DrCaterina Villani

Hong Kong has long been a global benchmark for mass transit development. Nevertheless, the city’s urban development model, with rail as the backbone of public transport, underwent adaptation to fit different planning systems and regulatory frameworks when implemented overseas. Moreover, despite the growing body of studies focusing on station-area integration, no research has analysed pedestrian access to transit from an inter-urban, transit-system-wide comparative perspective. This study aims to fill such a research gap by focusing on Hong Kong and three mainland Chinese cities with well-developed Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) systems: Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen (N = 1098 stations). A novel multi-source database was compiled and analysed; the analysis included a comprehensive set of indicators related to the physical connections (N = 4772) between the mass transit pedestrian environment and the overground urban realm. Results demonstrate that the Pedestrian Access to Transit (PAT) development in mainland Chinese cities differs from that in Hong Kong, where stations are often integrated with buildings. Such diverse integration reflects differences in service provider ownership, financial instruments, and dissimilar land allocation systems. PAT in mainland Chinese cities is primarily connected to outdoor public open space, shaping a peculiar pedestrian realm and end-user experience. This study advocates for dedicated urban design institutions focusing on the station-area pedestrian integration potential to promote, conceive, and implement climate-sensitive, culturally responsive, and universally accessible intermodal pedestrian connections.

Promoted by sustainable urban agendas and urged by global pandemic measures, street experiments (SE) are booming in Europe but remain latent in Asia. These experiments aim to reconfigure streets as more than spaces for motorized traffic movements, enabling a temporary urban paradigm shift. Such a shift involves balancing active mobility and public space uses in streets while envisioning radically different settings and uses. Recently, eminent scholars urged considering SE in connection to the system and planning framework within which SE are conceived to trace their trajectories. This article examines four decades of temporary-pedestrianization policies and planning instruments in Hong Kong, an Asian city representative of high-density urban environments with highly intensive use of road space and conservative and prescriptive planning. In doing so, the article identifies four trajectories and illustrates two emblematic cases: Chater Road, the first street temporarily pedestrianized under a commercial initiative, and Sai Yeung Choi Street South, a street pedestrianized under a government initiative, now turned back to its original function. The competing roles and practical uses that pedestrianized streets must fulfil partially determined their fate. However, the trajectories these cases followed also differ due to the contextual planning approach and decision-making process. The study contributes to scholarship on SE by shedding new light on the geographical context of high-density urban Asia, forwarding challenges that policymakers might need to address in the planning and governance of SE in similar environments.

This article retraces the impact of evolving hegemonic rapid transit planning and design strategies on pedestrian integration between stations and neighbourhoods, using Hong Kong as a longitudinal case. Mixed-methods research, triangulating documentary analysis, spatial analysis, and in-depth interviews, identified six typologies across three historical phases. The findings demonstrate that pedestrian access to transit is spatially heterogeneous, shaping the evolution of the station area from a connecting structure into an interconnecting infrastructure. Unfolding the historical interplay of hegemonic forces in the production of pedestrian spaces, this study innovatively bridges the research gap between planning policies and fine-grained urban design features.

Pedestrianisation, the conversion of a vehicular street for pedestrian use, is increasingly being proposed worldwide as a sustainable measure by hegemonic powers. Pedestrianisation can bolster uneven urban development patterns, however social tensions can magnify on the pedestrianised street, where deprived social groups claim the right to the city. This study employs a mixed method approach to examine, within a de Certeausian theoretical framework, the relationship between the governmental strategies promoting pedestrianisation and the tactics of pedestrianised space informal appropriation. Within this context Hong Kong emerges as a revelatory case, it is a city where the extreme scarcity of public open space exacerbates the conflict between social groups interested in this resource. The analysis provides evidence of a discrepancy between expected and actual uses of the pedestrianised streets. Furthermore, this study highlights the need in the context of the global neoliberal city for discussing the theoretical dichotomy of strategies and tactics. This paper argues for pedestrian planning which includes stationary use as a main pedestrianisation objective, as well as for responsive urban design that carefully considers the association between behavioural patterns and spatial features of the pedestrianised street.

In high-density Asian cities, the increasing scarcity of public open spaces gives rise to the need for stationary activities to tap into spaces originally conceived exclusively to channel pedestrian movements, such as grade separation pedestrian systems. However, the types and patterns of stationary activities on elevated walkways remain mostly unexplored. This study focuses on Hong Kong, wherein the scarcity of public open space characterises an extreme condition and where the burden of this scarcity falls most heavily on disadvantaged social groups, such as migrant workers. The findings highlight the prevalence of socially oriented activities and the importance of food as a gathering factor.Keywords: Grade separation pedestrian system; Elevated pedestrian network; Public open space; Migrant domestic worker; Hong KongeISSN 2514-751X © 2020 The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/aje-bs.v5i15.361