Living on the Skyline: Rooftop Housing in Seoul, Hong Kong, and Taipei

Abstract

Rooftop housing is a living urban legacy, encapsulating the history of the city as well as the evolving needs of its people. This study explores rooftop housing in Seoul, Hong Kong, and Taipei. In all three cities, the rooftop houses are ubiquitous, interwoven throughout the city’s skyline. Although each city’s rooftop community has its own context, rooftop housing in these cities shares common qualities and attributes, having been formed through comparable development processes. In the past century, East Asian cities have undergone a period of spectacular development driven by economic progress, industrialization, and urbanization. Amidst a sea of skyscrapers and high-rises, informal settlements have sprung up to fill the void left by these buildings. These informal settlements have provided alternative housing options for low-income residents and migrant workers, though the living conditions in many of these informal settlements have been inadequate. Rooftop housing is a type of informal settlement built through a haphazard process in order to meet the needs of these emergent urban dwellers. Much have been written about the informal settlements, but the existing literature has not focused specifically on rooftop housing; this lack of attention led to a general oversight of the important issues pertaining to this specific community. This dissertation expands on the existing framework of informal settlements to comprehensively study rooftop housing as an independent urban phenomenon. Studying rooftop housing communities presents a unique set of challenges, including the physical location of such communities, complex legal issues, lack of existing research, and a general lack of information. To overcome these challenges, this research is a holistic study of academic literature, news articles, popular and social media, and a collection of first-hand accounts of tenants and landlords through questionnaires and interviews conducted on site, as well as physical assessments carried out as part of the fieldwork. The key finding of this dissertation is that rooftop housing has distinct characteristics compared to other types of informal settlements. Its legal status is ambiguous: These informal residences sit on top of formal housing, putting them in a gray area between formal and informal. Public perception and awareness of the subject issues is low, partly due to their simplistic treatment in the media. Some media platforms romanticize the positive aspects of rooftop housing while ignoring the harsher realities, while others focus solely on the inadequate living conditions. All of these elements contribute to a set of narratives that are often contradictory and ambiguous, sending mixed messages to the general public. The study also produces rooftop housing typologies by studying the location, neighborhood environment, building types, and housing configuration of various settlements. An assessment of the building materials and the state of maintenance evaluated the condition of the housing and the level of deterioration. Despite the unconventional shapes of the units and haphazard development processes, this study found that there was a certain order in these structures—a set of organic developments that produced certain recurring patterns. The physical typologies of rooftop housing are shaped by the residents and their evolving needs. Moreover, rooftop houses are occupied by generations of tenants and undergo a process of iterative development to meet the tenants’ changing needs. Ironically, the flimsy materials that contribute to the inadequacies of these shelters also make them versatile, spaces that can be modified to suit the evolving needs of their tenants. In this way, the rooftop housing typologies reveal the evolution of the needs of these emergent urban settlers. When viewed from the perspective of the tenants, the rooftop housing represents a temporary space, one that often persists largely due to convenient location, affordability, and a lack of viable alternatives. Although there is a wide range, the sizes and conditions of rooftop houses are quite livable and preferable to other types of informal settlements. Some of the issues and complaints concern insulation and accessibility, and in the case of Hong Kong, the size of the units, but overall, close to half of the surveyed tenants found their living conditions to be adequate. Compared to the other forms of inner-city informal housing—semi-basement housing or cage homes—rooftop housing is privileged, an extension of formal housing, entailing privacy, views, and convenient location. Ultimately, this dissertation is an attempt to formalize the discourse on rooftop housing by examining the subject matter through various perspectives. By establishing rooftop housing typologies that are shaped by changing demographics and social needs, this study contributes to building a framework for future studies on this subject. Finally, a side-by-side comparison of the three East Asian cities—Seoul, Hong Kong, and Taipei, and their unique history and relationship with rooftop housing—is an effort to capture an important part of the urban fabric.