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Conspicuous and spanning a large part of Yuen Long, members of the community are used to the nullah presence and acknowledge its drainage function, especially during the rainy season.

Through our Design Thinking study, we first sought to understand Yuen Long town’s evolution over the years, community members’ everyday life, as well as their interaction with the town nullah. With the complex dynamics in Yuen Long involved, the co-creation process allowed us to have a better grasp of stakeholders’ pain points and wishes around the drainage facility, but at the same time inspired fresh imagination of a rejuvenated space for the community.

• Expanding Imaginations towards Public Space:  We centred our co-creation activities around collective placemaking, guiding stakeholders especially local residents to not just think about the nullah’s environment, but view the future revitalised channel as a new public space.

• Engaging Stakeholders with Hybrid Model:  Because of COVID, we adopted a hybrid model for our co-creation workshops. In both online and physical workshops, local residents got to join other community members to brainstorm how the nullah can be redesigned to fulfill community needs without compromising its existing functions. Such consensus-building process in turn offered stakeholders a realistic platform to shape the infrastructure based on a collective vision.

• Beyond Engagement – Public Education Opportunity: All along the engagement process, we also added a public education dimension to the project by getting the engineers in-charge involved and conveying the value of revitalising urban streams to the wider public.

• Continuous Co-creation: With the commencement of the construction works of the barrage in 2023, we once again collaborate with DSD for the second phase co-creation. While the first phase established the overarching design principles, the second phase co-creation narrows the focus to detailed design elements of the revitalisation. It is aspired that community needs at all levels can therefore be better addressed through the continuous co-creation process.

Where we see impact

• Provided a platform for in-depth engagement as well as co-creation that contributed to a community-oriented design of the Yuen Long Town Nullah

• Inspired renewed interest and re-imagination of the decades-old infrastructure in Yuen Long, in hope of sparking a community-wide reimagination of this long-standing facility, becoming an exceptional case of community involvement in the public service domain.

• Public infrastructure often takes years to complete. This co-creation project commenced at an earlier stage and continued throughout the project, enabling a more effective response to the evolving needs and aspirations of the community over time.

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