City Sustainability

What do cities need? 

Where does Hong Kong get its food from? 

90% of the total food supply in Hong Kong is imported food. The Mainland is our most important food source, especially for fresh food.94% of fresh pork, 100% of fresh beef, 92% of vegetables and 66% of eggs in Hong Kong come from the Mainland. As for fresh fruits, our major sources of import are the United States, the Mainland, the Philippines and Thailand. Apart from fresh food, Hong Kong also imports chilled and frozen food from many other countries, e.g., chilled and frozen pork and beef from Brazil, salmon from Norway, and fruits from the Philippines and Thailand, etc, so as to maintain a stable supply.

Effects of city Growth

• noise
• pollution
• over-crowded
• population increase
• rich culture 
• increase in waste
• less money
• transportation problems
• relying on strangers (other locals)

Urbanology - Urban Survival simulation game

Urbanology is a very practical and realistic game that provides a series of realistic economy situations in which the player has to act as the head of the government and make a decision of yes or no.

Questions are very good in a sense that it is very realistic and provokes the player to think theoretically and rationally about real life situations, this makes the player realize the questions the economy faces every day and learns how to tackle the questions in society.

However some of the negative factors of this game include the lack of graphics making this activity "game-like", some of the younger players in this game will find this too grown-up, even boring. Simply because it isn't much of a game, no real optimum goal achieved.

Building a City - enercities and urban planning game

This week we were asked to play four games similar to sim city. Each game had something to do with building or sustaining a city. They were all different, some were good, whilst some were bad. Each had their own ups and downs. I really enjoyed playing some of these games, but some were a bit boring.

I am going to talk about the positives and negatives of 2 of the games which we played: enercities and urban planning game.

 

Enercities:
Positive -

• entertaining
• good graphics
• 
  

Negative -

• no way to refill natural resources
• natural resources run out quickly

I actually really enjoyed this game. There was a woman in the corner who gave advice and helped us. You had to make sure to keep the citizens happy by building residential away from factories and by building entertainment for them. You also have to build up the economy so that there is money for the city to function and be an environmental and sustainable city.

The biggest let down of this game is probably the fact that your natural resources run out quite quickly and there is no way to refill them. The highest level on this game is 5, I only got up to level 3 before I had no more natural resources left. Since I had no more natural resources, the buildings stopped working and i was not allowed to play anymore.

Urban Planning Game:
Positive -

• learns about budgeting

Negative -

• Bad graphics
• boring
• nothing happens during the game

Urban planning game was really boring. I didn't notice that the instructions were under the game, so i just randomly put anything anywhere. I didn't finish the game, because it was too boring. The only good thing about this game, was that you realize that every city has a budget and you need to keep within it. 

In the game it was important to place all the industry related buildings and anything that makes noise, away from residential areas. This is because people don't like to live next to a loud factory.

Overall I enjoyed enercities the most from all four of the games. There is one problem they all have and that is that you start building the city from the beginning. This is not very realistic as nowadays cities don't start from scratch, but rather replace old buildings or expand around the old city. Therefore it is harder for cities to become more sustainable as they would have to replace a lot or build around the old structures.

Photo's from Fieldtrip

Field Trip

Last week we went on a field trip to central to look at the highs and lows of Hong Kong's environment.


We walked from school to conduit road. From there we went down along the escalator and took a look at different streets, such as Robinson road, Peel street, Elgin street, Mosque street etc. We then walked through queens road central and to IFC.


We were asked to take photos of what we thought were the highs and lows of Hong Kong. We found many authentic places and many places we had never noticed before and which wouldn't be expected to be found in those areas.

Highs and Lows of Hong Kong

Highs:

• convenient 
• cheap transportation
• cultural
• international
• shopping and food 

Lows:

• pollution
• badly conditioned buildings
• not preserved historic sites
• poverty gap
• expensive shopping
• expensive house pricing
• lack of land
• reclamation