Rethinking green : reinterpreting the future of urban greening in Hong Kong

Abstract

Greening has been used in Hong Kong to beautify the environment and enhance the social and economic conditions of our dense urban city. The development of greening has always been driven by various objectives, as a response to different civic or communal demands, problems and evolve around the everlasting list of issues associated with the urban, developed landscape. This responsive mode of operation and greening approach has resulted in the development and implementation of existing city greening for mainly ornamental purposes but otherwise limited impacts. The greening of Hong Kong has been in continuous development in the past decades. In year 2000, the announcement to commence the development of the Greening Master Plans was included in the Chief Executive Policy Address. Being one of the most notable and largest greening project in recent years, the Greening Master Plans are not the first greening intervention to be implemented in Hong Kong but it was the first greening effort recorded to tried to offer a more holistic approach to collaborate the greening of Hong Kong on a city scale. In this research, I look at the development and implementation of the GMPs, the background and context of the project as well as previous greening efforts in Hong Kong to identify the driving forces behind the greening initiatives. Through analyzing and comparing of the multiple stages of the greening history of Hong Kong, I hope to evaluate the reasons for our current greening approach in Hong Kong, it’s strength and weaknesses and potential ways to advance forward. This thesis investigates the idea behind greening and encourage the rethinking of our objectives and approaches to achieve the outcomes we hoped to get out of greening so that we, as landscape designers will no longer be confined by the stereotype of greening as a color, simple planting elements, aesthetic or statistic modification but more importantly to understand the impact of our greening on the landscape.