A journey of empathy with neighbours: towards a human-centred design neighbourhood
“I sometimes sleep for over two days… I don’t even know if it is day or night. I am eighty-nine years old… I live here at the elderly home upstairs. I talk slow, I walk slow, but I understand what you are talking about. You are collecting neighbourhood stories. I try to walk as much as I can, and I come to this supermarket sometimes, I can still walk the stairs! ”
Her name is So Chen Por Por, we met on a November evening. Me and my co-worker Shivangi were standing outside of Wellcome at Johnston Road, a local supermarket in Wanchai, Hong Kong. We were trying to the best of our ability to collect neighbourhood stories, something inspired by The Strangers Project by Brandon Doman in New York. So Chen Por Por told us a lot of her past, when her family was split up in Hong Kong and Macau during World War II and the Japanese occupation. She came to Hong Kong via Macau, and the days of Macau were her most memorable days.
She continued, “I lived with my grandpa and my cousins in Macau. During those days we lined up for rice or corn. The corn distributed were super hard and almost non-edible. When I missed my parents who were separated from me and were in Hong Kong, my grandpa would just told me to shout towards the ocean.”
It was seemingly unexpected stories like this that were able to connect us. And I must admit I rarely had the opportunity to fully listen to neighbours.
According to our initial sample of 103 survey correspondents in our pilot neighbourhood of Wanchai, about 50% never talk to their neighbours, and 8.5% only talk to them once a month. Also, 52% of correspondents said that their form of interaction are usually greetings only. It would be fair to say that a lot of us don’t really talk to our neighbours, and this might be a global phenomenon.
Referencing an article from Citylab, Joe Cortright wrote in a 2015 City Observatory report that only about 20 percent of Americans spent time regularly with the people living next to them. A third said they’ve never interacted with their neighbours. That’s a significant decline from four decades ago, when a third of Americans hung out with their neighbours at least twice a week, and only a quarter reported no interaction at all. Our guess is that would even be more extreme in Hong Kong. Only 8% of our correspondent in Wanchai said that the average duration of their interactions with their neighbours were over 15 minutes.
But who is really living in Wanchai? Is it simply the binary of “new gentrifiers” vs “old residents”? We were set to dig deeper into the classic “gentrification issue” that is happening to cities across the globe.
On one occasion during our engagement, we were at Southorn Playground with our volunteer Steph. For those of you that are not familiar with Hong Kong, Southorn Playground is a classic public sports ground in Hong Kong including soccer fields and basketball fields. Back in the days it was plagued with drug problems, but now it has become a popular meeting spot for elderlies. We came across an elderly in his seventies, and began to strike up a conversation with him, “I used to come to Southorn Playground a lot to play soccer, I also go to Victoria Park, and other soccer fields in Kowloon. Southorn is interesting, this was where Alan Tam and Teddy Robin grew up [They are both famous musicians / actors] ! We would see them play here. When we were younger, the society was a bit simpler, our economic status were a bit closer, and so the community were a bit closer. We didn’t have that much entertainment, I hang out at the soccer field a lot. I played defender, I was a member of the Eastern Sports Club, playing in their pre-professional team. Now I come here to reminisce the past.”
We asked him if he had any dialogue with youths in the neighbourhood, “It is hard to talk to youth, they get very offended easily, there’s no in-between, they are right and that’s it. It is sometimes even hard to talk to your own kids, they are not patient enough to listen to you. It is very hard to build a common ground to talk. They think they are educated and have their ideologies, and know English. I can’t even communicate with my domestic helper sometimes. I try to stay away from discussing with young people, that’s why I come here to watch people play soccer, it’s easier and quieter for my mind.” We felt that there is a strong sense for nostalgia for long-time residents. And there might be quite a bit of mistrust between different pockets of the population. There are problems much deeper rooted than a simple divide of class and status.
Wanchai is an old neighbourhood with lots of history and memory, and it reflects as we learnt more from talking to older residents. As we were wondering if there are common ground between different demographics based on the fact of Wanchai as an old neighbourhood, we found that this nostalgic sentiment of the neighbourhood is very consistent across a number of youths in their twenties and thirties that have been living in the neighbourhood since they were kids. These are young, old neighbours if you will.
This is the case with Willy & Ah Kwong. We met Willy at one of our engagement sessions, “I have lived in Wanchai for over 20 years, at Morrison Hill. There are lot of community services, with proximity to minorities. Such as the Sikh Temple, and another building with a temple inside. Of course, I can’t say that because of that I have lots of interactions with the minority community, but I would be more open to ethnic diversity. I think cultural and ethnic inclusion is very important, especially since I grew up in this neighbourhood, it became easier for me to be around people of diversity, and I won’t have a lens of discrimination.”
According to 2016 census, Wanchai was the neighbourhood with the most foreigners in Hong Kong, with 22.1% non-local ethnicity. Among that Indonesians and Filipinos were the top categories of non-Chinese groups.
