The notion of impermanence underlies the urban design language of Hong Kong to a significant extent. The city's intensely urban environment has long reflected embedded patterns of change and temporality in both physical and cultural dimensions - a forever reconstructed city of dislocation, adaptation and imagination. These characteristics are intrinsically interwoven with street and spatial patterns, producing a sense of immediacy and transience, ingrained within the fabric and memory of the city. This might stem, on the one hand, from a philosophy of change inherent in cultural traditions, but it also reflects more tangible issues accumulated from historical imprints, regimes of displacement, and constant transformation of the urban environment.