I remember seeing #residensity photos when I first joined Instagram, and I was enamored. On this platform, photographs made it seem more visually stunning and interesting than learning about highly dense developments in my urban planning courses.
Traveling to Hong Kong, I knew I wanted to see it for myself. This is a bit of a cliché photo, and this spot attracted a good crowd of photographers and Instagrammers (such as myself). So, no, this isn’t the most creative shot.
But most important, seeing these various residencies and developments made #residensity seem more human (or at least it did for me, as a young urbanite from the Midwestern American suburbs). The courtyards echoed with children playing, majhong tiles clacking, ladies chatting, and radio music.
So perhaps my western ideas of the human scale are not absolute and are contextually amenable. Development in Hong Kong felt like an honest bricolage given its restraints and opportunities. And being massively vertical and stacked does not necessarily exclude a quality of life that cities around the world wish to offer its inhabitants. It may not be the ideal human scale, but from what I saw, it doesn’t make it any less humane.
