Learning from dense cities: Hong Kong spatial constructs as narratives

Cities all over the world are being densified in the quest for sustainable urban development. Whether or not this is a viable strategy is an ongoing debate, but as densifying cities face certain challenges, they can learn from already dense cities, where interactions between interior and exterior space are explicit. This paper takes Hong Kong as a model for the densifying city to focus on three levels of spatial organisation in hyper-dense urban space. The paper will discuss urban life forms through seamless interconnection between interior and exterior space. Using a micro-narrative methodology for organising personal experiences and communication data, the paper will take the interior workplace, porous urban space, and the urban landscape as three conditions for dense urbanism. The paper will deploy Hong Kong as an in intellectual framework and model for spatial design and construction in high density; it will explore three levels of space through micro-narratives; cross-analyse the micro-narratives to detect attributes and concepts for densification; and synthesise the findings to suggest directions for further research.