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This is another dialogue on planning. Its novelty lies in its potency in discovering new cutting edges in planning theory and education by examining the roots of planning in real world practices. T...

BACKGROUND: Open plan or open space office has become increasingly popular but those who promote the concept seldom refer to health studies or workers’ perceptions of a change in office layout towards an open space arrangement. OBJECTIVE: To review the literature on open plan or open space office layouts in terms of facilities management (FM) with users’ perceptions in mind and to obtain opinions of users of open space offices for a better appreciation of the FM issues. METHODS: A literature search of research papers from 2007 in journals using the keywords “open plan office” and “open space office” plus “health”, first in the titles then in the text, was carried out. Thirty-two of those papers, accessible by the authors’ institutions, were consulted together with 5 other works in the Harvard Business Review. The review consulted but excluded papers and reports published or sponsored by commercial firms that were in favour of open space layouts. Case studies were conducted by face to face meetings in confidence with workers in the middle managements of twelve Hong Kong organisations known as friends to two of the authors. Problems as seen by staff are reported and discussed. RESULTS: The literature review reveals that apart from writing that promotes the use of an open plan office layout, a host of scientific works point to the problems of perceived dissatisfaction with such a layout, the nature of the dissatisfaction tending to depend on the actual design. Most workers interviewed disliked the new style open plan layouts, which points to the necessity of consulting workers when such changes are contemplated, as well as monitoring the results of the change once it is in place whether against workers’ wishes or with their support. There is a need for a number of facility arrangements in making a change to open plan that ensures that worker needs for proper lighting, privacy, and indoor health will be met. CONCLUSIONS: If the aim of a change to an open plan arrangement is to promote collegial communications in office, the study sheds light on the extent to which such arrangements may not in practice be suitable for achieving the aim. It follows that further, more specifically sociological studies of workers’ job satisfaction and emotional health in open plan office settings would be worth doing.

This paper follows up six propositions in recent works that considered lot boundaries as units of private planning in a state prepared/endorsed layout and interprets land readjustment as a coordina...

Informed by a Coasian transaction cost paradigm enriched by the concept of Schumpeterian innovations, this paper discusses the advantages of using experimental coastal reclamation of the se...

On the grounds of two unique features of land, locational specificity and capacity for betterment through in-situ entrepreneurial transformation, this monograph uses three real world examples to qualify Coase’s idea, mentioned in two of his works on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), that a state monopoly of land is undesirable for allocating land due to the huge transaction costs of non-price allocation. These two features of land enable the creation of institutional arrangements constraining such costs occasioned by rent-seeking or rent dissipation envisaged by Coase. Breaking new theoretical grounds in understanding planning beyond a matter of property rights assignment and attenuation, the three examples show that where the state has an effective monopoly of land supply, it does not behave like a private land monopoly but, subject to constrained rent-seeking, enables, and also possibly brings about the betterment of land and its redistribution by government planning. The examples, two of which testify to a Coase Theorem predicated on Coase’s first work on the FCC, also shed light on the question of property boundaries as an ex ante planning tool for de jure property or an ex post outcome of development. The monograph shows that the transaction costs of both dividing and recombining tradable land, as physically unitized into land parcels within a layout, are greater than partitioning and re-partitioning marketable segments of radio frequencies.

Informed by the concept of subsidiarity, this paper is a preliminary study of the efforts undertaken by the Taiwanese Government to conserve some historical areas of Taipei. While the state’s primary concern was to foster the cultural identity and historical value of these places, it has also brought about the conservation and promotion of “old street shops”, leading to a growth in tourism. Therefore, this role of the Government in innovative planning fits a version of the allegedly libertarian Coase Theorem, which holds that the state can play an important role in expanding a market.

