For the love of god, what does the WCKD want?
By Hayley Wu
Hong Kong is, in many ways, a dream city. With a flourishing economy, super efficient transportation, and low crime rate, it has everything a person would ever need. Well- almost.
Asking around, you’ll begin to notice that there are two things that people consistently point out as being Hong Kong’s weaknesses: lack of green spaces, and culture. Such an issue has attracted the attention of the government, and after years of development, a solution has been proposed.
The West Kowloon Cultural District.
A 40 hectare development site stretching from the Elements mall to Canton Road, the area is made out of reclaimed land, and it’s main purpose is to help meet the infrastructural needs of Hong Kong’s arts and cultural development. It’s also meant to help fulfill the need for open green spaces for the Kowloon district- something that has always been lacking in the area.
The ideology sounds good. Hong Kong has no real ‘arts hub’ for arts and culture, and creating an area for this could potentially encourage more acts to perform in a well equipped arena. There have already been discussions about subsidizing the prices for hiring out the various facilities for local performances. The facilities, when built, should be some of the best that Hong Kong will have. Most of all, it’s an active move in prioritizing things like cultural development and urban green space into Hong Kong.
But this begs the question- how much of this ideology will remain in the actual execution of the project? And how much of that ideology was actually legitimate when they were planning to create WKCD? It’s hard to tell.
Firstly, the aims of the overall project have been extremely broad throughout the project. While it has stood by it’s aims to be a ‘cultural and arts district’, it also considers itself to be an attempt at innovative green design. Now that’s fine- until you add that it also wants to be a place for education on the arts. And a place to attract tourists. And for the public. And it has to be economically beneficial. Again, the aims themselves are not the problem- it’s just a matter of how feasible all of this is.
What WKCD fails to do is to narrow down on what should be the core of it’s project- does it want to make money? Does it want to promote arts and culture? It wants to be all of these things, all at once, which is just simply not an effective way to work. What it needs to do is to focus on key aims that make it as effective as it can be. The rest (tourism, money making, education)- will follow.
The plan for WKCD is also strangely vague for a development that is supposed to be ongoing construction. While it is true that there are 23 hectares dedicated to green space, the question as to where the remaining 17 hectares are going remains fairly unclear. A quick look at the WKCD website doesn’t reveal much more- while some will become theatre halls and performance areas, others have simply been left blank, and within the small text of WKCD’s aims you can see that there are also plans in place to ‘build commercial facilities, hotels and development’.
Again, this is a matter of trying to do too many things at one time. Putting additional ‘commercial facilities’ in between one of the busiest shopping roads of Hong Kong and a huge shopping mall is useless- unless it can prove that those shops bring something to the area (and isn’t yet another opportunity to stuff more jewelry and high brand shops into the area), there’s no reason why it should be there in the first place. It won’t be effective enough to bring people in, and will drive those who actually want to experience the area for it’s arts, cultural and environmental aspects out.
It’s not the first time they’ve tried to build an entire area with a key purpose- and have it flop. Cyberport is a key example of this- if you go there, you can see that clearly a lot of effort has been put into the development of the place. But take a walk, and you’ll soon see how empty it is. Even on the weekends, it’s heaviest traffic comes not from cars coming into the area- but in the bike path where bikers pass through on a weekend.
So, with that in mind, what could be done to WKCD as a whole to make it a better place for all those involved? What can we do to ensure that it becomes a space well used- a space of value for all HK residents? Well, there’s no definite way to go about this, but here are a few ways the government could work towards making WKCD a more effective space.
1: Use the current strengths of WKCD. The area is already gaining a reputation for being a place where festivals occur- Freespace Fest and the highly popular Clockenflap being examples of this. While it’s true there is already an effort made to keep a large open space for this for the plan, by keeping elements that have made such events successful and continuing them, this could allow for the WKCD to be effectively used. It’s also developing into an area where actual open space can be found (and it is immensely busy on the weekends)- adding additional shops and buildings would deter this and ruin the overall atmosphere.
2: Integrate the ideas of ecology and arts and culture into the area. Rather than having ‘elements’ of sustainability or ‘areas of culture’, WKCD needs to work on creating an integrated approach to this. Perhaps instead of installing normal benches for people to sit on, invite local artists to create pieces of art that can be sat on. Ensure that all theaters built will be ecologically friendly! Putting more dedication into the aspects that are the biggest objectives of WKCD will ultimately be more effective, rather than trying to create an ‘all round’ space that encompasses all of the desires of everyone in the vicinity of Hong Kong.
Failing all of that, I highly recommend that the entirety of WKCD be turned into a massive patch of grass, for people of all ages to enjoy and roll around in. If that doesn’t succeed in getting the people of Hong Kong’s attention, nothing will.
