Evaluating the social, economical, cultural and heritage impacts of the "Revitalizing Historic Buildings through Partnership Scheme" in Hong Kong

Abstract

Hong Kong has undergone a rapid transformation from a small fishing village to one of Asia's top commercial cities. With the booming economic development that it has undergone, heritage has been criticised as largely neglected. To respond to this criticism proactively, the HKSAR Government introduced a scheme entitled as "Revitalising Historic Buildings through Partnership Scheme" in October 2007. In this scheme the Government will pay all initial costs related to the renovation of these buildings for subsequent renting to service providers of social enterprises and will not expect the service providers to shoulder these costs. The facilities will also be rented to the service providers at a nominal or heavily subsidized cost. In return the service providers will operate their own social enterprises using their own funds. The objectives of the scheme are: 1) to preserve and put historic buildings into good and innovative use; 2) to transform historic buildings into unique cultural landmarks; 3) to promote active public participation in the conservation of historic buildings; and 4) to create job opportunities particularly at the district level. It is hoped that pumping in public expenditure to upgrade these historic buildings will in turn generate jobs, uphold conservation principles, and also subsidize the social enterprises in running their businesses which may not otherwise remain feasible without financial support. However, since the scheme's introduction, there has been much criticism of the selecting procedures for the service providers (e.g. Concern by the Chinese Artists Association regarding the use of the North Kowloon Magistracy). How successful the scheme is in achieving the stated objectives is a question yet to be answered. Therefore, the proposed study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the scheme at different stages of the development (i.e. initiation of the scheme, selection of service providers, renovation / conservation of building, management and running of the social enterprises) in terms of its social, economical, cultural and heritage impacts.