Air Plot: an alternative to urban gentrification
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Thesis statement This thesis borrows the regulatory model of Air Rights zoning from New York City, and adapts it to Hong Kong’s urban context as an opportunistic approach to critique some of the city’s contemporary urban (re)development issues. Namely, land scarcity; the current model of urban gentrification; and the practical and sociopolitical problems that stem from such strategy.
Background Urban gentrification is a popular urban strategy in developed cities adopted by real estate developers and governments to old neighborhoods in order to increase efficiency in terms of economic profitability and density control. This popular mode of urban renewal involves the demolition of aged existing structures that are out-of-date in terms of their structural integrity and capacity to meet the current planning agenda, which are then replaced by new buildings that utilizes the land more efficiently. Although such interventions offer obvious advantages to audience above the poverty line, they often result in the displacement of existing inhabitants who are less wealthy than the intended newcomers. In a real estate market like that in Hong Kong or New York, compensations for the displaced are not likely sufficient to cover relocation costs. Under the current model, the more rigorously a city undergoes urban renewal, the more sociological problem it creates. In New York, the strategy of air rights as transferable titles is used to fill in underdeveloped pockets under the current zoning regulations within the city. New developments benefits higher profit returns by building higher, and in some cases older buildings are preserved by selling their air rights without having to face demolition. So can the urban environment of Hong Kong benefit in the same way by adopting said concept of air rights? That is the question this thesis sets out to answer. However, the practice of New York’s air rights model requires vacant plots for the development of new buildings, a luxury that this thesis is assuming Hong Kong will not possess in the near future. Therefore it will take another approach of building with no ground, or creating new ground per se.
Concept of Global Rule of Air Rights Acquisition
Density studies (2nd Review) This study analyses the amount of excess GFA possessed by the entire Kowloon City district, and visualizes them as phantom forms of fixed volume and tries to manipulate them using operations like scaling, setting back and aligning at the top. The findings suggest that by aligning at the top this set of rule is able to create an architecturally interesting second ground that could possibly benefit the entire neighborhood. The new open field created on top of the maximum development envelope can be adapted as parks, sports field or the like of generous sizes, a opportunity that the city of Hong Kong rarely sees.
Practical Guidelines for Utilizing Air Rights (3rd Review) Taking from the most basic spirit of building/ planning regulations that is to ensure and foster desirable living quality of both building and street users in terms of sunlight and air, this thesis invents, in collaboration with the existing building regulations of Hong Kong, simplistic rules that facilitate the formation of a new ground as well as building typology directly above an existing urban fabric. This set of guideline helps to minimize the physical impact of a mega-structure or a collection of structures suspended midair may have to the existing urban fabric below. Some points of consideration on that matter are:
For existing structures that encroach outside the prescribed envelope as derived by aforementioned guidelines, the following operations are to be implemented to further define the maximum development envelope:
(Moving on from 3rd Review) Architectural potential under newly implemented guidelines: 3 residential typologies driven by different stakeholders with different mindset and agenda are tested out within the maximum development envelope outlined by the prescribed regulations:
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