Guest editorial

摘要

Urban renewal provides opportunities of solving urban decay problems (Lee and Chan, 2008), improving land supply and the built environment (Adams and Hastings, 2001), revitalizing social networks (Chan and Yung, 2004), enhancing housing quality and benefiting health of the community (Krieger and Higgins, 2002) and improving the use of land and building resources. All of these aspects can contribute to the sustainable redevelopment of the built environment. Many countries and cities are, however, experiencing difficulties in ensuring sustainable urban renewal. To respond to the challenges, appropriate strategies and measures in the renewal process must be established in a systematic manner. Urban renewal is a very complex system, which consists of a number of interrelated disciplines, involves multiple stakeholders and deals with many complicated matters such as stakeholders, housing, transportation, resources, energy, and facilities. These issues become more complicated and challenging in large cities such as Hong Kong, because of their high urban density.