Assessing the impacts of volumetric urban designs of metro infrastructure projects in Greater Bay Area

This project will support pilot studies to refine research questions, and methodologies, and confirm the feasibilities of biding an external research impact fund on interdisciplinary assessments of how volumetric developments in metro infrastructure projects generate social, economic, health and wellbeing impacts for society in Greater Bay Area, within the institution, urban design, land finance and political contexts in China. This study extends the works and findings of several nationally competitive research grants, and practice funds from industries Dr Guibo Sun, Prof. Chris Webster, and Prof. Kelvin Wong have accomplished (see the list in the proposal). A sheer number of metro projects have been planned and constructed in Greater Bay Area. The findings can help transform the cities in this region because cities in Greater Bay Area rely on metro development to sustain their high-density built environment. Moreover, the investigation allows us to provide an in-depth understanding of the mechanism in the numerous new metro lines built in China and offer remediation guidelines to improve them further. Noted it is a metro-city-building era for Chinese cities. Over 50 metro lines could be planned or constructed in China in one year. In addition, China is actively extending the metro-city building model to Belt and Road countries, such as Ethiopia, Vietnam and Israel. Hence, the impact pathways expand from China to abroad.

We aim to understand the complex interactions of metro infrastructure building, urban development, land financialisation, and design and development issues in volumetric development around the stations, and their social and health impacts in the Greater Bay Area. Our research can inform new questions and methodologies in mega-infrastructure planning and design, contemporary urban development, and societal impacts in China.

This project is funded by HKU Seed Funding for Strategic Interdisciplinary Research Scheme, Methodologies for assessing specific social, economic, health and wellbeing impacts of volumetric urban designs of metro infrastructure projects in Greater Bay Area (2022.06-2025.06, 1,000,000HKD).