Research

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This article evaluates the Pickers’ Link, a Hong Kong initiative enhancing older waste pickers’ bio-psycho-social well-being, addressing research and practice gaps for precarious workers. The program's influence and mechanisms were captured in themes spanning social and digital engagement, health and mobility benefits, crucial outreach engagement and personalized support. The quantitative analysis revealed pain reduction and cognitive enhancements post-treatment, while improvements in grip strength and physical function did not meet clinical significance thresholds.

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Properly designed modular construction offers the potential for easy disassembly, relocation, and reuse across multiple use cycles. However, the environmental benefits and burdens resulting from the reuse of modular components over these cycles are not well understood. The study aimed to assess the environmental credits and loads associated with reusing modular components over multiple use cycles...

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Using Modular-integrated Construction (MiC) method to build transitional housing can achieve earlier occupancy, owing to its faster on-site project delivery when compared with traditional in-situ construction. As these temporary housing projects are normally developed on vacant government or privately-owned land with limited duration of land tenure, the adapted MiC method shall also allow efficient disassembly and future reuse/reinstallation in their subsequent life cycles. Otherwise, if these temporary MiC housing projects are scrapped and disposed of as construction waste, the adverse environmental impact relative to the period of use may be much greater than that of permanent buildings. To optimise the environmental sustainability and economic value of temporary MiC housing, it calls for a shift from demolition to deconstruction, a process of disassembly, relocation, and reuse.

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Population ageing is a challenge to societies worldwide in terms of healthcare, social support, community infrastructure, and more. With one of the longest life expectancies in the world, Hong Kong will soon see a dramatic increase in the number of older residents together with a decrease in the old age dependency ratio. This book provides a timely examination of the current status and services available for Hong Kong’s ageing population in four key areas: general healthcare needs, such as health promotion and lifestyle modifications; specific healthcare needs, including care of chronic conditions and hip fractures; psychosocial needs for older people with intellectual disabilities and impairments, as well as the needs of their caregivers; and environmental and technological needs in relation to universal design, information and communication technology, and telehealth. Drawing from a wide range of experience in local professional settings combined with international best practices, the authors offer holistic, evidence-based solutions for the development of an age-friendly society where elders can age in place at home in their communities. These suggestions will be useful for policy makers, healthcare practitioners, social workers, care workers, as well as older people and their families not only in Hong Kong but globally.

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In a world of unprecedented changes and uncertainties, our next generation needs to be equipped with appropriate skills to solve real-world problems. Design thinking, an approach to solving novel problems, can be situated in education to help students learn to solve ill-defined problems, practice empathy, think critically, as well as think creatively. This paper will describe an experiential learning opportunity whereby secondary school students experienced the stages of design thinking through a workshop. There were many gains, including an increase in the students’ level of creativity, as well as a heightened awareness of the needs of others. This study shows that experiencing design thinking can be beneficial to secondary students as they acquire essential skills for the future.

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The study reported in this paper examines an under-researched aspect of design thinking (DT) in teacher education. While DT has popularized for responding to the needs of 21st century teaching and learning, there have been very few attempts to gauge the voices of teachers as non-designers and how they master the related knowledge, skills, and attitudes of DT. To illustrate this, Retna (2016) notes that very limited empirical evidence has navigated teachers’ voices throughout the implementation process and endeavored to respond to this gap. There is also a wider issue here about how teacher education institutes prepare for a 21st century teaching force that can respond to uncertainties and with this in mind the current paper draws on the voices of 24 pre-service teachers at a leading university in Asia. Through understanding this important learning process of facilitating DT workshops we hope to show how pre-service teachers, as non-designers confront the challenges and show development in the important mindsets associated with DT. There is a lack of attention invested in such process (Diefenthaler et al, 2017) and the current paper seeks to better understand it.

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Adolescents’ classroom experiences have a long-term impact on their future education and life chances (Kramer, 1991). Long have achievement gaps among students been recognized, so it is crucial to explore different instructional strategies that can improve learning outcomes for all (Okoye-Johnson, 2011). Design thinking has been widely applied in business settings and a growing trend has been observed in the K12 classroom as well. Yet, little is known on the effects of such application on different learning outcomes (Razzouk & Shute, 2012). In responding to this gap, the current study stems from the second year of a 3-year project that offers subjectbased design thinking workshops to secondary schools in Hong Kong. Adopting a mixedmethods approach, this study aims to unpack the learning experiences of students engaged in this innovative curriculum initiative with depth and breadth. Findings inform policymakers and fieldwork practitioners who seek to nurture students for the 21st century.

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Design thinking (DT) is a human-centric, iterative and interactive problem-solving process that captures how designers innovate and problem-solve. Such important skill set has become one of the most crucial skill set in the knowledge society of the twenty-first century (OECD, 2015). Thus, DT has been widely applied in business education and social innovation, and a similar trend has also been observed in the field of education (Carroll et al, 2010) and yet, there is a paucity of study that try to understand the important learning outcomes of such application (Taheri et al, 2016) and to empower teachers to adopt DT as a pedagogy (Panke, 2019). This presentation highlights a cross-university collaboration on nurturing 21st century skills in pre-service, in-service teachers and students with an experiential learning process through DT workshops.

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One of three JCDISI projects featured in the Hong Kong Report on the State of Sustainable Built Environment 2020 (Hong Kong Report 2020) to showcase Hong Kong's accomplishments in striving to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals among the 102 selected projects.