Informed by property rights economics, this paper explores some unique advantages of reclamation, as a form of expansionist dynamic zoning, compared to densification of existing built up urban land and conversion of rural and peri-urban land. One major argument is that modern reclamation package, in light of global circulation of capital, can be one comprehensive project that avoids old mistakes and tries out new ideas without upsetting pre-existing development or interests. It then explains, with the help of statistics collected from a historical study of land reclamation of Hong Kong, that the future urban development in this open economy will be arrested if she gives up reclamation. The loss of corporate memory, using civil service staff movements based on the Staff List, seldom used in Hong Kong studies on town planning, as a proxy, in strategic planning is advanced as a factor behind the current situation.

The outbreak of a highly communicable disease, SARS, in Asia in 2003 has revealed the health risk of living in a high-density environment. To show the important connection between human health and environmental quality, this study surveys the prevalence of sick building syndrome (SBS) among apartment residents and their evaluation of indoor environmental quality (IEQ). Based on a sample of 748 households living in Hong Kong, two interesting findings are revealed: (1) nasal discomfort was the commonest home-related SBS symptom despite the absence of any central ventilation system in apartment buildings; (2) noise, rather than ventilation, was the major IEQ problem perceived by residents. Our statistical analysis further showed that residents with SBS symptoms were less satisfied with their IEQ than those without. That is, despite a positive evaluation of specific IEQ criteria with respect to the building residents lived in, if they reported feeling SBS related symptoms, the overall IEQ evaluation of their building could still be negative. This perception bias gives rise to a sample selection problem in measuring perceived IEQ, which has implications on housing management practices and the formulation of a healthy housing policy.

Although there is growing interest in the subjectivity of ground photos, similar criticism of aerial photos as a media product widely used in land use, environmental planning and management is seemingly absent. Inspired by pioneering work of Dorrian and Pousin (2013) and informed by the idea of Farman (2010) that users of aerial images can re-contextualise and subvert “master representation”, this paper attempts to offer an explanation for this contrast and argues that it is harder to wage a subjectivist battle against aerial photography than against ground photos and discusses the possible better use of government possessed aerial photo data in a digital form. Four reasons for this based on disinterested observation, data neutrality, psychology and focus are offered. Two thought experiments and examples are used to help explanation.

This interdisciplinary paper, informed by research and practices in neo-institutional economics, property law and land surveying, is an exploratory account of the boundary as (a) the ontological foundation of private property in land and boundary dispute resolution, and (b) as a pre-contractual condition of any Coasian exchange of rights for planned urban development and space-relevant innovations. Under conditions of positive transaction costs according to the third Coase Theorem, with the help of real-life examples, the paper explains the choice of using the courts, instead of the market, as a means of resolving disputes over land boundaries. It does so in terms of two land surveying and three economic reasons. The surveying reasons are historical and cartographical. The economics reasons relate to the price level of land, the transaction costs of enforcing dispute resolutions and the externalities of land boundary determination.

The traditional approaches to zoning, as an area and locational-specific action, treat it as a means of the state to attenuate and/or establish private property rights over land. The old approach regards zoning as necessarily one of attenuating private property rights over land whether it is from an interventionist or libertarian perspective. A more recent approach finds zoning possible by contract and characterizes it as a means by which the state establishes and/or attenuates private property rights over land. Informed by Coasian transaction cost economics, this paper: (a) reiterates the view that zoning, as lot boundary delineation by the state, is the institutional foundation of private property rights over land; (b) explains the relationship between private property rights held by citizens, which are often wrongly treated as necessarily restricted access, and those of the state, which are often mistaken as common because they are called “public,” which, in fact, means open access; (c) discusses the distinction between static and dynamic boundary delineation for three forms of incursion into private land by the public; and (d) uses a case study on history of reclamation in Hong Kong, as a form creative zoning by dynamic boundary delineation from 1844 to 2015 to illustrate the importance of dynamic boundary delineation.

