The public retail market was built in Chung Wan (Central area), Victoria City in 1842, and it meant an important role for urban function since it becomes a British colony. Currently, the north coast of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon / New Kowloon has a high-density city in Hong Kong and about half the population lives there. There have not only high-rise offices and houses are lined up but also old-small buildings are remaining. We have already revealed that the public retail market is a key factor for the high-density city and its associated street markets and row fresh food stores have a close relationship. We use Chung Wan and Wan Chai area as case studies and clarify the spatial characteristics in the urban block around the public retail market.

 Therefore, the purposes of this study are the following 3 things.

 1. Clarify the current status and changes in the public retail market over the past 20 years.

 2. The characteristics of the residents live in the urban block around the public retail market.

 3. Composed of streets and architecture, regulation of land use plan in the urban block around the public retail market.

 The main results are summarized as follows.

 1) There was no new public retail market established since 2008. There’re three trends in 20 years. First, the public retail market does not have the function of dealing with fresh food and created only by combining C/F with the public facility or residential functions. Second, the new program is being operated collaboratively with private capital. Third, historic public retail market architecture is preserved by conversion or facade preservation.

 2) The urban block around the public retail market has various residents from the viewpoint of occupation and monthly household income. It shows the same result as the analysis in 1994, a district around the public retail market has been formed as collateral for the residence of diversity.

 3) Most of the building with row fresh food stores or along with the street market is Tang Lau or Rectangular Mass type. These are supporting the market space and that is easy to establish a relationship between the ground floor use and the front road. URA evaluates not only Shophouse type buildings but also Tang Lau type and Rectangular Mass type buildings and it has begun conservation and utilization. Since the development of URA based on not urban blocks but building units, the street structure is preserved, it is easy to lead to a mixture of old-small and new-large architecture in the urban block. Therefore, the mixture of the five building types supports the diversity of residents based on TPU analysis.

 4) Tang Lau, Rectangular Mass, and Podium Tower-type buildings are closely related to the zoning of Residential A, which is in the block including the market space. These building types, which is old and middle or low-rise buildings, lead to mix functions, and easy to compose the market space.

The internal documents and materials made by Nippon Chisso Hiryo group before World War II were inspected and examined. In particular, many drawings and documents of the Chosen Chisso Hiryo owned by Chisso Corporation were scanned or digitalized. Some city maps of the Hungnam district, North Korea, were also collected.
These historical materials allowed us to re-examine the layouts for some company house areas of Chosen Chisso Hiryo and to contribute to our deep understanding. Some drawings allowed us to examine several buildings and houses constructed in Hungnam district and to detect new or more detailed facts.