Reflection on Outdoor Public Spaces of Shopping Centres: A Comparative Study between Beijing and Hong Kong

In recent years, with the high speed economic development, the newly developed cities in China start to seriously consider the quality of urban landscape. However, due to the lack of experience, most of these cities copy the idea from other cities without considering carefully the particular characteristics of their own. As a result, a lot of these cities become the same as others, e.g., in recent years, a lot of outdoor public spaces of shopping centers have been designed in the same way. This paper explores the development of outdoor public spaces of shopping centers. Based on a comparative study between the public spaces of shopping centres in Beijing (a rapid-developed shopping city) and those in Hong Kong (a famous shopping paradise), the paper identifies and discusses different possible functions of outdoor public spaces of shopping centers. The functions include not only promoting consumption interested by the operators of shopping centers, but also enhancement and enriching people's social lives. The paper further discusses the irreplaceable relationship between outdoor public spaces and people's public lives.