the past years since the rise of the population. Ways have been used by Hong Kong government, such as slope cutting, and reclamation…. However, all these ways will harm the environment, and the problem in the industrial areas remains. Redeveloping industrial land use can improve the residents' living environment, providing more flats while keeping the green belts.

• Since there are other factors affecting the living quality of the area, we mainly focused on the facilities around the industrial areas, not considering the traffic flow, air quality and many other factors.
• However, this depends on real situation a lot. This research just provides direction for others. Real implementation depends on government developing direction and developers' plan.

Hong Kong CSDI portal. (n.d.). https://portal.csdi.gov.hk/csdi-webpage/

Google. (n.d.-a). Overview. Google Earth. https://www.google.com/earth/index.html

Census and statistics department. (n.d.). https://www.censtatd.gov.hk/en/