However, when we asked Willy about why people are not talking to each other, she emphasized that racial difference was not of a concern. “Most of the time the reason of not communicating with your neighbours is not because of their ethnicity, but more because of the difference in lifestyle. We are always busy, and we all mostly care for ourselves. I guess there were a bit more interaction and care within the community in the past, and people had more conversations and dialogues. Maybe it is because in the past [under the socio-economic circumstance], there is really a need to take care of each other, but now everyone believes that they can be independent. Everything within a small household is self-sustainable.” This echoes with what we have gathered from the elderly at Southorn Playground.
Ah Kwong is in his early thirties, he teaches liberal studies in a secondary school in Kowloon, he lived in Wanchai for a few decades. When we had the dialogue, he also had similar sentiments about the neighbourhood, but through the lens of property developments. “When I was young, I don’t have particular feelings about the changes in the neighbourhood. But after graduation and becoming a part of the working community, when I looked at the way that old Wanchai market has been redeveloped, or the redevelopment of Lee Tung Street, I would be more emotional. For example, urban redevelopment claimed that they are human-centric, but would the original residents be able to afford these new fancy developments? These are the things that I would consider.” Lee Tung is a new development in Wanchai spearheaded by Urban Renewal Authority in 2007, it was very controversial as a lot of the old Wanchai fabric, famous as the Wedding Card Street, was entirely erased for a number of very expensive private developments. This was an example of what added to the mis-trust of the government for events to come.
He continued, “Blue House is a really good example. But how many Blue Houses are there in Hong Kong? It is really hard to develop a Blue House from bottom-up, they have the support of a non-profit organisation, and the previous district councillors. I think it is through that we can make collaboration happen between different entities and the government.”
Blue House sits a few blocks from Lee Tung Street, and is a rare example of a historic building that was preserved and given back to older residents to “age-in-place”, along with market-rate housing for new-comers. Willy also had a similar sentiment about Blue House, and with how redevelopments proceeded. She added, “entities that do redevelopments sometimes cannot have the flexibility within the default structure and ecosystem. I don’t think they would do these street interviews like you guys! Would they really listen to the voice of the community? I am not sure. They might only think about how to maximize profits for the redevelopments.”
Talking about redevelopments, we happened to come across along-time neighbour in Wanchai who had a much less sense of belonging despite the length in the neighbourhood. She came up to us and said, “I have lived in Wanchai for decades but also can live in any neighbourhoods, when do you think Urban Renewal Authority will come and buy my apartment?” Urban Renewal Authority is the quasi-governmental, profit-making statutory body in Hong Kong responsible for accelerating urban redevelopment. To some they represent the private interests of developers working with the government to demolish historic fabrics of neighbourhoods, to others, they are a way out for a handsome return as the make generous offers for these fairly old properties. From nostalgic to practical, the spectrum of neighbours that we had encountered are quite wide and diverse.
It shows that the sense of belonging to the neighbourhood might not be related to how long you have lived here. Pragmatism trumps nostalgia sometimes.
We also met Vincci, a landscape architecture lecturer and a long time resident of Wanchai. She added that the physical urban attributes of Wanchai enrich the unique character of the Wanchai neighbourhood, “the street experience in Wan Chai is very vibrant and unique. For example, walking from Star Street to Queen’s Road East to Johnston Road, and to Hennessy Road, one transitions from a cozy neighbourhood street to the hustle and bustle of the district. There is a hierarchy of roads. I feel the connection to the street here. In Tai Koo district (where I lived before), usually the housing complexes and shopping malls are connected to the MTR so I didn’t get to experience the neighbourhood at street level.” The contrast of urban streets versus urban malls is very apparent in dense Asian cities. With tight market streets next to newly minted developments. A good example is Tsuen Wan, the oldest new town in Hong Kong, where large chunks of vibrant markets, stalls, and old buildings sit directly next to mega-malls with new developments on top of them.
But what about new-comers? We also met quite a number of them. They were usually more curious and open-minded, but also admitted that convenience or trendiness were a big factors of being in the neighbourhood.
Sara is from the UK and had been a teacher in Hong Kong for about a year and a half. “As an expat, the bubble I exist in is predominantly expat-driven. There are people in my building I chat with but it is tough since I don’t speak cantonese… Hong Kong has an identity of its own which is quite interesting and fascinating, and Wanchai embraces that.”
Another correspondent echoed a similar sentiment on the character of Wanchai, “I used to live in Wanchai and now I come to church every Sunday. I am still fascinated by the vibrant and dynamic atmosphere here and I especially like the area in star street because I am a trendy guy.”
