Hong Kong is a city known for its soaring skyscrapers and crowded sidewalks,but now the city is getting creative and exploring the use of underground space to increase land supply for new homes. Cathy Yang walks the campus grounds of the University of Hong Kong, where innovative planning has helped find it new space for its growing number of its students.
This is the University of Hong Kong – one of the world’s top universities, located in the western end of the Southern district. It is Hong Kong’s oldest institute for higher learning. It is also a venue where the city government can learn a few things from – when it comes to increasing land for homes in a city’s that literally running out of space.
Hong Kong University literally went underground – moving reservoirs into caverns – to free up space and accommodate more undergraduates in the campus.
Because the existing campus was located in a built-up area and was already crowded, the University could not construct any new buildings. So they went for the one, innovative option, and you see it right behind me. The University sought approval to relocate these service reservoirs right here into the underground caverns behind me.
Where these three service reservoirs used to be -- is here. And the space that it freed up is where the University of Hong Kong’s new Centennial Campus now stands. It’s made up of three buildings – housing the arts, social sciences and law faculties.
And as Professor Lee Chack-fan of Hong Kong University noted, much to the surprise of many, ‘the campus actually looks nice and green, complete with an array of environmentally friendly facilities.’
And this innovative solution reinforces what Hong Kong Chief Executive C-Y Leung highlighted in his recent policy address, when he referred to the use of underground space in relation to land supply for housing. What Hong Kong University did – may just as well give urban planners and developers a fresh take on how else to address the need to build new homes -- in a city that’s literally running out of space.
