Expressway airspace in Hong Kong : putting air rights to work

Abstract

Hong Kong has one of the highest development densities and road traffic densities in the world, scarce flat land, and hilly topography. In a large city like Hong Kong, with these unusual and simultaneous conditions, traffic infrastructures have split urbanform and created much leftover space below and around the road infrastructures. There are various well studied strategies to accommodates these left over/negative spaces,yet little is found on a much radical approach to these issues which includes the leftover space above the road that is the road air right itself. Given the increasingly scarce land resources and soaring land demand this study set out to make an inventory of such space in Hong Kong and to explore the conditions of their relative values for development.In Hong Kong, a systematicinventory identified more than 500ha of air right development, half of which are prime. Two case studies demonstrate the positive economic value and financial viability of air right development.