Developing a smart city system for land use and sustainable urban renewal in Hong Kong

Abstract

Hong Kong, as one of the most densely populated cities in the world, has been suffering from land shortage, urban decay, and dilapidated buildings for a long time. Land is one of the most precious and scarce resources in Hong Kong. Sustainable land use planning has become a challenge for the Hong Kong government. In addition, due to the increasing population and limited land supply, Hong Kong has been committed to developing every piece of urban land to achieve its expected potential. Urban renewal is regarded as a strategy to meet these challenges because it aims to solve the problem of urban recession, optimize, and improve land use patterns, and enhance the image of the city. The concept of sustainable development has its advantages, but it is not always well applied in practice. The urban renewal plan has received considerable criticism, including the destruction of local culture, profit driven characteristics, the expulsion of low-income residents and the poor quality of urban renewal stock. Effective decision support is needed to reduce or eradicate these negative effects before starting the update plan. To better apply sustainability to urban renewal, an in-depth study should be carried out to determine what factors influence sustainability and how to promote sustainability. In addition, although the role of GIS in urban planning has been widely recognized, 2D systems are no longer enough, and there are few studies on the application of the 3D GIS technology in land development. To fill these research gaps, this paper sets two goals: (1) Determine influencing factors from social, economic, and environmental aspects and how these factors affect sustainable land use planning; (2) Establish a 3D modeling platform for the investigating land development in Hong Kong. To achieve these goals, the paper designs and implements two stages: the first stage reviews the advantages and disadvantages of the existing research on urban renewal and urban planning system from the perspective of practice and theory based on comprehensive literature review and literature analysis. Based on the in-depth understanding of the urban renewal mechanism of Hong Kong or other cities, this paper defines the research problems and objectives.