A study in social impacts on provision of pubic open spaces in private developments on users in Hong Kong

Abstract

Public open spaces (“POS”) are public services allowing everybody to use and enter for their enjoyment at no cost, it is not only providing a space physically, but also providing a space for social engagement with groups of people and providing facilities to carry out activities. It offers individual, community and the city dimensions with various benefits in environment; social; psychology and health aspects. Nevertheless, rapid urbanization and population growth bring impacts to general public as a result of decreasing in the functions of POS. The Hong Kong government established the Public Open Spaces under Private Developments (“POSPD”) policy in 1960’s, to solve the congestion in urban areas, and then developed strategic planning for the provision of these spaces by private sectors to lessen the economic burden on the government. However, the declination of these spaces in the qualities, public utilization and functions within private developments, such as the denial of public access or tight management practice for public usage has been reported many years. The inequality on such provision has aroused unfairness on public’s health, social and psychological problems as well. In this dissertation study, 4 public open spaces under private development were selected for site observation and conduct questionnaire survey, to investigate the use intensity and satisfactory levels to these spaces, level of agreement on physical and functional aspects towards the quality of life; in addition to investigate the social impacts on various users including the time under current pandemic situation. In this study, the indicators of common ideal factors to assess a successful public open space will be covered aspects in (i) Accessibility; (ii) Public Utilization; (iii) Environmental and Facilities; (iv) Sociability. In which, in order to generate an overview of performance in the provision of such spaces, various scales and types of developments will be evaluated. The performance of public open spaces relies on the level of activities allow to be carried out; the relationship between the physical criteria, level of activities and the functional dimensions will be assessed, successful POS allows public to get benefits through the utilization of these spaces and thus achieve a quality of life. Due to the limited developed land for open spaces in Hong Kong, the provision of high quality of POS in Hong Kong is challenging, where the conditions in the provision of these spaces are not always practicable and ideal to meet all requirements, therefore optimization of land use is important for public to achieve quality of life; and livability and sustainability for the community. Under the current pandemic situation, large population was impacted globally by anti‐pandemic restrictions or lockdown to reduce people’s mobility so as to minimize the spread of COVID‐19, general public has been shifting to work‐fromhome or shifts basis, and keeping social distancing in the community, there is also experiencing closure and certain levels of restriction in using leisure and recreation services and facilities. Public has been adopting a new “normal” life together with these anti‐epidemic measures, and they have been suffering from social, psychological and health issues arouse, such as stress, anxiety, loneliness and social disconnection over the past year. The result in the study showed that the awareness of psychological, social and physical benefits increased to the public and changing their behaviour in using public open space. Apart from the equal utilization of spaces, respondents concerned more about safe and hygiene issues of the spaces, the result and the phenomenon in the society allowing opportunities for general public, private developers and the government to rethink the meaning and the value of public open spaces under pandemic or future emergency situations.