Urban planner marks Hong Kong down
There's a buzz about some Asian cities, says Peter Cookson Smith, who explores the changes in his new book. Hong Kong could do better if officials took a more bottom-up approach
Peter Cookson Smith has been working as an architect and urban planner in Hong Kong since 1977, but it wasn't until 10 years ago that he discovered a sad deficiency in how urban planners are taught.
"I realised that nearly all the textbooks we use are Western textbooks," he says.
Very little material dealt with the unique development of Asian cities. That left Cookson Smith with plenty of questions: "How did our cities evolve in the way that they have? How and why do they look the way they do? And where are they going in the future?"
He decided to do something about it. In 2006, Cookson Smith published The Urban Design of Impermanence, a collection of sketches and essays that examine how Hong Kong came to be the city it is today.
He expanded his focus to the mainland in 2012, with The Urban Design of Concession, which delves into the forces that shaped treaty ports such as Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xiamen.
His latest book goes further. In The Urban Design of Intervention, released this week by MCCM Creations, Cookson Smith analyses over 20 different Asian cities, from Lahore to Seoul, by way of Calcutta, Bangkok, Penang and Taipei.
While Hong Kong does not figure much in its pages, any local reader will be tempted to draw conclusions about how our own city has evolved in comparison with its neighbours.