Assessing citizen perceptions on community participations and social bonding - the case of urban renewal in Hong Kong

The Urban Renewal Authority (URA) was set up in Hong Kong in 2001 with the goal of promoting the principles of redevelopment, revitalization, rehabilitation and preservation of the decaying areas in Hong Kong. One of the major objectives of the URA is to incorporate citizen views in the planning process in order to achieve the promise of "caring people" in the process urban renewal. However under a bureaucratic procedure, public views are gathered mainly through public forums & exhibitions, community aspiration survey as well as the social impact of assessments. In the academic world, there are increasing emphasis on the institutional evaluation on the development and effectiveness of the citizen participation (Mok, 1988; Lai, 1996; Loh, 1997; Ng, 1997). For instance, Fong's study concentrated on examining how citizen participation is nurtured in the context of Hong Kong (Fong, 1986); while other (Lau, 1999) focused on assessing the circumstances for citizens to participate in the revitalization process. There are; however, very limited studies that are focusing on assessing how citizens perceive the various modes of public participations in HK. Understanding the perceptions of citizen on public participation is in fact a bottom-up approach to compliment the weakness of the paternalistic planning in HK. In order to examine the perceptions of citizens toward public participation in the urban revitalization, we conducted a number of qualitative interviews and focus group discussions, with an attempt to generate insights on the understanding of citizen perceptions on the effectiveness of participation in current town planning process. This study discovered that most citizens were confused with the various modes of consultation and in general believed that they had very limited power in shaping urban planning policies in Hong Kong.