The works presented in
the exhibition “GBA 2030+ Ecologies and Projections” closes our second year of
research on the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. This new mega region
on the Pearl River Delta gradually will be activated and will re-define its
modes of functions until the total unification of Hong Kong to China in 2040. The
GBA area is considered the most fast growing region in human history,
accommodating round 14 percent of China GDP, with an expected population of 100
million people by 2030 and covering a total area of 56000 square kilometers. It
consists of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), the Macao
Special Administrative Region (Macao SAR) as well as the municipalities of
Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Huizhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Jiangmen and
Zhaoqing in Guangdong Province.
The project is a joint program of Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and the Urban Environment, Department of Urbanism; The Polythecnic University of Hong Kong PolyU Design; and supported by the International Forum of Urbanism [IFoU].
The emergence of ‘mega’
urban-scapes and their regional agglomeration into urbanised areas of over 70
million – at least an order of magnitude larger than has ever been planned
before - has reframed many conventional challenges of the spatial planning
agenda. With the mega region in formation, a new necessity emerges, that being
the investigation of the dynamic, morphogenetic and ecosystemic properties
specific to the local and regional conditions. The integration of eleven
significantly sized cities and their corresponding metropolitan hinterlands,
three special economic or administrative regions, three currencies, and
different cultural groups into one urban regional entity is a complex
undertaking. At present, aside from the governance and policy intentions this
has primarily resulted in an infrastructural planning approach, one that
utilizes a systemic top-down approach that seeks to provide the connective
tissues and reticules, as well as civic and economic systems that mobilize
people, capital and goods in such a vast region. This approach is akin to the
smart city models, which seek to enfold all aspects of civic life within
infrastructure systemic control paradigms. However, given the scope and scale
of this undertaking, the modalities of planning in the GBA need to shift from
an extensive planned realm in which every part coheres to a plan, to one of a
differentiated field in which diverse intensities arise as an effect of their
urban eco-system integration (or its lack of).
The complexity of the
planning task ahead urgently asks for inclusive approaches, concepts and development
strategies able to respond to the vulnerabilities and potentialities of this
consolidating mega-region on the Pearl River Delta in dynamic, open-ended ways
that can foster new modalities of planning. Therefore, the spatial planning
and design disciplines need to critically reconsider their role whilst
developing critical and non-conventional analytical tools and development models
to address the socio-economic and environmental challenges, whilst at the same
time projecting possible future inclusive and equitable scenarios.
In this light, the
projects here presented are addressing these challenges by exploring a
non-conventional set of methodologies so to evaluate and forecast the
complexity involved in this emerging form and processes of mega-regional
development. The projects seek an alignment between the natural systems (that
are expressed into different spatio-temporal scales) and the concomitant
interaction of scalar sensitive functional networks of each metropolitan system
and its patterns of inhabitation.
Outlined here are the
outcomes of scenario testing and proposition formulation in the field of
spatial planning, landscape architecture and urban design on a mega scale
region of the GBA. This is done through the introduction of game boarding methodologies (PolyU HK) and cross-disciplinary approaches. As a point of
departure, the work shown challenges the way strategic planning becomes
instrumental as a speculative medium in materializing spatial strategies at the
regional and territorial scales, inclusive of environmental systems and their
even larger scales.
Guided by a consortium
of spatial planners, morphologists, regional designers and researchers from TUD
and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, PolyU – supported by the International
Forum of Urbanism [IFoU] - students of the Master track Urbanism (TUD) organized
in 4 groups worked during 10 weeks at: firstly, building a robust theoretical
framework so to determine the analytical methods to evaluate the current
regional development and forecast a future mega-regional system. Thereafter, starting
from the key challenges as expressed in the GBA outline documents from mainland
China government (2018) and complemented by an expanded set of new development
goals emerged from the analytical findings, each group developed a proposal for
the future development of the GBA mega-region.
The studio was
structured around and supported by a series of lectures and workshops from the
Complex City research group (TUD), the Design of the Urban Fabric research
group (TUD), the Delta Urbanism research group (TUD), the Landscape Architecture reseach group (TUD), the Adaptive Urban Transformation (AUT) Joint Research Project (TUD) and PolyU Design (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University). Because of the
travelling limitations brought by the COVID 19 pandemic, the 3 weeks IFoU
workshop "Game Boarding Regional Development" by PolyU, kindly hosted and guided by PolyU Design in Hong Kong has taken place
online.