Within a framework that connects the various disciplines and key concepts of “urban renewal,” this paper reviews the relevant research publications, as found in the literature going back to 1960 in terms of its: (i) diverse meanings and means; (ii) espoused reasons for government-led urban renewal; and (iii) the notion of holding out. It then discusses the feasible roles the state can play when planning for urban renewal in terms of property rights, which is a dimension of social justice (which has yet to be explored) and an expression of subsidiarity. It will demonstrate these roles in a study on Hong Kong and report a statistical test on the effect of urban renewal on neighbouring properties. It should show that government-led urban renewal in Hong Kong is oriented towards exploiting development potential and infringes on private property rights, while other espoused objectives are secondary. A statistical test will show that government-led urban renewal has not always led to positive externalities, as expected.

Coase’s (1960) famous story of land use conflicts between two farms, as generalized in the Coase Theorem, injects into neo-institutional economics a potential to overcome the a-spatial limitations of neo-classical economics and contribute to theorization in planning as a science for delineating places for specific purposes, or zoning. In the light of the historical evolution in spatial division of labour and a review of the literature on the definitions and meaning of zoning, this exploratory interdisciplinary inquiry informed by neo-institutional economics, history of surveying and planning, attempts to use the corollary of the Coase Theorem, which highlights the significance of property boundaries, to explore several boundary scenarios in planned zoning that are of policy significance. They are conflicts of zoning, borderline non-zoning, incomplete zoning, forgotten zones, zoning for non-planning, rights-conferring zoning and co-development zoning. The transaction cost implications of these scenarios are spelled out. Examples from Europe, China, Australia and Americas are cited and elaborated where suitable to illustrate specific arguments.

This interdisciplinary study, drawing on knowledge in institutional economics, history, and cartography, uses evidence based on government files up to 1975 and disclosed since 2003, aerial photographs from 1945 to 1975, and NGO publications evidence to show that developers used metes and bounds, namely the original walls of the main fort as modified by public roads, and the surveyed alignment of a stream, to delimit their building lines under uncertain jurisdictional limits of the boundaries of the Kowloon (Walled) City in spite of certitude of the alignments of its walls. In this light, the paper discusses the proposition that to both the Chinese and colonial governments, “Kowloon City”, consistently referred to as the “Kowloon Walled City” (KWC) in post-war official Hong Kong government files and recent English language academic literature, had a great sign value in terms of Peirce’s theory, as it pointed towards something more than a disused solitary fort. This value cannot be dismissed when articulating present heritage management for the KWC as a public Chinese garden.

This study represents a trialogue by a town planner, an economist, and a political scientist on the concepts of built heritage and sustainable development in terms of some features in the relationship between sustainable development and economics, sustainable development, built heritage conservation and economics, built heritage conservation and politics, built heritage conservation and sustainable development, and the tension between built heritage conservation vs. conservation/sustainable development. From planning, economic, and political angles, the feasibility and limitations of heritage building conservation in relation to conservation and sustainable development are presented. Compared to ecological conservation, built heritage conservation can easily accommodate sustainable development, as it is certainly a physical dimension for managing cultural heritage conservation. Built heritage as “heritage buildings” can articulate with real estate development via proper conservation planning. Its historical aspect signifies the legitimacy of conservation, while its proprietary aspect renders it fit for betterment.

In Hong Kong, since direct land value capture (LVC) can be exercised through premium assessment during lease modifications, levies of developer obligations have received relatively less attention. Since the introduction of the planning application system in the 1970s, negotiable developer obligations (NDO) can be levied through imposing conditions on the planning permits. This study walkthroughs the key direct and indirect LVC devises regarding the major types of land contracts in different regions of Hong Kong. To unleash the development potential of the privately owned land in the suburb regions for housing development, this study explores the introduction of land readjustment mechanisms, of which the private landowners must contribute substantial portions of their land parcels, as non-negotiable developer obligations, for public housing and infrastructure development.

This interdisciplinary paper, informed by property rights economics, urban planning, facility management, and medical science, as well as the study of the quality of life, (a) presents a typology of Hong Kong open space transformation in terms of property rights; and (b) a small scale indicative survey with a sample that was > 1% of the workforce of the constituency. The authors argue with the help the findings of the survey that the government, as a major provider and regulator, should be able to assign a higher priority to, or enact better designs and plans for usable open spaces to contribute to better public health. This would counterbalance the focus on the indoor environment and health after the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and articulate with the issues of property rights and social justice in open space provision.

