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News Feature<br />
Stairs and the City<br />
“Stairs perform a function of public space that we are<br />
lacking in Hong Kong,” says Cate Christ. Much like parks<br />
but located more conveniently, stairs are meeting places,<br />
resting areas, and quiet corners far from traffic. Not long<br />
ago, the city’s staircases served as market streets. Before<br />
cars, people mostly stuck to stairs to get around the city<br />
quickly, so shops opened up to capture this foot traffic.<br />
Wide landings offered relief to coolies as they made their<br />
way up the city.<br />
But increasingly, staircases are subject to development.<br />
A proposal to put in a new escalator on Pound Lane in<br />
Sheung Wan, which would cost some $200 million to<br />
construct, has been met with contention in the community.<br />
“The area is historic,” says Cate Christ. “We already<br />
have a SoHo. We already have a Lan Kwai Fong. If an<br />
escalator gets put in, then we’re going to see gentrification<br />
overnight, like what happened with Centre Street [in<br />
Sai Ying Pun].” She remembers when, early on in the<br />
government’s proposal for Pound Lane, units around the<br />
escalator were already being bought up by developers—<br />
”[Escalators] have a history of increasing rent, and that’s<br />
why developers like it.”<br />
The Stairs<br />
in Your Eyes<br />
With the inclusion of 16 new sets of stairs on<br />
Google Street View, Hong Kong has yet another<br />
reason to save its staircases. By Jessica Wei<br />
Photo: Felix Wong/SCMP<br />
Tripped Up<br />
“We’re making the argument that the stairs should<br />
be considered public space,” says Cate Christ. “Stairs<br />
are structures, not just sidewalks, and they should be<br />
catalogued.” In 2012 Cate Christ and her students<br />
suggested to the Central and Western District Council<br />
and the Transport Department that instead of installing<br />
the escalator, the government simply implement small<br />
changes—such as putting in a new handrail, widening the<br />
sidewalks, or putting in green edges and benches—to<br />
increase the quality of life in the neighborhood.<br />
But her pleas went ignored. “The government<br />
wasn’t really interested in improving the quality of the<br />
neighborhood,” she says. “They were interested in<br />
redeveloping.”<br />
The Stairs my Destination<br />
Stair Culture and Google both say they’re trying to<br />
highlight something that many don’t see: That there’s<br />
significance to Hong Kong’s stairs beyond moving people<br />
around. In this city of fast cars and hyper-efficient public<br />
transport, they are the only places which are wholly and<br />
freely for pedestrians. “Maybe we can help to introduce<br />
these amazing stairs to future generations,” says Google’s<br />
Cynthia Wei. With luck Raf Ho can get through all our<br />
stairs before they truly become history.<br />
Explore Hong Kong’s Street View staircases at tiny.cc/hkstaircases.<br />
Visit Stair Culture at stairculture.com<br />
Imagine walking in a straight line with a book placed<br />
on your head. Now imagine that the book is the<br />
Google Trekker: an 18kg sphere studded with 15<br />
camera lenses encased in metal and held aloft over your<br />
head. And that straight line is a long set of worn-down,<br />
slippery, uneven stone steps—and you still need to keep<br />
your balance. It’s all in a day’s work for Google Trekker<br />
operator Raf Ho, who wanders the streets and trails of<br />
Hong Kong as part of his work for Google Street View.<br />
Google has been mapping Hong Kong onto its digital<br />
database since 2010, but until the advent of the wearable<br />
Google Trekker camera in 2013, the only way to map<br />
the city was through their Street View car. But this year<br />
the search company isn’t just going off-road: It wants<br />
to preserve our disappearing heritage, too.<br />
Snapping Steps<br />
Since May 5, anyone with an Internet connection can<br />
head to Google and scale any one of 15 staircases: from<br />
the 373 steps of Ladder Street, which connects Sheung<br />
Wan to Caine Road via Man Mo Temple; to the path<br />
leading up to the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery,<br />
lined with hundreds of life-size gilded statues.<br />
“What we’re doing right now is archiving history, to allow<br />
[current] users or people in the future to see how this city<br />
changes over time,” says Cynthia Wei, the Asia Pacific<br />
Project Manager for Google Map’s Street View, “Most<br />
of the stairs are open to the elements. It’s always fastchanging;<br />
new parts of the city develop and old parts<br />
get quieter and quieter.”<br />
There’s a lot more still to go: Currently, there are over<br />
3,000 stairs in Central and Western district, according to<br />
Stair Culture, a research project founded by landscape<br />
architect and Polytechnic University research professor<br />
Melissa Cate Christ. She and her team are creating their<br />
own archive of the city’s stairs in an effort to provide the city<br />
with a sense of the roles that stairs play in the community.<br />
Where the Pedestrians Roam<br />
Learn more about Hong Kong on these walking tours.<br />
1. HK Free Walk Free, tip-supported walking tours of<br />
Tsim Sha Tsui, with stops at historic landmarks and guides<br />
who cover everything from street food to Bruce Lee.<br />
hkfreewalk.com<br />
2. Walk Hong Kong Hiking is more fun when you<br />
know where you’re going. With Walk Hong Kong,<br />
participants discover the heritage and trivia of<br />
Hong Kong’s natural landscapes—<br />
and its man-made defenses.<br />
walkhongkong.com<br />
3. Little Adventures in<br />
Hong Kong Tailor-made food walks<br />
and culture tours with some of our<br />
favorite people.<br />
littleadventuresinhongkong.com<br />
Raf Ho and his Google Trekker<br />
camera (Photo: David Wong/SCMP)<br />
14 HK MAGAZINE FRIDAY, MAY 20, 2016