New Technologies Opening New Directions in Urban Renewal

The construction industry has been actively promoting Construction 2.0 reforms as a means of addressing future challenges. Similarly, urban renewal works, which are closely related to the construction industry, have also been implementing comprehensive reform in recent years. The CIC has invited Ir WAI Chi-sing, Managing Director of the Urban Renewal Authority (URA), to share how the URA has addressed the problem of urban decay and opened up a new direction for urban renewal through innovation, digital transformation and cross-sector cooperation.

Urban Renewal Lags Behind Urban Decay

“In the past few decades, urban renewal has very much been outpaced by the rate of urban decay,” said Ir WAI. According to URA records, the average age of buildings being demolished and replaced is 50 years. Currently, Hong Kong has approximately 12,000 buildings older than 50 years of age. Over the next two decades, the number will increase to 25,000. Ir WAI fears that even if the URA accelerates renewal work, they will be unable to catch up with renewal demand fuelled by the pace of urban decay. Taking Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok (Yau Mong district) as examples, 65% of the area’s approximately 3,000 buildings are over 50 years old. The estimated cost of acquisition and compensation equates to more than HKD1,100 billion, which the URA is unable to bear alone. Additionally, the renewal potential of a building decreases over time, which reduces the private sector’s interest in participating. A further consideration is that in Hong Kong, there are gaps to fill in building maintenance, including requirements to enhance the regulatory system, property owners who lack knowledge and organisational capacity, and owners’ corporations which lack sufficient financial reserves. All the above have aggravated the situation of urban decay. Facing this daunting challenge, in recent years the URA has, like the construction industry, made multiple changes and implemented new initiatives. They want to rectify the situation with new ideas.

Developing new materials to extend service life

One of the most important initiatives is the adoption of innovative building materials that extend the lifespan of buildings and slow the pace of urban decay. As the first engineer to be a Managing Director of the URA, Ir WAI has used his expertise and turned to civil engineering technologies to inject fresh thinking into construction projects.

As Ir WAI pointed out, the design life of buildings is currently based on a wind load return period of 50 years. If this could be prolonged to 60 or 70 years, the building service life could be longer. “As engineers, we all know in civil engineering, the design life is 120 years. So, it may not be appropriate to simply adopt this design life in building, but it may be time to review the building design code,” He said.

As a result, the URA has commissioned a study across the expertise of the civil engineering and construction industries. It is examining the feasibility of elements and technologies common to civil engineering projects – including use of a longer design life and more durable materials such as higher-grade concrete and coated rebar – and their effectiveness in prolonging the service life of buildings.

Launching Internal Digital Transformation

While encouraging the application of innovative technologies, the URA has embarked on its own internal digital transformation. Ir WAI said: “The use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) is now mandatory in all URA projects, serving as a common platform for communication and collaboration.”

The Shanghai Street/Argyle Street and Central Market projects exemplify the effectiveness of BIM. As well as preserving and revitalising buildings of historical value, new facilities have been added that meet the requirements of modern construction. The URA used BIM to integrate information such as construction design, structural engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering and plumbing facilities over the whole building life-cycle. BIM also aided in identifying structural incompatibilities between old and new designs, allowing the team to resolve issues early and save time and cost.

To facilitate urban renewal planning, the URA developed a unified GIS-based planning system known as URIS. URIS integrates geographic information and data such as land use, planning requirements, development density, etc, and visualises such information on a map. This enables the URA to precisely devise suitable renewal plans for different districts, and also helps to obtain higher operational effectiveness in the project cycle.

The URA also plans to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) for URIS and BIM to automate the approval process for general building plans. In light of this, the URA requests its staff to attend AI-related training.

Cross-sector Collaboration to Promote Urban Renewal

The URA has been active in working with different sectors to seek innovative urban renewal solutions. “Since I joined the URA in 2016, I have been saying that the extent of URA achievement is contingent on the success of building rehabilitation,” Ir WAI stressed. If aged buildings can be maintained in good condition and design life prolonged, the pace of urban decay can be slowed down.

In view of this, the URA has been enhancing property owners’ building maintenance knowledge and the standards of rehabilitation technologies. With the support of the construction industry, they established a one-stop Building Rehabilitation Platform to provide comprehensive building rehabilitation related information and technical support to property owners. The URA has also worked with the Lands Department to introduce amendments to the Deed of Mutual Covenant provisions pertaining to URA projects. These require owners to draw up regular maintenance plans and allocate money in reserve for their execution. The URA has also worked with the Home Affairs Department and multiple NGOs to help property owners set up owners’ corporations to facilitate the coordination of maintenance work.

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank the construction industry because they were active in the process of setting up the Building Rehabilitation Platform,” said Ir WAI. He expects that as the relevant measures become effective and successfully raise general awareness of building rehabilitation, the construction industry will have to train up skilled workers to meet demand for repair works.

To encourage private sector participation in renewal projects, the URA commissioned the Yau Mong District Study and has adopted area-based strategic planning to form a renewal blueprint. The blueprint also introduces new planning tools such as street consolidation area and transfer of plot ratio. Street consolidation areas forming large-scale redevelopment zones and transfer of plot ratios of residential and non-residential areas can flexibly respond to the public’s needs and cope with changes in the market.

Summing up, Ir WAI said that although the new initiatives and collaboration can enhance its effectiveness, urban renewal still faces many challenges. In future, the URA will step up the pace of innovation, and hopes that the civil engineering and construction industries will continue to collaborate on new solutions.