Strategic Spatial Planning and the Greater Bay Area

Abstract

With the operation of the High-Speed Rail and the Hong Kong Zhuhai and Macao Bridge in fall 2018, regional planning and development in the Greater Bay Area (GBA) has elevated to a new platform. These projects have signified and unprecedented spatial transformation of multiple connectivity and seamless mobility. From the vantage point of strategic spatial planning which concerns the “organization of space at different level of scales” (Albrechts, 2004), this paper sets out to reexamine the roles of Hong Kong within the GBA. The five-dimension normative viewpoints (Albrechts, 2006) is applied to examine the cross-boundary planning and city region governance of the GBA. From the development trajectory of “shop-front, factory back” to “city-region collaboration-integration”; lessons learned from the strategic spatial planning of the GBA will be of interest to cross-border study as well as regional planning discourse.