CityU Campus Location, Geographic Zoning and Building Directory

City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) comprehensive information database · 05 Campus module

No hills, no lake, no walled-off green expanse — the main campus of City University of Hong Kong (hereafter "CityU") is one of the few Hong Kong university campuses that is genuinely "built on top of a shopping mall, plugged into a Mass Transit Railway station". An entire complex of academic buildings sits stacked above Festival Walk, a large shopping centre on Tat Chee Avenue in Kowloon Tong, no more than a few minutes' walk from MTR Kowloon Tong station. To understand CityU's campus, you first need to grasp its distinctive spatial logic — vertical stacking plus pedestrian connectivity — and then trace its trajectory of multi-site expansion: from a temporary campus in Mong Kok, to its move to Kowloon Tong, and in recent years to Ma On Shan Whitehead and Songshan Lake in Dongguan.

Editorial note: All factual claims in this article carry sources at the end. Areas, dates and geographic relationships follow current official University records and authoritative entries; minor discrepancies in figures are flagged. This article focuses on four threads — location, connectivity, zoning and expansion — and closes with a building directory for quick reference; design details and naming stories for individual buildings are covered in 〈Campus Landmark Buildings〉, while transport and amenities are covered in 〈Transport and Facilities〉.

---

# 1. Location: Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong — a "city-centre" campus

The CityU main campus sits on Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong — the same address that serves as its administrative address — in the Kowloon Tong district of Kowloon, one of Hong Kong's most central urban areas. The main campus covers approximately 15.6 hectares (about 39 acres)^※ — measured against university campuses of hundreds of hectares such as HKU's, this is a highly intensive, prime-urban-land "metropolitan campus".

This density is precisely the price — and the character — of an urban location. CityU does not spread across a hillside like the Chinese University at Ma Liu Shui in Sha Tin, nor does it command its own bay like the University of Science and Technology in Clear Water Bay. Instead, it compresses the vast majority of its teaching, research, administrative and living functions into a handful of large buildings on one side of Tat Chee Avenue, linked by footbridges and podium walkways. Moving from one building to another, students most often do not step outside at all, but pass through indoor corridors, lifts and escalators — this predominantly indoor circulation layout is the most immediate physical impression CityU's campus leaves.

---

# 2. Relationship with Festival Walk and Kowloon Tong station: built above a mall, connected to the MTR

The most talked-about feature of the CityU campus is its unusual relationship with the shopping centre beneath its feet: Festival Walk.

# Festival Walk itself

Festival Walk is a large shopping centre at 80 Tat Chee Avenue, jointly developed by Swire Properties and CITIC Pacific, opening on 13 November 1998^※. The complex comprises a seven-storey shopping mall with four storeys of office space above, around 220 shops, a cinema and an indoor ice rink, plus a three-level basement car park. Festival Walk is directly connected to MTR Kowloon Tong station, which serves both the East Rail line and the Kwun Tong line^※.

# How the campus "stacks" on top of the mall

The CityU campus and Festival Walk are structurally interlocked and linked by pedestrian walkways: the CityU campus is connected to Festival Walk by pedestrian walkways, while Festival Walk in turn connects directly with MTR Kowloon Tong station (East Rail line and Kwun Tong line)^※. From a visitor's perspective, travelling from MTR Kowloon Tong station via Festival Walk, it takes about 5 minutes on foot to reach the CityU campus^※.

In other words, the typical journey for staff, students and visitors runs: Kowloon Tong station → Festival Walk → CityU academic buildings — all three strung together by indoor passages and podiums. This three-in-one university–mall–MTR station stacking arrangement is rare among universities in Hong Kong, let alone globally: the mall serves as the university's "portico", the MTR station as its "front entrance". The convenience is obvious — transport, dining and retail are all within arm's reach — but it also means the campus is deeply interwoven with the city's public spaces, lacking the sense of bounded "territory" that walls and trees give a traditional campus. The pedestrian walkway linking the mall and the campus, known on campus as the "Time Tunnel", is covered in 〈Transport and Facilities〉 along with its planning origins, changes of ownership and the 2025 renovation.

The campus itself has access control: it is open to cardholders daily from 07:00 to 23:00, with controlled entry^※. The campus is about 30 minutes' drive from Hong Kong International Airport (according to the University's campus information).

---

# 3. Geographic zoning: a giant academic building organised by colour

CityU's zoning logic could not be more different from universities laid out on terraced hillsides. Its core organising principle is not elevation or terrain but a colour-coded wayfinding system inside a single colossal building.

The campus's central academic building, the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building (formerly Academic 1), has a floor area of about 63,000 square metres (approximately 680,000 square feet), housing 116 laboratories, 18 lecture theatres and classrooms, and restaurants^※. Given its sheer size and complex circulation, the building is divided into five colour-coded zones — Purple (P), Green (G), Blue (B), Yellow (Y) and Red (R)^※. Staff and students navigate using a "colour + floor" coordinate system — "Red Zone, 2nd floor", "Yellow Zone, 5th floor" and so on. This colour-zone system is a signature feature of finding your way around CityU, and one of the first pieces of "campus language" a new student must master.

