Hollywood Road Police married couple quarter open day

About heritage conservation,
What criteria do we have? Functional? Do we want to maximise the use of land? Do we want no waste of heritage?


You will find me crazy if I ask the public to support conservation of my 'apartment', although it may be unique in style and possibly reflect hong kong people's lives.

We could not support everything. We have to be realistic. Being realistic does not mean that I fervently support development because I am also quite fed up with the ideas of development. We are so tempted to develop every single inch of space without understanding that space is sometimes vital for more creativity.

For keeping heritage, How do we know what we truly share and treasure?We have to choose.
To choose is to make judgement. By making more judgements, we then know what we want and then make sound judgement.

However, we do not know how to choose because we know so little. We are in the kindergarten phase. We have to be educated. Sb has to draw up an education plan. We have to learn from others and from history too.

I watched Pearl report last night about conservation, my feeling is that we tackle problems one by one. Govt is worried about all logistics matters eg. accessibility, management of the site etc. How come there is no one to link up all heritage sites and make it into an attractive tour option to the public? If the Hollywood quarter opn day is on the same week of central police station exhibtion, the voice/noise will be more. No co-ordination is what I can see in the present situation.

So can there be a (bi) yearly review of 'heritage' policy, not piecemeal, short term but long term building up of heritage? Drawing up and consolidating a list...Public poll/competitions ? ...Co-ordinating diff parties by a central office...be it NGO or govt department who has long term committment to work on HK heritage.

Public may not know how to use the space, we need expertise. Like the earlier exhibition in central police station and victoria prison, it had widened public's horizon on how the places can be used. But ordinary people can tell you what they want and what they truly miss.

Heritage is not just preserving the old but creating new meanings of the old. Eventually people find revitalising energy from history and have capacity to create better future.