Delays in obtaining development approvals have been advanced as a major reason for shortages if not also increase in cost of housing. This paper is the first systematic attempt to examine whether the apparently long period of time taken to obtaining statutory planning permissions by developers for major development projects under Comprehensive Development Area (CDA) zoning is due to Town Planning Board rejections or developers’ strategy to hoard land or improve building design. Publicly available Town Planning Board data obtained from the Planning Department, property transaction records kept by the Land Registry, property market statistics released by the Rating and Valuation Department and macro-economic data from the Census and Statistics Department are used to find out the number of planning applications and time taken for a real estate project in a CDA zone involving residential components to start construction from the date of the first valid planning application as the means to ascertain if any delay in development was due to business innovation in building design to cater to sustainable development; or strategic behaviour to hoard land.

This paper demonstrates that the framing of post-war Kowloon Walled City through photos has been dominated by the maps commonly used to represent this Chinese enclave in colonial Hong Kong as a place. Inspired by and extending Wylie’s (2009) argument that emptiness and presence are equally important, this paper uses basic GIS techniques and hitherto unpublished archival materials to help (a) argues that the colonial government’s mindset of clearly defining the spatial boundary of the city, which is a subtle admission of an officially and diplomatically denied otherness in ownership, created the city as a quasi-cadastral unit; and (b) explains how this shaped the framing of the landscape of the city by promoting investment and trade in high-rise housing development units. The government did not destroy its walls. When these were physically destroyed, it did not ignore the walls’ original alignments but treated the city as a planning unit, as if they still existed.

A state monopoly over a scarce natural resource under open access can theoretically reduce the costs of supply by constraining rent dissipation and innovations. A monopoly over the collection and trading of sand was formed in Hong Kong by legislation in 1935 in the wake of disputes between sandmen and villagers and imminent shortages of sand. Arguably, a monopoly at this stage of Hong Kong's development was a better alternative to merely defining rights over sand extraction in terms of the transaction costs of enforcement. During the 1950s and 1960s, when Hong Kong's economy and construction industry began to boom, the monopoly's existence was further justified due to the politics of China being the sole source of Hong Kong's sand supply. However, this case study of the sand monopoly and its post-war operation as a bilateral monopoly shows that it did not protect coastal villagers, as violations of the sand law were not infrequent. The local sand supply was huge, and the monopoly's abolition in 1981 was followed by a long period of falling, rather than rising, real wholesale prices of the resource. Nor was there any sign of scale economies, as claimed by the government. The policy implications of this are discussed.

This paper examines the nature of the “community” in “gated communities” as a globalizing form of housing development; discusses factors for the enmity this form attracts; argues that the global trend in gating need not be socially destructive, as warned by critics; and suggests principles for shaping the governance of these communities with subsidiarity and solidarity in mind. It uses four case studies to demonstrate the applicability of these principles or otherwise.

This study aims to investigate the objective factors that determine heritage conservation decision makings. A probit regression model, fed with land value data obtained by the residual valuation method, was used to evaluate data sets for 155 built heritage sites designated as statutory monuments or administratively graded by the Antiquities and Monument Office in Hong Kong. Five refutable hypotheses were tested. Although a building at a larger site has a higher chance to be designated a graded heritage building than one at a smaller site, the chances of it being designated a grade heritage building were statistically higher for an older building than for a newer one; not lower for sites under zoning for non-private uses and lower for a privately owned building than a government building; and above all higher for a site with higher property value. The results as a whole dispute the presumption of other researchers, who argued that planning decisions in general, or conservation planning decisions in particular, were dominated by a pro-market sentiment in favor of economic benefits. They form a discussion on the relevance of statistical inquiry for heritage conservation.