A Digital City building cities for a digital age

My Visit to Hong Kong: Part 1

Famous view of Hong Kong
from The Peak

A bridge near Lantau Island

A few weeks ago, I embarked on a trip halfway around the world to visit the city of Hong Kong, which is a major world city. It was especially significant because my girlfriend Seychelle and her family are from there. It was a great experience, and it has definitely changed my views about how cities should be planned.

Hong Kong is rarely what you imagined, and nothing like you see in the pictures. It is extremely, almost inconceivably, different from anything you’ve ever seen in North America or Europe. It is simply the ultimate urban machine.

My first experiences of the city was rather surreal. We took a bus from the airport, traveling through many different environments. The first was the highway between the mountains and coast of Lantau Island, which is relatively undeveloped compared to Hong Kong Island. You can refer to the map below if you’re not sure where it is.

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Bigger Isn’t Always Better

La Bon Marché in Paris

Eaton’s in Toronto

Macy’s in New York

Large format retail has existed in various forms since the concept first emerged in the 1850’s, when Le Bon Marché opened in Paris. It was four storeys high and one of the largest shopping centres in the world at the time. In time, famed department stores like Macy’s in New York, or Eaton’s in Toronto acted as magnets for tens of thousands of shoppers.

All three have several things in common: they are all more than one storey high, Macy’s and Eaton’s being almost ten storeys. They all take up just a single city block. For example, Macy’s flagship store fits around 100,000 square metres of retail space into just 3 acres. The Walmart mentioned later in this article has 21,000 sq. m on 18 acres.

They all have stunning architectural detail, such as beautiful stonework, windows, and cornices. They all face directly onto the street, which is lined with windows to display merchandise and covered with awnings.

The entire experience is filled with detail and colour. These are places you would not mind just sitting on a bench and watching the people walk by along the sidewalk, and the traffic whizzing by on the street. Now this is big done well. Yes, big can be good, as I have shown above. Read on for why many modern developments are big, and bad.

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Defining Human Scale

In order to build an enjoyable environment on a human scale, we first need to know what people enjoy, and then what they need. This combination of two variables, esthetics and functionality, is important. Even the most conceptually unique space won’t be used by normal people if it is not functional. Similarly, people will not want to spend time in an extremely spartan space that is only about function.

A building in Seattle demonstrates human
scale in its built form.

The city of Seattle has a series of design guidelines, including a section detailing how make a place human-friendly. Basically, the details are most important. Greenery to provide shade, details in building and window mouldings, awnings, and good lighting, all contribute to making a space appealing. However, all these features work together to make sure that a space does not appear too large. Awnings and moldings act as an imaginary outdoor ceiling, and trees contribute to this.

My previous blog talked about how commercial big box stores, with their giant parking lots, are just about the worst example of human scale planning in our everyday lives. How can they be better?

The fact is, the Big Box is simply too big. Before any of the detailing mentioned above can be incorporated, that box needs to be broken up into smaller, more realistically sized portions that are stacked on top of each other to a minimum of two storeys. That doesn’t mean they have to be tiny, but they shouldn’t be much deeper than a typical building in a city’s downtown. That means an average depth about 40 metres (130 feet). The Walmart store alone in your average Walmart supercentre is over 100m (330ft) deep, not to mention around 170m wide!

Reducing the horizontal size of these developments is the first step toward human scale design. Check back next time for a look at the environmental and economic reasons why modern shopping centres are way too big.

Gas Prices, and Building on a Human Scale

Starting with Hurricane Katrina’s ravaging of New Orleans three years ago in 2005, gas prices have continued their steady summer climb. Oil prices hit $145 U.S. Dollars a barrel today, which really has not come as a surprise to anyone. In fact, the price of oil barely makes the news anymore.

What does fill the headlines, however, are regular announcements of manufacturing plant closures, airline cutbacks, and the like. Here in Ontario the auto industry, which is an economic mainstay, exports over 90% of its product south of the border to the United States. Needless to say, people in the U.S. currently don’t have a very large appetite for automobiles right now. At the same time, the U.S. housing/mortgage crisis, which was at first expected to quickly dissipate, has continued with vigour, forcing many out of their sprawling suburban homes.

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Welcome to A Digital City

Hi, I’m Jeremy Krygsman. I’m starting this blog to act as my outlet for all that I learn related to the profession of city planning. I’m currently finished my first year at the University of Waterloo’s School of Planning, and loving every minute of it. I have lots of ideas, from big to small (mostly big though!), which I would love to see come to fruition – and the first step is toward that is to develop them in detail and show them to the world! I hope my readers will find my ideas interesting, thought provoking, and practical.

They tell you, when you go to university, that you can change the world. This is the beginning of my attempt at doing just that!