Hong Kong running community bemoans government inaction on long proposed Victoria Harbour route
- Decades of bureaucracy on creating running routes along Victoria Harbour have left Hong Kong’s running community with a sense of apathy
Hong Kong architectural firm Lead 8’s Harbour Loop proposal put forth a bold vision for the city’s waterfront. A 28-kilometre pedestrian corridor to run all the way around Victoria Harbour, through Kowloon Bay and back, with a pedestrian suspension bridge and cable car crossing the water.
The 2015 design has racked up an impressive number of awards: in 2016 it was a finalist at the World Architecture News Awards in the “Future Projects: Urban Design” category as well as being a finalist at the World Architecture Festival Awards in the “Future Projects: Civic” category.
This year it won the German Design Award for “Excellent Communications Design: Urban Space and Infrastructure”. However, Claude Touikan, the co-founder and executive director of Lead 8, said the project is still in the “lobbying phase” and while it is “most definitely not dead”, he admits it would be an “incredibly complicated” project to bring to reality.
The Harbourfront Commission, which was set up to advise officials on development of the area, seems to have no ear inside the actual government and being a commission, has no actual weight in terms of moving projects along.
In June of this year, harbourfront advisors slammed a government proposal to study management of the city’s promenade, stating they already spent six years studying a way to better manage the city’s scenic 73-kilometre waterfront, concluding that a statutory authority was needed to centralise responsibilities for related matters.