27.0 City Parks - Hong Kong and Singapore

Sound city master plans always have great public spaces as a means to provide outdoor living and community meeting spaces as well as areas for recreation and sometimes a "green" relief from the dense built up environment. In places like Italy, the piazza is the standard urban public space that serves most of these purposes, but rarely is it a space of green landscape.

Of course New York has Central Park, an oasis among the forest of high rises and one of the genuine drivers of people's desire to own property along Central Park one of the most valuable addresses of real estate in the world.

In Asia the two competing cities of Hong Kong and Singapore also have their major parks. Hong Kong's Victoria Park built in the 1950's on reclaimed land which used to be a typhoon shelter for boats. Singapore's Gardens by the Bay newly opened in 2012 is also built on reclaimed land around Marina Bay. So how do these parks compare?

 

Victoria Park, Hong Kong

Gardens by the Bay, Singapore

This brief comparative overview is based on mostly site observations of both parks done in the last 12 months.  You can say it is an analysis of a “snap shot” in time.  Clearly Victoria Park with a much longer history and having gone through a major renovation in 2000 to 2002 has probably evolved much over time and one would imagine that Gardens by the Bay with the southern portion less developed will also evolve over time especially when more surrounding developments move into the adjacent sites.

Scale

Both site are quite substantial for being located within major city center and if sold for real estate development, both could be considered as governments giving up significant “land sale revenue”, but at the city planning scale it is partially the fact that the parks exist that have and will drive adjacent property values.

Victoria Park - 19 ha (500m yellow line for scale)

Gardens by the Bay - 54 ha (500m yellow line for scale)

Location

Both parks are located on reclaimed land with mass transit stations providing direct access for most of the city population.  In the case of Victoria Park, there are 2 stations one located at each of the ends of the park, while in the Gardens by the Bay there is currently only one stop which is rather centrally located but due to the scale of the park it does not give very convenient access to all of the park.  This too will probably change with time as the MRT system expands.  In addition Victoria Park being located adjacent to the main shopping belt of Causeway Bay and significant dining location of Tin Hau there are an abundance of F&B facilities to support the park. 

In the case of Gardens by the Bay, currently being located a distance away from current developed areas, it is much more isolated and lacks any real F&B support other than those which are tenants to the park.  And as most government facilities F&B outlets were probably tendered out and hence went to the highest bidders and cost of F&B is reflected in that.  As Marina Bay is still in its infancy, this too will evolve over time and hopefully more development will yield more diversity and choice.

Character

This is a point where at the present snap shot in time the two parks are very different.  The Gardens by the Bay has the distinct feel of being a Theme Park Tourist Attraction.   This is reinforced in both the product design and aesthetics.  The Flower Dome, Cloud Forest and Skybridge are all seen as paid admission attractions.  The park is essentially a living museum with plants and landscape materials as the museum exhibits.   The Super Tree Grove are iconic pieces that are well suited for post cards. 

Gardens by the Bay - sky bridge and "artificial trees

Gardens by the Bay - tourist tram

On my last visit newly noticed  from my original visit when it first opened is the guided tram tours that starts right from the arrival point just outside the MRT Station.  In addition the souvenir shop and theme park type and priced F&B all reinforce the fact further.  A small cart selling water and ice cream from Gardens by the Bay was the only non-sit in type facility for F&B and as one young Singaporean Boy yelled out as he passes the cart with his family , “…….wa la, twenty dollars for ice cream!!!!! “  (I believe in reference to the amount it would cost to buy ice cream for his family of 4 or 5.)

Victoria Park on the other hand is perceived to be a recreation park for residents by the simple fact that a good 50% of the land area is devoted to sport facilities, hard soccer courts, tennis, basketball, lawn bowling as well as swimming pools.  The large hard soccer courts are the largest most dominant spaces and serves as multi-function spaces for special events such as Chinese New Year fairs and the starting and ending location for large rallies and demonstrations. 

The other half of the park is largely tree covered with various pockets of space for smaller activities such as picnicking, model boat racing as well as groups for dancing or martial arts.  The park itself probably doesn’t have any picture post card image or aesthetic but the large soccer courts are probably the most identifiable space to the park and probably recognized by all the locals but hardly of interest to tourists.

