Under the Wrecking Ball’s Shadow

There is not much to indicate that the rundown shophouse on Shanghai Street in Mongkok houses anything but a pawn shop.

On the third floor, however, is Tong Saam, an unmarked space that has positioned itself on Hong Kong’s creative vanguard. Since it was opened earlier this year by three friends interested in music and art, it has hosted film screenings and performances by underground folk singers such a Beijing’s Zhao Yiran.

“Normally, you’d only be able to find this kind of space in an industrial area,” says one of Tong Saam’s founders, Charlie Wong Liang-yih, a freelance designer. “It’s the perfect size and even has a balcony. Being in Mong Kok makes it even more special because it’s so central and we’re part of a real neighbourhood. Places like the Cattle Depot [Artists' Village in To Kwa Wan] are like warehouses for artists. This is more like a community space.”

For all its ambitions, though, Tong Saam might soon be redeveloped. Shortly after they moved in, Wong and his partners heard rumours that the Urban Renewal Authority was planning a new project on the street. Even if that did not turn out to be the case, it was likely that other URA projects in the area would drive up prices and encourage owners to sell their properties to developers, he said. “We’re surrounded by redevelopment projects,” Wong said.

Tong Saam is not the only new venture to open in a neighbourhood targeted for redevelopment.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

The Right Scale

Earlier this week, Montreal’s city council approved the development of two 32-storey Waldorf-Astoria hotel and condominium towers near the corner of Guy and Sherbrooke streets. The Gazette accompanied this announcement with a rendering of two massive, gaudy, post-modern towers; if they are vaguely reminiscent of the famous Waldorf-Astoria in New York, it’s only a coincidence, since the rendering has been recycled since at least the early 2000s, when the tower was first proposed but before the luxury hotel chain got involved.

Though the new development was approved by the council without debate, I’m sure its mass will elicit protests from those who are generally opposed to new highrises, especially those that might block the view of Mount Royal from certain angles. Putting aside the question of its architecture or function, however, I think this kind of building is exactly what the area needs.

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Popularity: 1% [?]

Paving in Portuguese

Ten years after its handover to the People’s Republic of China, the old Portuguese colony of Macau hardly abounds with the tongue of its former master. Portuguese signs still cling to shops and older buildings, but the language of the streets is unmistakeably Cantonese — with the occasional whiff of Mandarin coming from the direction of mainland tour groups. Macau’s future, its leaders have decided, is as a gambling destination, and increasing numbers of visitors from across Asia pack its Vegas-brand hotels night and day.

But the enclave’s Lusitanian design vocabulary remains remarkably intact, and nowhere is this more evident than in the patterns that swirl beneath its pedestrians’ feet. Calçadas (literally “pavements”), the unique street mosaics that decorate the cities of Portugal and its former colonies from Lisbon to Luanda.

The origins of calçadas are somewhat unclear. The popularity of tiles in Portuguese art first exploded with the introduction of geometrical ceramic arts by the Moors. Decorated tilework, known in Portuguese as azulejo, soon came to cover houses and churches across the country. But the first recorded calçada was not the product of an artist’s whimsy, but as a makework project for prisoners thought up by an army officer.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Making of a Square

Place Gérald-Godin in 1979 and 2009. Compilation by Guillaume St-Jean

Over the past decade, Montreal has invested heavily in big-ticket squares and plazas, including the remarkable Place Jean-Paul Riopelle and redesigned Victoria Square, both completed in 2003, and the surprisingly successful Place des Festivals, which opened earlier this year. But some of the smaller new squares are just as impressive, perhaps doubly so for the fact that they’ve been perfectly integrated into the city’s life without any kind of the fuss or introspection demanded by their bigger counterparts.

Place Gérald-Godin is the best example of these small new squares. It sits just outside the sole entrance to Mont-Royal metro, one of the city’s busiest stations, and as a result it’s busy throughout the day. Until recently, however, it wasn’t so much a square as a patch of grass traversed by a couple of asphalt pathways. A building that housed a caisse populaire (and before that, a bicycle shop) occupied the corner of Berri and Mount Royal, next to the station, making the space in front feel like more like an afterthought than a real place.

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Popularity: 10% [?]

Informal Space, Untouched

Maguire Meadow. Photo from imagine (le) mile-end

I found myself in Kennedy Town yesterday evening, my hair still dripping from swimming at a nearby pool as I walked towards the waterfront, beer in hand. At the small promenade built next to a bus loop, the smell of diesel fumes in the air, I stopped to admire the violet hues of the sunset. But I didn’t stay there — I pressed on to a far nicer part of the waterfront.

