Spaces & Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Abstract

With one of the highest wealth gaps in the world, there is a current struggle to establish the identity of place among the less fortunate in Hong Kong. The urban air space in Hong Kong’s Central Business District occupies a complex elevated layer of urban connectivity bridging the gaps of the chaotic roads and streets below. On Sundays, this elevated layer transforms into a community of little neighbourhoods flourishing with picnics and social gatherings, which is vastly different from the transient function it performs throughout the rest of the week. This paper looks specifically at the unique phenomena among the domestic helpers who gather on Sundays in Central’s elevated network and the less fortunate homeless staking claim on the edges of the higher dense urban areas within Hong Kong and how they each identify place within a realm of non-place public space. The term empathetic sustainability is introduced as a solution to creating innovative places in effort to better the lives of the less fortunate within high dense urban areas. The term non-place is used to challenge the function of space and flow specific to transient spaces such as roads, streets, and walkways that are considered the most public form of public space in Hong Kong. This paper concludes by identifying solutions based on empathetic sustainability practices to better understand how to transform non-places into places and restructure the identity of place back into a community.