Victoria Part - edge facing Causeway Bay, model boat pond, walkways with benches among landscape

Surrounding Land Use

At current time the only real development fronting Gardens by the Bay is the Marina Bay Sands whose east facing hotel rooms have commanding views of the park.  The rest of the surrounding land is zoned by the URA as generally “white” sites meaning that when they are sold off the developers will be given some flexibility in what to develop in terms of mixed use commercial, residential, hotel, retail, etc. The whole of Marina Bay is just that a bay development with significant water frontage and one can certainly question the logic of dedicating such a large amount of land and investment to an area with already significant attractive physical features.  In the end it is either commendable as “generous gift to the public” or   “ill logical” to spend so much and give away so much to an area that is already attractive due to the abundant shoreline! 

For Victoria Park on one edge is the National Library and the adjacent Causeway Bay Sports Ground which spatially extends the open space another 35%.  Beyond the Sports Grounds and along the east and west edges of the park are 15 to 30+ story buildings mostly residential with some hotel and commercial.  The northern edge is pretty much bound by the highway and the Causeway Bay, shelter for boats.  One of the unfortunate things is the Causeway Bay Commercial side has an elevated road that somewhat acts as a physical barrier to rest of the district and restricts the feel of the space flowing together. 

Victoria Park - surrounding high rise residential and national library

End Users

Clearly the difference in character as well as stage of development determines the end users of the two parks.  On the one hand Gardens by the Bay located in a new location with very little surrounding occupied developments and conceived more as a Theme Park and is heavy in attracting tourists.  My recent Sunday visit in an afternoon on a relatively cool day there was a very small number of locals or even domestic helpers on their day off.  The park was somewhat quiet mostly with international tourist having their photos in some of the iconic backgrounds. 

One of the most telling signs of how the park is conceived is the actual sign in the park saying NO BIKES OR SAKEBOARDS, the activities you would expect in a public park for the residents.

Gardens by the Bay - park "restrictions"

Having traveled by Victoria Park daily for almost 3 years it is apparent the daily use is by the residents of Hong Kong, users of the sports facilities are always abundant, the landscaped area are all used as exercise and play areas for the general public, especially elderly and children.  On Sundays the domestic workers all congregate at the park in various clustered groups both in the canopy of trees and open areas.  Some of the week end events also cater to the domestic workers such as open markets on Sundays, and let's not forget the park is one of the favorite starting and ending points of public demonstrations!  

Victoria Park - spaces for resident's use, playground, basketball, open market, picnics

Snap Shot Conclusion

Both parks provide a significant open space to the respective cities and make attractive living environments for adjacent development.  Knowing Singapore’s URA plans for the long term, we can imagine that over the course of development in the Downtown Marina Bay area the park will evolve and more than likely to have parts that are more suitable for activities for downtown residents.  In any case the Marina Bay Development anchored by the Marina Bay Sands has been a lesson in a city developing / expanding its downtown to a green field site and the Gardens by the Bay is just another step in the whole process.  Clearly Singapore is of the approach to use tourism as a catalyst!   

We would also hope that in the future Gardens by the Bay will take on all the daily activities and traffic that Victoria Park currently has making Singapore's downtown living among one of the most attractive in the world.

It will be interesting to watch the evolution of the parks and perhaps another review in 10 years will be in order.  Perhaps the land surrounding Victoria Park my go through some significant redevelopment and hence a good reason to consider further redevelopment of the park.

No	Subject	Singapore	Hong Kong
1.	Park Name	Gardens by the Bay	Victoria Park
2.	Year Opened	2012	1957
3.	Location	Reclaimed Land in Marina Bay	Reclaimed Land on Hong Kong Island
4.	Scale	60 ha (+- measured from map)	19 ha
5.	Accessibility	Bayfront MRT Station	Tin Hau and Causeway Bay MTR Stations.  Tin Hau Bus Terminal
6.	Character	Botanic Museum / Theme Park	Recreation Park
7.	Surrounding Land use	Integrated Resort	National Library, Commercial, Mixed Use, High Density Residential.
8.	Climate and Design	Year round tropical climate makes it not very attractive for day time visits.	Combination of 4 seasons, lots of mature shade trees and fact it is used largely for recreation make it useable year round day and night.
9.	Operations and Programming	Tourism Product for both inbound and local visitors	Daily use park for leisure and recreation more for local population.
	Web Sites	http://www.gardensbythebay.com.sg/en/home.html	http://www.lcsd.gov.hk/parks/vp/en/index.php
10.	End Users	“Tourist” both foreign and local	Recreation and gatherings as well as events.

Jiwa Studio, Singapore
November 2013