Evaluating the quality of life in Hong Kong's new towns in relation to accessibility and the distribution of community and cultural facilities: A case study of Tung Chung

Abstract

Providing adequate homes has been an ongoing challenge for Hong Kong. The Hong Kong government has utilized new town developments to meet its development goals, employing a balanced development principle. However, Hong Kong's new towns have long been criticized as ‘dormitory towns,’ as they cannot achieve self-sufficiency, partly due to the uneven distribution of public amenities. Access to public amenities, such as libraries, municipal halls, and performing arts venues is not only crucial for creating a sense of community and identity but also for the development of sustainable and livable communities while also helping to address inequality. Hong Kong's new towns have been developed through three generations, starting in the 1960s. Of interest for this paper is Tung Chung, the latest new town that has attracted public attention due to its lack of community identity and inadequate access to public facilities, all of which are exacerbated by the new town's poor urban form. To understand the relationship between access to cultural facilities and quality of life, this paper assesses and compares the total number, capacity, and overall access to public facilities within Hong Kong's new towns and the variation within each generation. After that, we focus on Tung Chung to explore, through spatial analysis and interviews, the impact of the new town's urban form and its limited offer of public facilities. Our findings suggest that the more recent new towns, particularly Tung Chung, are disadvantaged in both qualities of the urban form and access to public facilities. Moreover, lower-income households in public housing are particularly disenfranchised. This affects the residents' daily life, depriving them of access to social services and affecting community life, thus exacerbating inequality. Future expansion areas are designed based on the same principles and will thus likely result in similar issues.