[Video Essay] Underground: Hybrid city

Description of the theme: Hong Kong has been well known for her hybridity-an estuary where the East meets the West. Admittedly, addressing such cultural fusion may become cliché. In my video essay, I have tried to reveal the obscure hybrid of ordinary and underground lifestyle in Hong Kong, especially in the context of Covid-19 pandemic. In the light of the pandemic, the government has announced a series of ongoing disease prevention measures, including the social distancing policy, mandatory closure of bars and clubs, etc. After a long-term implementation of these measures, the absence of nightlife and extensive patrols aiming to

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[Field-Homework 3] Construction City: a trip to Pound Lane Public Toilet

Theme description: The video has two themes: a) the construction of a public toilet as a means of construction of equality and fairness within the city; b) how could the construction and redevelopment process be more considerate to users? Public toilet, public health, these represent one of the most important aspect of a city’s development, especially justice for the unrepresented people. Such argument could be supported by the history of Hong Kong’s first toilet built at Pound Lane in the Tai Ping Shan area. In May 1894, the Bubonic Plague raged rapidly in the Hong Kong TPS district and cause

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[Video Essay] Control City

Since the beginning of 2020, the Hong Kong government has set up many controls in restaurants to cope with the pandemic. For example, the number of people eating at the same table should be limited to four, the dining time cannot exceed 10 pm, and it is necessary to record guest information and measure their body temperature. The original intention of these restrictions was to prevent the further spread of the virus, but the restaurants also paid lots of prices behind. However, some claims that these costs are worthy of us. Since it is a crucial problem for human beings,

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[VideoEssay] Subdivided City: Hi Neighbor!

Subdivided City: Hi Neighbor! Original video drawings Subdivided City: Hi Neighbor! (Original video drawings) Synopsis In the video essay, my space is set in housing estates and I set my title to be subdivided cities. It is because when talking about housing estate, my mind comes out with a lot of words like subdivided flat and neighbor. Nowadays, there are lots of housing units in a housing estate. Compared to the walled villages, housing estate seems more indifferent in between neighbors. We just like being subdivided. Therefore, I decided to set my video message as the neighborhood. I would like

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[Field-Homework 3] Recovering City

Introduction: Playground – place specifically designed to enable children to play[1] – represents more than its dictionary definition. It’s not only a place for advocating free play and recreational play[2], but also a tool to rouse interaction between kids and kids, between kids and parents, and between parents and parents. The playground, where kids’ and parents’ perceptions to the current situations are shown by their free talks,  perfectly reflects the city’s trait under the threat of COVID-19. After researching the playground in my community, I come up with the following conclusion: Though the pandemic is not over, the popularity of

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[Video Essay] Sidewalk — Hybrid City

Sidewalk is a city hybrid between busy and vacant. Sidewalk is an everyday spaces, in a large city like Shenzhen, the sidewalk of CBD area. Undoubtedly,very busy, like millions people may walk on that sidewalk in a day. The filming section will focus on how the surrounding of sidewalk looks like also the activity of the people on the sidewalk. As Gao, L., Ji, Y., Yan, X. (2021) mentioned [1]“shared-bike systems in China has brought convenience for users, as well as great pressure on bicycle parking management.” Which reflects that many sidewalks in the city had literally been the parking

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[Video Essay] Poem of Slow City: Halcyon Place

Fang Wenbo UID: 3035789253 We all live in a busy city, Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Shanghai. Everyday we all exhausted by endless works, pressure and tasks. Every hour we all anxious to our study grade and work’s KPI. Everything seems too fast in the city, walking speed, shuttling bus and subway train which goes by every minutes. The hurried sound of traffic lights sent people rushing back and forth on the crossroad. People’s souls seem to be dying, like sunset clouds in the burning sky. Under such circumstances, it is extremely important to find a place where we can slow

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[Video Essay] Public City

Idea The feature of the overhead bridge that first comes to my mind is, it’s a public good. Non-excludable, it doesn’t cost pedestrians anything to walk on; non-rival, passengers could consume it together. That’s the reason I choose a topic as a public city. However, I recognize that there must be some differences between public city and infrastructure, like the difference between public place and space, as emphasized by De Certeau, M.   Research and Construction My first research was done to investigate the definition of a public city. The general idea refers public city as the government and citizens

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