Hong Kong, along with other neoliberal,
capitalist cities around the world, is
experiencing a growing trend towards
commercialisation in heritage
revitalisation. On the other hand, there is
advocacy for democratising urban planning
where placemaking that aimed to foster a
sense of place and community cohesion
have arisen. In the dominant literature,
there is a prevalent division on top-down
and bottom-up approaches of placemaking.
Contrary to the original intent of
placemaking, the former is interpreted as
an entrepreneurial strategy that employs
heritage revitalisation as a branding tool
and primarily seeks economic growth. The
latter establishes place identity and
heritage value. Critiquing on the binary
concept of placemaking, this paper
analyses how an in-between form of
collaborative placemaking is used to
facilitate the delivery of community values
in a seemingly top-down revitalization
initiated by the government and the Urban
Renewal Authority (URA). This study
focuses on the case of Central Market (CM)
revitalisation project. It addresses the gap
of collaborative placemaking by examining
the power dynamics and participation of
actors involved, the three manifestations of placemaking (tangible, intangible and
mixed), and cross-evaluating the social and
economic dimensions. While the case
demonstrates an effort to deliver
community value through authentic place
attachment and cultural memories, which
distinguishes it from previous URA-led
revitalisation projects, it is concluded that
the case study is not unique. This form of
placemaking is found to be transferrable
across large-scale revitalisation projects in
Hong Kong as organisational intervention
sets the scene by providing necessary
landscapes and builtscapes, that should be
combined with mindscapes and
storyscapes to serve people. It is argued
that recurring efforts and appropriate
partnership are essential to deliver a
sustainable outcome oriented towards
genuine benefits for the public.
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