By day, the shipping yard that stretches from Kennedy Town to the wholesale food market at Shek Tong Tsui, on the western end of Hong Kong Island, whirs with industrial purpose, as forklifts dart about and shipping containers are unloaded by boat. By night, it becomes a playground for people who live nearby. As I walked along the water last night, I saw kids riding their bikes, old men fishing, middle-aged women stretching and power walking. As the evening wore on, couples emerged, strolling hand in hand. Nobody seemed to mind the signs warned against unauthorized entry.

It reminded me of the Maguire Meadow, a large open field in the old garment district of Mile End, Montreal, which is slated for redevelopment in the coming years. Lately, people have been gardening on the field and using it for neighbourhood gatherings; over the years, it has acquired an impressive collection of flora and fauna, including walnut trees and the squirrels they feed. At the moment, redevelopment plans call for a new road to be built through the meadow, which has elicited quite a bit of protest.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

Only the Trams Remain

Lee Chi-man, Hong Kong’s answer to Guillaume St-Jean, finds old photos of Hong Kong streetscapes and heads to the spot where they were taken to replicate them. So far, he has compiled around 400 scenes, showing just how drastically Hong Kong has changed over the course of the twentieth century.

The photos above illustrate how many of those changes have been for the worse. In the top photo, you see Central in the 1950s, looking down Des Voeux Road towards the bank headquarters. Today, the banks are still there, but their headquarters have morphed into postmodern skyscrapers. The old shophouses that once lined Des Voeux are gone; their graceful arcades and simple signboards have given way to a mess of overbearing corporate storefronts, bland façades and gaudy plastic advertisements.

The worst thing about this is the loss of human scale: whereas Des Voeux was once well-proportioned, with nicely-textured buildings and an understated elegance, it is now an unpleasant concrete canyon. As the street has become more unbearable over the years, footbridges have been built so that people may avoid it altogether, which only adds to the hostile atmosphere. If the effects of that aren’t evident in the photos above, they certain are in Lee’s other Des Voeux scenes.

Popularity: unranked [?]

More Pedestrian Streets, Less Pollution

Hong Kong’s government has finally decided that sacrificing its air quality in favour of cars, buses and trucks isn’t such a good thing after all. Yesterday, in a somewhat surprising departure from its reluctance to make big plans, the government pledged to fight roadside air pollution by revamping the city’s vast bus network, planting more trees, expanding bicycle infrastructure, creating “low-emission zones” in the city’s most congested areas and permanently pedestrianizing nearly two dozen streets. Emission standards would also be tightened for boats and private vehicles.

While details on many aspects of the plan have yet to be confirmed — and of course it’s still just a proposal, with no guarantee that any of it will be actually put into place — it has the potential to drastically improve the quality of life in Hong Kong’s central areas. In Mongkok, the network of pedestrian streets already in place would be expanded, while vehicles that do not meet the highest European emission standards, known as Euro IV, would be banned from the entire neighbourhood. Vehicular access outside the pedestrian areas would also be limited.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

Before the Grid

Paths in snow, on the beach and across fields show how people seem unable to walk straight even when they have a clear shot at where they’re going.

People don’t walk straight. Not only do they take short cuts when they can, they avoid trees, rocks and uneven places. The streets in old cities and towns reflect that meandering, but between the beginning of the 19th century and suburban developments in the middle of the 20th century, cities used right-angled street grids in their urban plans almost exclusively. It’s only where the grid met pre-existing footpaths that we can see evidence today of a time when walking feet determined where roads went.

One of the first attempts at “rational” planning began in 1803 when New York’s City Commissioners decided to survey Manhattan and bring order to the hodge-podge of grids that had been laid out along the island’s shorelines. Not much could be done about the earlier patterns, but they were integrated into a huge master plan which would not be completely built up for nearly 150 years. The chief exception to straight streets and right angles came when the commissioners recognized they had to include some footpaths used for centuries by Amerindians. The shortcuts and trails had become major thoroughfares, the most famous being the one running diagonally across the island and now known as Broadway.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

