Making of Places and Community Building Across two regions

The gathering brought together experts from Hong Kong and Czechia to explore frameworks, strategies, and the future of placemaking under the Agenda 2030 initiative. The program featured welcoming remarks, keynote
 speeches, and dynamic panels discussing urban policies, civic participation, and sustainable development strategies delivered by leading changemakers. These discussions sparked fresh ideas for creating more inclusive urban environments.

Keynote speaker: Mr Bernard Charnwut Chan

Keynote speaker: Mr Harvey Rouse

Keynote Speaker: Ms Klara Jurcova

Distinguished Speakers
Our featured speakers included Klara Jurcova , Consul General of the Czech Republic in Hong Kong; Ambassador Harvey Rouse , Head of the European Union Office to Hong Kong and Macao ; and Bernard Charnwut Chan , Chairman of 團結香港基金Our Hong Kong Foundation.

Part One: Frameworks and Implementation
The first session featured Eric Ho , Co-founder and Director of Architecture Commons; Věra - Karin Brázová, Head of Urban Policy and Strategy Unit at the Ministry of Local Development of Czechia; Ar Donald Choi, Managing Director of Urban Renewal Authority 市區重建局 ; and Eva Gregorová and Linda Seitlerová from the Department of Participation at Brno City Municipality.

During this session, we discovered that Czechia has pioneered participatory governance through dedicated Departments of Participation that advocate for private, public, and citizen engagement across diverse projects, from schools to neighborhoods. Developers are increasingly adopting participatory principles to create brand value through collective goals and inclusive visioning processes. Donald shared Hong Kong's perspective that creating systematic participation opportunities enhances social cohesion, strengthens cultural identity, and generates economic benefits through tourism and local development.

Comparative Insights Across Contexts
The presentations revealed significant differences in approach between the two regions. The Czech Republic operates through distributed national coordination where ministries facilitate rather than direct, while Hong Kong functions through centralized statutory authorities managing complex urban renewal within constrained geographic and political parameters.

Both contexts demonstrate methodological sophistication but with different emphases. The Czech Republic focuses on systematic process documentation and quality participation principles, while Hong Kong emphasizes quantitative optimization and cost-benefit analysis of participatory processes. Czech cities show incremental innovation through European networks and digital tools, while Hong Kong presents more transformative technological visions anticipating fundamental changes in work and society.

Both regions acknowledge trust deficits and complexity challenges but propose different solutions. The Czech Republic emphasizes methodological rigor and inclusive processes, while Hong Kong leverages technology and regulatory optimization. These presentations demonstrate that successful participatory placemaking requires both institutional innovation and cultural adaptation, with each context developing approaches that respond to specific urban challenges while contributing to global participatory democracy practices.

Keynote speaker: Ar Donald Choi
Part Two: The Future of Placemaking
The second panel featured Lawrence Leung, CEP® from Hong Kong Social Entrepreneurship Forum; Milan Brlik, Head of Office of Participation at The Prague Institute of Planning and Development; Jan Rachunek, Coordinator of Participation and Sustainable Development Prague 1; Van Doan from Blueberry PoP; Warren Luk, Vice-President of DBS Foundation; and Renata Klánová, Participation and Communication Expert.

Strategic Frameworks and Philosophical Approaches

Milan Brlik opened with Alejandro Aravena's observation that "the scarcest resource in city development is not money, but coordination." This insight captures the Czech experience, where Prague operates with extraordinary governance complexity including 57 districts with their own councils, one City Hall, and 1,300 political representatives total. Despite highly restrictive building legislation with planning processes taking over ten years and UNESCO Heritage Site constraints covering almost the entire city center, this complexity teaches valuable democratic discussion skills.

Warren Luk presented DBS Foundation's corporate-led placemaking model, which has impacted over 440,000 beneficiaries since 2014 through eight community programs. The foundation has committed HKD 145 million in grants and funding to 36 social enterprises and NGOs, embodying their mission of "Doing Well by Doing Good" to help communities "cope with life's uncertainties and become more socially and financially resilient."

