Session Chair: KP Cheung, The University of Hong Kong
In densely populated cities, expansion of urban areas is a thorny task especially for those constrained by their physical environments. In the past decades, substantial efforts have been put in around 30 countries such as Canada, Japan, Singapore, Korea, Germany, the US and the UK etc. to explore the creation of underground spaces and cities. Trails have been made to create underground connections, public spaces, interchanges, shopping malls and cavern developments for public utilities etc. These attempts not only pose challenges on engineering, traffic and planning considerations, but also give rise to concerns and debates of potential conflicts on property rights and governance issues. These conflicts entail identification of rights over the under-above ground structures, governance structure of managing integrated complex developments, land management system and dispute resolution mechanisms etc.
This special session welcome studies of the following topics:
- Delineation of property rights for under-above ground developments.
- Governance structures and issues of complex integrated under-above ground developments.
- Evaluations of institutional arrangements to facilitate land management, investment, public-private-participation, financing and dispute resolutions of underground cities.
- Institutional innovations for sustainable integrated under-above ground developments.
KP Cheung
Associate Professor
Department of Architecture
The University of Hong Kong
Email: kpcheuna@hku.hk
