Facing the undercurrents of rapid neighbourhood change, Tsuen Wan is presented with the challenge of a new-old divide. This project is an iterative process with an ambitious aim of realizing a neighbourhood commons, where neighbours in Tsuen Wan would come together as a whole to share and manage resources with a shared identity.

With an in-depth research on the concept of commoning, the principles of developing an urban commons are introduced. Based on the principles, this project is downscaled to a neighbourhood scale – creating a neighbourhood commons. Eight local and international case studies are featured as a comparison through the lens of scale, depth and complexity.

Together with 40 civic design fellows and 39 corporate fellows, NIL embarked on a journey. Neighbourhood Commons@Tsuen Wan was carried out from October 2020 to June 2021. Over the eight-month period, NIL has reached out to stakeholders across sectors in Tsuen Wan, including neighbours, businesses, civic organisations, social innovators and corporate.

Following the three ideation tracks, three prototypes were developed and experimented with the public and corporate teams, namely Space As Commons, Neighbourhood Friendly Businesses Ecosystem and Neighbours-for-Neighbours Experiences. On open space, a piazza was selected as a site to experiment and test how public spaces (privately owned or publicly owned) can be co-managed by multiple parties. We co-hosted two co-creation pop-ups together with local NGOs and social enterprise, including Newlife 330, Green Common, Green ladies and HKFYG. On business collaboration, a questionnaire survey is designed and conducted with small scale businesses across sectors to validate and test the feasibility of the scheme.

With a Neighbours-for-Neighbours format, tours co-designed, co-managed and co-ran by fellows were created as a prototype to explore historical development and present day Tsuen Wan topics with a small number of participants. Through the different stories exchanges between tour guides, the self-guide app and audiences, these tours aim to cultivate a sense of belonging within the community.

The engagement process included 3 street polling sessions, an online survey, 5 focus group discussions, 40 1-1 interviews, 8 ideation and prototyping workshops, 17 co-creating experiences and an exhibition, engaging over 5800 audiences.