When we talked to Kady, recently resident of Wanchai of only 4 months in her twenties living at Hennessy Road, she said, “I moved here because it is very convenient to work, at Wanchai close to PP3 [Three Pacific Place, a Class-A commercial development by Swire Properties], only ten minutes walk to work. But I also like the old community here, especially the market, I live very close to Wanchai market, but I like it because of the memories I had as a kid going to market with my mother. I like the nature of the city fabric that it is like finding treasure, it’s more of an experience than just convenience.” Although she is a new-comer to the neighbourhood, it is part of the nostalgia and memory that make her want to be curious and explorative of the neighbourhood.
Not only are residents and visitors attracted to the vibrancy of Wanchai, business owners are also attracted here because of that.
We spoke to Roy, an interior designer who has an office across Three Pacific Place, but also runs a glass-making workshop at Sau Wah Fong. “We decided to set-up shop here because there is a mix of foreigners and the local community relationship is strong. This is also a very convenience location for our business between Admiralty and Wanchai station… We are smacked in the middle between a financial district and an old neighbourhood, which makes this area very unique. This intersection of new and old, foreign and local is very important for us, to capture tourists, office workers, and locals alike, which equates to money for us [LOL]. We actually do get to meet a lot of overseas artists coming to Hong Kong to make glass here, as there are not many in Hong Kong, only three. We are the only one on Hong Kong Island. We also have hotel clients that work with us.”
For new-comers that might not be aware of the history and may not have develop any attachment to the neighbourhood, there appears to have a different spectrum of “why Wanchai” for them, from those that values for convenience only, to those that are aware and curious, and with the most engaged that are actually enthusiastic of connecting, contributing, and relating.
Roy continues his thoughts on building relationship in the neighbourhood, “We have been here for about three years, the first two years we had been working with our neighbouring businesses and St James Settlement Blue House to create Sunday Markets. I think in the beginning, everyone that collaborated were thinking that this is something to boost their business, but we discovered that the residents here are so nice, the elderly community would come and attend our workshops. For example, we learnt that an old resident used to do hand-craft beers at Stone Nullah Lane! Way before our time. It is such a unique neighbourhood compared to other neighbourhoods we have worked at. They are very open to share and they have the pride of the neighbourhood, with many stories to share.”
Being on the ground and on the street for quite a few times now, the street connection to retail is quite key in shaping a vibrant, welcome, and friendly neighbourhood, and shop owners and retailers that align to that vision is key to shaping this experience. We also understand that there is not a “black” and “white” between “old-residents” and “gentrifiers” per say. The spectrum is wide and and nuanced, this is exactly the reason why we need to listen.
“I connect with people through my genuineness and respect. Although I only have been working as a security guard here for a year and a half, I have built a lot of good relationships with the most troublesome tenants in this building… But some of my co-workers may not understand my sentiment…”, says Ricky, who insisted we give him a fake name. He is a security guard at our office building, and we are conveniently situated at Queen’s Road East.
Even without a deep understanding of the neighbourhood, to him, it is enough to start from being genuine and being respectful to be a good neighbour.
We are excited at Architecture Commons to be joining forces with Vince Siu at Epiphany Labs who brings a lot of great thoughts on the process and framework to co-create the Neighbourhood Innovation Lab, and a variety of partners to embark on this journey to understand our neighbourhoods from multiple angles and perspective.
Such is our humble beginning with the Neighbourhood Innovation Lab. A journey of empathy towards actionable insights for different stakeholders in the neighbourhood, starting with Wanchai as a pilot.
This is a journey that I felt is much needed during these trying times in Hong Kong. From cultivating and activating vacant storefronts in New York, to inclusive real estate through Storefront for the Commons, this is yet another chapter in Hong Kong for my personal journey of empathy as well. This is also a part of a bigger vision of applying design-thinking to drive urban innovation, starting from social innovation but creating channels to overlap and create business insights that stem from the good of the neighbourhood community.
“In my opinion, Wanchai is changing too fast, if we don’t document it it will be gone! Even if it is just a photo, it would be an important record, because everything could be demolished at any moment.” It’s opinions like this that drives me forward to think, how as architects and urban designers can we better integrate the new and old, and sustain such innovation for the long run instead of ad-hoc projects.
My most memorable engagement was still with So Chen Por Por. In the middle of the conversation, she suddenly started moving her hands with a specific gesture and dancing her way through it. She says, “I used to be a teacher, and also dance.” I tried to mimicked her but totally failed at following her moves. It was unexpected, elegant, serendipitous, and I dare say, neighbourly.
As we set-up our engagement near Queen’s Road East, where there were also violent activities from protests to tear gas just the day prior. We half jokingly said, we were using our survey to mend the fences here, and literally the rolls of paper became the fence for the time being.
If we could turn these streets of conflict into streets of engagement, that’s my hope.
Join us for the beginning of this neighbourly journey at our public panel on December 14 (Sat) with property developers, architects, community enthusiasts and more, we would like a diverse pool of people to ride along this journey with us. We would also share more of our framework and quantitative insights to understand our diverse and varied neighbours and neighbourhood.
Link to RSVP for our next event!
Eric
— From HKG to NYC back to HKG
