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How long should Hong Kong's architects reach for the sky?

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Something most Hongkongers have long taken for granted was the subject of a three-day symposium in New York.

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That tall - very tall - buildings can be packed into Hong Kong plots was the topic of much interest 13,000km away at the Skyscraper Museum in Manhattan. The museum, along with several other organisations, recently held an international symposium to examine the verticality and density that defines Hong Kong. Host city New York might as well be the closest kindred spirit the city has among vertical metropolises in the world. After all, Central and other island business districts can claim to be Asia's Manhattan.

And the discussion, though far from the reach of most locals, could not have been more timely. Participants, fittingly, were the shapers and students of the city's skyline. They ranged from executives from Hongkong Land and the MTR Corporation to architecture professors, preservationists and urban planners.

Hong Kong's soon-to-be-tallest building, the International Commerce Centre, is soaring in West Kowloon. This signifies that the extreme vertical now defines not just the island's business districts, but the cityscape at large.

Meanwhile, the groundswell of residents vociferously opposing certain skyscrapers in the pipeline is growing by the day.

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Unbowed by the architects' fame for designing Shanghai's Bird's Nest stadium, residents from Central and Western districts and their councillors defeated the proposed observation tower designed by Herzog & de Meuron for the Central Police Station heritage site.

Residents in Tsim Sha Tsui, North Point and Quarry Bay are trying to fend off future tall buildings in the neighbourhoods. Wan Chai residents are now fighting the 60-storey Mega Tower hotel. Developer Hopewell Holdings minced no words in reminding them that it was Hopewell Centre, the district's first skyscraper, that made Wan Chai thrive.

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