Participation Paradigms and Community Engagement

Brlik challenged conventional participation concepts by advocating a shift from "participation" to "cooperation," defining cooperation as the alignment of key stakeholders, understanding participation limits, effective project management, data utilization, partnerships, and strategic planning. This sophisticated approach moves beyond simple consultation toward genuine collaborative governance that manages rather than avoids complexity.

Renata Klanova reinforced this with quantifiable benefits, showing that participation reduces project delays by 40% and increases long-term utilization by 60%. Her work demonstrates that successful participation requires collaboration between citizens, communities, cities, and investors to achieve greater trust, transparency, and quality outcomes.

Representing Czech civic-tech company Blueberry PoP, Van's presentation highlighted the effectiveness of digital participation tools for participatory budgeting, demonstrating applications across different US locations for community-based projects. These digital placemaking tools create efficient and transparent communication channels for participatory results that can be tailored to different communities through multiple languages.

The Hong Kong model focuses on creating specific spaces like the "Community Space @ Yau Tsim Mong," which extends living spaces for families in subdivided units. This approach addresses Hong Kong's unique housing challenges through multifunctional community living rooms. DBS Foundation's programs integrate wellness and community building through initiatives like the HKFYG LiveWell Programme, empowering youth as wellness practitioners to champion healthier lifestyles for themselves, their families, and their communities.

Technology Integration and Innovation

The Czech approach demonstrates sophisticated technology integration including civic tech platforms for online collaboration, VR/AR for immersive urban planning engagement, gamification to increase motivation and long-term engagement, and urban data collection where citizens gather environmental data through sensors and apps. Brlik emphasized Prague's future direction toward digital tools providing real-time, quick, and cost-effective data while educating the public and decision-makers and increasing transparency.

While less technologically focused, the Hong Kong approach demonstrates practical community engagement through interactive workshops where participants design ideal "community living rooms." This collaborative visioning process embodies the philosophy that "if you want to walk fast, walk alone, but if you want to walk far, walk together."



Part Three: Staunton Community Building Workshop
Immediately following the panel, on the day after, we curated a community workshop with local residents, local shop owners, cultural and creative organisations representatives, to reimagine the memories and aspirations of the Staunton Street area in a traditional shophouse that is now a community living room for Habyt.

Residents, organisation representatives and business operators identified themselves through various lenses - from insider, community-driven conservator, to connector of cultures and creative placemaking local. A strong sense of belonging emerges through the exchange of neighbourhood stories and memories. Upon exchanging the background of each participant, we dive into a community map to document the assets and aspirations of the area.

The neighbourhood was described as having a balance of residential and unique business spaces, creating a close-knit community that keeps evolving while maintaining its preserved character. Defining key characteristics of the neighbourhood, the cozy atmosphere, green spaces and post-war tong lau buildings were highlighted repeatedly. The presence of trees, benches, tiny parks, and the staircase along Shing Wong Street was pinpointed as important spatial assets.

Building upon and carrying forward to community aspirations, discussions were formed around pedestrian-friendly streets, street activations for community hangouts, and curated cultural programming between shops and cultural spaces. Community initiatives like antique shops’ open house, street potluck, and part-time pedestrianisation were raised to create social opportunities while celebrating the multicultural roots of the area.

We will continue the discussion from a physical placemaking towards digital placemaking on the BlueberryPoP platform to a wider audience, which is a unique collaboration between Hong Kong and Czechia. One notable fact is that one of the local participants expressed the value of creating a local association to sustain the placemaking activities, which is a key action to mediate ongoing needs of the area, such as the format of a business improvement district, which is one of the key proponents to create forms of participatory design such as participatory budgeting.

Conclusion
These events demonstrated that successful placemaking requires understanding local contexts while learning from global best practices. The Czech emphasis on systematic methodology and Hong Kong's focus offer complementary insights for advancing participatory placemaking through institutional-supported project based activities.

Together, and combining both approaches shows that diverse approaches can address universal challenges in creating meaningful places and communities, this is something that we are constantly learning from our on the ground experience with different institutional supporters in Hong Kong while learning from the "platform-based" facilitation approach. Big thanks to the team and Valerie Ho at Wyndham Social and Anita Wong at Habyt for supporting this, and Van's team at BlueberryPoP for enabling this cross-country experimentation.