Goodbye Gutzlaff

Whenever you come across a particularly charming and surprising corner of Hong Kong, you can almost be sure that the Urban Renewal Authority has plans to do away with it. Although its official vision is “to create quality and vibrant urban living in Hong Kong,” most of its developments obliterate tight-knit communities and organic urban growth in favour of shopping malls, office developments and housing estates. Cynical Hong Kongers see the URA as a proxy for the big land developers that control this town; its projects are usually little more than land grabs for Hong Kong’s economic elite. Aside from displacing well-established neighbourhood social networks, they replace small-scale, independent businesses with corporate chain stores, which degrades the entrepreneurial spirit on which this city was built.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

The Teenage City

“The thing to do on prom night 1998 was to take the rented limo up to the lookout on Mount-Royal after a soirée of underage bar-hopping to see the sun rise,” writes Alanah Heffez on Spacing Montreal. “We didn’t make it. Dizzy on newly-discovered drinks, my date and I watched the sun come up from the rooftop of a grocery store around the corner from home.”

The teenager’s city is one of escape, adventure and a constant search “for something to climb, for a hole in the fence, for an undiscovered place, a final frontier to push against,” she writes. Too old to play at home and shut out from other venues (movies get expensive and bars are for the pleasure of the 18-plus), teenagers begin to see the entire city as a playground. “If my experience was any indication, teenagers rely on public space more than almost any other demographic,” Alanah notes.

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Popularity: 1% [?]

Shenzhen Overpass

Hong Kong businesspeople and pro-Beijing politicians like to daydream about the day when Shenzhen and Hong Kong will be completely integrated, the border between them either gone or reduced to an anachronistic formality. For now, though, the two cities remain strikingly different despite their proximity and shared history. Shenzhen is brash, devious and seedy, but also vast and monumental, often aloof from its surroundings. Whereas Hong Kong has a well-entrenched local identity, Shenzhen is a seething melting pot of new migrants from throughout the country, making it in some ways the ur-city of modern China.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

Every Street is a Mosaic

Even the most ordinary street in Lisbon is a mosaic. The stones may be simply-hewn blocks of some kind of gray rock, or elaborate black and white designs, as found in the praças. Obviously putting them in place and maintaining them is labour-intensive, but they have the advantage of providing an easily-repaired surface that also allows rain water to percolate into the ground.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Greening Expressways

If there’s a city that proves the lengths to which a government is willing to go for cars, it’s Hong Kong. Fewer than one in five people here actually own a car; most of the traffic is made up of trucks or some form of public transportation. It’s one of the less congested cities in Asia. Yet the government insists on building new roads at the expense of the city’s environment and quality of life.

The Central Kowloon Route is one of the most recent examples. Current plans call for an expressway to be tunnelled across the Kowloon peninsula, from a highway near the old Kai Tak Airport in the east to the West Kowloon expressway in the west. This in and of itself could be a good thing, since it has the potential to remove cross-town truck and bus traffic from noisy and polluted surface streets. But instead of using the new tunnel as a way to reduce the impact of traffic on surface roads, the government is increasing it. Along with the construction of the tunnel, the Central Kowloon Route will involve the widening of the existing Gascoigne Road flyover that runs through one of the city’s most densely-populated neighbourhoods.

The widening of the flyover is pretty much a done deal, unfortunately, so the question now is how to mitigate its impact. Sound barriers have recently come into vogue here, but they often create visual pollution every bit as nasty as noise, and of course they don’t do anything for the more serious problem of air pollution. To deal with this dilemma, an architectural competition was held for the design of the sound barriers along the rebuilt Gascoigne Road flyover, and the winners, a team of four recent architecture school graduates, found a solution that is both obvious and ingenious: cover the road in greenery. The flyover would be enclosed in a double-layered shell of glass modules that could support vegetation, which would then grow up and over the surface of the shell. The architects pointed to wall trees as their inspiration.

Engineers still need to determine if the winning proposal is technically feasible. If it is, and the government chooses to integrate it into the final design of the widened flyover, it could be a way to deal with the future highways that the government insists on building and the people are mostly powerless to stop.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Street Flourishes

Hong Kong is a city with very utilitarian streetscapes — everything on the street, from paving to furniture, is standardized, cost-efficient and bland — so visiting Taipei was a bit of a relief. Streets there are far more haphazard and eclectic. Part of that has to do with the wide range of street furniture (like the bollards I wrote about last winter) but part of it simply comes from nice decorative touches, like these mosaic walls along Yongkang Street. They add a bit of individuality and character to the street, avoiding (at least in this part of Taipei) the repetitiveness so common here in HK.

Popularity: unranked [?]