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One of three JCDISI projects featured in the Hong Kong Report on the State of Sustainable Built Environment 2020 (Hong Kong Report 2020) to showcase Hong Kong's accomplishments in striving to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals among the 102 selected projects.

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One of three JCDISI projects featured in the Hong Kong Report on the State of Sustainable Built Environment 2020 (Hong Kong Report 2020) to showcase Hong Kong's accomplishments in striving to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals among the 102 selected projects.

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Supported by the Chinese National Engineering Research Centre For Steel Construction (Hong Kong Branch), JCDISI worked together with Leigh & Orange Limited and WSP to investigate how the modern technology of MiC can help address the unprecedented challenge of transitional housing in Hong Kong. After months of investigation, the study aims at identifying key technical issues and proposing an adaptable solution in form of a relocatable MiC building system prototype is now released.

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For high density urban areas, promoting walkability is conducive to enhancing age-friendliness of cities and communities. Walkable environment enhances the levels of physical activities, which will finally improve physical and mental health of older people. This paper measures walkability scores for the whole territories of Hong Kong, based on residential density, street connectivity, and land-use mix. Results indicate that downtown areas (i.e., Hong Kong Island and Kowloon) have higher walkability scores than New Territories. Area-based walkability is positively associated with population density and employment rate in tertiary sectors, and is negatively associated with household income and size of the land. Interview with planning professionals suggests that different planning paradigms in downtown and New Territories give rise to various levels of walkability. Land lots are smaller, and the streets are narrower in old urban areas, which promote human and commercial activities. However, the highly congregated development mode has negative impacts on the public health. Future development shall seek a balance between plot size and diversity in the zoning process. Quantitative methods should be enriched by other methods to propose strategies oriented to the enhancement of elderly livability and well-being.

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Population ageing and building stock ageing are usually tackled as two separate subjects and each has already received much attention. However, the Hong Kong community at large is less aware that the combined impact of population ageing and building ageing, i.e. “double ageing”, is a much more complex issue to address. If not tackled properly and in a timely manner, “double ageing” as a socio-economic issue will have significant impact on the sustainable development of Hong Kong, significantly affecting the liveability and resilience of the city. The first objective of this paper is to elaborate on the problems and evaluate existing efforts in tackling the challenge. This paper advocates an integrated, people-centric “double-smart” approach to leverage the merits of smart ageing and smart city in tackling double-ageing and bring positive changes for the city.

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The supply of social welfare sites and premises is perceived by the general public or social welfare counterparts to fall under the realm of land and urban planning. This perception is not incorrect. Yet, I wish to point out that as a pre-requisite to accomplish the concerned tasks, both planners and the Planning Department (PlanD) must secure the collaboration and cooperation of various parties. We also need to view from the perspective of social innovation in opening up our minds, broadening our horizon, triggering collective wisdom, and coordinating the endeavours and cooperation of different parties with a view to identifying the possible way forward for increasing the supply of social welfare sites and premises.

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Around the world, countries are hosting rapidly accelerating aging populations, with many establishing and implementing building guidelines to ensure successful aging-in-place as a response. Universal design has been adopted as a general approach, with the endorsement of UNCRPD and WHO. Best practices have also been proposed in some nations to set an even higher standard to guide the industry. At the same time, the prevalence of dementia is increasing. Following the emergence of Evidence/Research-Based Design and Salutogenic Design, design for the elderly no longer comprises discrete considerations of mobility or sensory deficits, but incorporates a continuum of physical, mental, cognitive and psychosocial factors in one holistic approach. Such an approach will benefit people of all ages. For a vertical city like Hong Kong, it can be adapted to suit high rise living and mass ground movement of the densely distributed city network. ("Double Aging" refers to the phenomenon of simultaneous occurrence of an aging population and aging building stock, having profound impacts on society and urban living.)

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It has been nearly a half century since Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China began promoting the accessible environment in the early 1970s. Starting from describing the international transformation on the concept of “Disability”, this paper first sorts out the theoretical development in Hong Kong including “Physically Handicapped and Able-Bodied”,“Barrier-free Design” and “Universal Design”; Then clarifies the promotion mechanism of the accessible environment from the perspective of policies and regulations, investments and the coordination between different institutions; After that, the achievements on residential buildings, public spaces and tourist attractions are introduced. At last, how mainland China can learn from Hong Kong’s experiences and apply that in construction tasks of related facilities when promoting the accessible environment are discussed.

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Prof. HSIA Chu Joe specialises in architecture and urban research in Taiwan. His book “The Tale of Three Cities” offers a collection of notes on three cities, Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Taiwan, in the global information age. Limited copies available upon request.

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Mr. CHAN Koonchung, a prominent writer and cultural figure in the Chinese-reading community, laid the groundwork for social innovation by extrapolating local wisdom to construct the parameters of a good society. In his book, “Living Out the Contradiction of Our Time”, he explored the types of education and social innovation that will allow the next generation to respond to unstoppable advances in technology. Limited copies available upon request.

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Prof. Matthew TURNER, Professor Emeritus of Edinburgh Napier University, has had a long career in Hong Kong that has allowed him to witness the city’s transformation; he is undoubtedly an interesting and knowledgeable figure to envision Hong Kong’s future. In his book, “Tête-à-êtet” addresses two related questions, namely “what is social innovation?” and “what does social innovation mean and what could it mean for Hong Kong?”