Producing Food and Enhancing Community in the City: using a hybrid design-land economy approach to investigate the barriers to urban farming in Hong Kong

Mr Wee, Hiang Koon   (Principal Investigator (PI))

Professor Webster Christopher John   (Co-Investigator)

Dr Li Ling Hin   (Co-Investigator)

36

2016-06-01

428000

Producing Food and Enhancing Community in the City: using a hybrid design-land economy approach to investigate the barriers to urban farming in Hong Kong

Community, Food Urbanism, Liveable Cities, Property Rights, Urban Agriculture

Architecture

Humanities & Social Sciences (H)

17609515

General Research Fund (GRF)

2015

Completed

1) Identify and survey workable pockets of private and public land, and multi-level surfaces for cultivation within the pilot study area of the Western District of Hong Kong (Sheung Wan, Sai Ying Pun and Pokfulam), and propose a network of publicly and privately managed spaces that permeates through these urban farms. 2) Focus on planning feasibility in accessibility, circulation, solar orientation, waste management, without reinventing engineering solutions for high-intensity food cultivation. This pilot study area must demonstrate complex traits in both physical and social terms, in order for it to benefit the rest of Hong Kong, once success is demonstrated on some levels. 3) Survey and understand the socio-urban make-up and property rights of private and institutional stakeholders, and public agencies in the pilot study area to undstand the constraints on collective organization of production. 4) Develop models for re-organising rights of access and use in a way that offers incentives of resource-holders to deploy their resources in a collective urban agricultural network experiment. 5) Position Hong Kong as part of the discourse of food urbanism, towards a better practice of urban life and stronger community building.