STUDENT FEATURE

Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) in Urban Development on Reclaimed Land in Hong Kong

Water is part of essential point to identify a place. Hong Kong is located at the mouth of the Pearl River Delta on the coast of southern China. Being influenced by a number of environmental variants and demographic change, including but not limited to rapid population growth and the ensuing urbanization, impacts of climate change, ageing infrastructure and the capacity constraints, the sustainability of Hong Kong’s urban water systems is inevitably under pressure. Hong Kong has heavy water dependence from the Mainland with about 52% of its total water consumption being imported from Dongjiang, Guangdong.

 

With reference to the experiences in some countries like Australia and New Zealand, their greenfield residential developments open up new possibilities in Hong Kong of using the Water Sensitive Urban Design principles and water localization to reduce demand for external water supply.

Hong Kong has a very long history of land reclamation (figure 1), which started since 1841. Unfortunately, the reclamation also gave rise to various engineering, environmental, and ecological problems. And the large-scale reclamation has, among the other things, strongly disturbed the balance of the natural hydrodynamic system, including the loss of biodiversity, deterioration of coastal water quality, and depletion of fishery…more

PROJECT DATA
Project Name
Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) in Urban Development on Reclaimed Land in Hong Kong
Location
Hong Kong, Tuen Mun
Status of Construction
Urban Design Proposal
Project Supervisor/Tutor
Adjunct Assistant Professor: Ms. Sunnie S.Y. Lau
Site Area
8.726 square metres
Images
ZHANG Yu, Zoe