The Making of Hong Kong: From Vertical to Volumetric
With its island origins, skyscraper skyline and world city status, Hong Kong is often likened to New York. However the comparison soon falters with the realization that Hong Kongs skyscrapers are only the more visible aspect of a far more complex urban condition. A steep and contorted terrain has ensured that built-up areas are compact, rich in spatial experience, rarely far from hills and water; and connected by an array of public transport that is second to none.
The three authors of The Making of Hong Kong see value in these conditions a metropolis with a small urban footprint, 90 per cent use of public transport for vehicular journeys, and proximity to nature. Though the compact city is a model that is frequently advocated by urban thinkers, it is one rarely encountered. Here, the evolution of Hong Kongs intense urbanism is traced from the regions pre-colonial walled settlements and colonial shop-houses to the contemporary vertical and volumetric metropolis of towers, podia-and-towers, decks, bridges, escalators and other components of multi-level city living. On a site bedevilled by an acute shortage of flat land, Hong Kong is portrayed as the accidental pioneer of a new kind of urbanism that commands the thoughtful attention of a wider world.
The books lucid text and over 200 mostly original illustrations, including images of design futures, are an essential package for urban designers, architects, planners, landscape architects and other urban professionals with interests in urban design, density, urban theory, East Asian urbanism and, of course, Hong Kongs built form history and future.
Planning, History and Environment Series
Editor:
Emeritus Professor Dennis Hardy, High Peak, UK
Editorial Board:
Professor Arturo Almandoz, Universidad Simn Bolivar, Caracas, Venezuela and Pontificia
Universidad Catlica de Chile, Santiago, Chile
Professor Gregory Andrusz, London, UK
Professor Nezar AlSayyad, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Professor Robert Bruegmann, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
Professor Meredith Clausen, University of Washington, Seattle, USA
Professor Robert Freestone, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Professor John R. Gold, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK
Professor Sir Peter Hall, University College London, UK
Emeritus Professor Anthony Sutcliffe, Nottingham, UK
Technical Editor
Ann Rudkin, Alexandrine Press, Marcham, Oxfordshire, UK
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The Making of Hong Kong: From vertical to volumetric by Barrie Shelton, Justyna Karakiewicz and Thomas Kvan
THE MAKING OF HONG KONG
From Vertical to Volumetric
Barrie Shelton
Justyna Karakiewicz
Thomas Kvan
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published in 2011
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2011 Barrie Shelton, Justyna Karakiewicz and Thomas Kvan
This book was commissioned and edited by Alexandrine Press, Marcham, Oxfordshire
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Shelton, Barrie, 1944
The making of Honk Kong : from vertical to volumetric / Barrie Shelton, Justyna Karakiewicz,
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