Designing a better environment through analysing the built environment

Abstract

According to its oldest definitions, civil engineering is a very broad discipline that deals with the design, construction and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment. It has been widely accepted that built environment is one of the major supports to public health and quality of life. This chapter is dedicated to a service learning subject lead by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University that engages students in studies of the built environment. Students work alongside with the service clients to gain first-hand understanding of the problems faced by the end-users, which helps them to reflect on the conventional top-down design approach. The quantitative and qualitative data obtained by students not only helped them in devising improvement suggestions to service clients and public authorities, these data also forms part of district database and can be used in setting performance targets and monitoring progress. Apart from the benefits to community, there has been observations in students’ academic, professional, and personal developments, as well as positive impacts in service clients’ quality of life attributes.