Western District: Community Revival
Authors. DING Saidi Sandy, LO Chak Hei Hugo, WANG Tian Meng Timo, ZHANG Zeyi Lanal.
The aim of the project is to revitalize the old community of Western Street socially and culturally with the design of a footbridge that links residential buildings with commercial shops, whilst creating more public space for residents. The whole project will connect elements of transportation, public space and links together to achieve sustainability. The Western Street connects Des Vouex Road West at the Sai Ying Pun waterfront to Bonham Road at the Mid-levels and the vicinity of Western Street is a local hub with shops, schools, community centers, health care facilities and fresh food markets.
ELEMENT ONE: TRANSPORTATION
The Third Street is a steeply graded road with a level difference of about 55 m between Des Vouex Road West and Bonham Road. Some sections even have the gradient of 1:2 with staircases provided. The steep gradient has imposed difficulties to the pedestrians commuting along the street, in particular during adverse weather conditions. The footbridge will serve as a hillside escalator link for pedestrians. It will improve pedestrian accessibility and can shorten the journey time from 14 minutes to 5 minutes from bottom to top. Cars and buses will move faster under footbridge without too many pedestrians walking on the original road, which will reduce the polluted air and noise in this area.
ELEMENT TWO: PUBLIC SPACE
The footbridge will also provide more public space for residents there. Public platforms with community gardens are designed between escalator links, where people could take a rest and communicate with each other. It is anticipated that the footbridge will benefit a residential population of about 50,300 in this community. With the implementation of the West Island Line of MTR and redevelopment of the Sai Ying Pun area, it is anticipated that more pedestrians and residents will benefit from the footbridge and public space provided.
ELEMENT THREE: LINKS
The footbridge is a link that effectively integrates the commercial area with the residential buildings. People living uphill will be attracted to the lower part to go shopping, thus shops there are more likely to sustain. Residents will be more willing to go around the community to meet new people and talk to neighbors. Consequently, the whole community will be revitalized commercially and socially, thus sustainability could be achieved with enhanced efficiency in the usage of the buildings. Moreover, the whole footbridge is covered with solar panels, which will continuously supply electricity for the escalators, making the escalators self-sustained. We expect that the proposed escalator link will boost the pedestrian flow of Western Street to about 30,000 two-way trips per day in 2015, comparing to the current figure of about 2000 in Western Street and 12000 for the existing escalator in the Sai Ying Pun Market Complex.
The project is designed to revitalize the old community with the consideration of transportation, public space and community links in a sustainable way, benefiting not only current residents but also future generations.