Around the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building, the main campus functions can roughly be grouped into several clusters:

• Core academic zone: the academic building complex — Yeung Kin Man Academic Building, Li Dak Sum Yip Yio Chin Academic Building (Academic 2), Lau Ming Wai Academic Building (Academic 3) and others — housing the majority of departments, classrooms, laboratories, the library and administration.
• Creative media zone: the Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, on the Tat Hong Avenue side, a relatively self-contained signature building.
• Sports zone: sports facilities including the Hu Fa Kuang Sports Centre and the Joint Sports Centre.
• Living/residential zone: the student hall complex on Cornwall Street (11 halls), plus the Lee Shau Kee Student Residence Village in Ma On Shan Whitehead outside the main campus (see 〈Student Residence System〉).

Full design, naming and architect details for the three core academic buildings and the Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre appear in 〈Campus Landmark Buildings〉; a quick-reference list of every building's use and naming follows in Section 5, 〈Building Directory〉.

---

# 4. History of expansion: from a temporary Mong Kok campus to a multi-site university

CityU's present-day urban campus was not built in one stroke. It evolved through a sequence of temporary beginnings → a move to Kowloon Tong → phased expansion → multi-site extension.

# Temporary premises in Mong Kok (1984)

CityU's predecessor, the City Polytechnic of Hong Kong, was established and began classes on 8 October 1984, with an inaugural intake of 480 full-time and 680 part-time students^※. With no permanent campus yet in place, the government purchased Phase 2 of the Argyle Centre on Argyle Street, Mong Kok, to serve as temporary premises^※.

# The move to Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong (1990) and phased construction

Phase 1 of the permanent campus on Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong, officially opened on 15 January 1990 with 14 lecture theatres and about 1,500 computers; Phase 2 was completed in 1993, expanding capacity to roughly 20,000 students^※. In 1994 the institution was renamed City University of Hong Kong^※; 2024 marked the 30th anniversary of university status.

Since then, the main campus has continued to expand in place through what the University calls "Additions, Alterations and Improvements (AA&I)" — squeezing new capacity into the existing site: adding academic buildings on top of existing podiums (Lau Ming Wai Academic Building is the tallest building on campus), building the Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre on the Tat Hong Avenue side, and continuously upgrading sports, catering, library and other facilities. Constrained by its urban plot, CityU's expansion has been much more about "building upward" and "creating capacity from within" than "spreading outward".

# Multi-site extension: Ma On Shan Whitehead and Dongguan Songshan Lake (2024)

In the 2020s, CityU's physical footprint broke past the Tat Chee Avenue headquarters:

• Ma On Shan Whitehead: the student residence CityU built at Whitehead, Ma On Shan, came into use in the third quarter of 2024^※, subsequently named the Lee Shau Kee Student Residence Village, providing more than 2,000 places (see 〈Student Residence System〉).
• Dongguan Songshan Lake: City University of Hong Kong (Dongguan) held its opening ceremony on 2 September 2024^※, located in the Songshan Lake High-tech Industrial Development Zone (Science City) in Dongguan^※ — CityU's extension campus in mainland China's Greater Bay Area (its governance, admissions and positioning are covered in the internationalisation/mainland modules; this module does not elaborate).

That gives CityU today a multi-point configuration: "Kowloon Tong headquarters (teaching and research hub) + Ma On Shan Whitehead (residence village) + Dongguan Songshan Lake (Greater Bay Area campus)" — with Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong, remaining the core of its teaching, research and administration.

---

# 5. Building directory: a quick-reference table

The table below gathers the main buildings of the CityU main campus with their Chinese name · English name · former name/code · naming origin · primary use, for easy reference. For detailed architectural features, designers and landmark significance of individual buildings, see 〈Campus Landmark Buildings〉; for sports, dining, residential and other facilities, see 〈Transport and Facilities〉 and 〈Student Residence System〉.

Editorial note: where a naming origin involves a donor, the name is stated as recorded in public documents (the 00–12 neutral-fact zone records donor names as given); where no evidence can be established, the entry is marked "Not established". This directory aims to cover major buildings but does not claim to be exhaustive of every structure and ancillary facility; the University's current Campus Map is authoritative.

Note: the Chinese and English names and naming origins of individual CityU halls, which are numerous and include the new Ma On Shan residence village, are listed together in 〈Student Residence System〉; the table above is a pointer only and does not repeat them.

# How buildings get their names

Names on the CityU main campus broadly follow two logics:

1. Functional naming: the Amenities Building, the Academic Exchange Building, the Joint Sports Centre, and the early "Academic 1/2/3" labels — named directly for what they do, plain and instantly recognisable.
2. Donor naming: all three core academic buildings were later named after major donors (Yeung Kin Man; Li Dak Sum and Yip Yio Chin; Lau Ming-wai), as were the library, the creative media centre, the sports centre and the gallery (Sir Run Run Shaw, Hu Fa-kuang, Harry Banga, and others). Such naming both acknowledges the gifts and constitutes the bulk of CityU's building directory — to read CityU's building names is nearly to read a roll of honour of the University's donors (for the broader giving context, see the finance module).

One detail worth noting: the three academic buildings were "numbered first, named later" (Academic 1 → Yeung Kin Man, Academic 2 → Li Dak Sum Yip Yio Chin, Academic 3 → Lau Ming Wai). Students and staff still habitually call them "AC1/AC2/AC3" in everyday speech while official documents use the donor names — this dual nomenclature is a small quirk of CityU campus language.

# Unverified or pending

• To Yuen Building: whether its name is functional or donor-related could not be confirmed from authoritative sources; marked "Not established", pending verification against the University's campus information.
• Minor ancillary facilities on campus (individual catering outlets, convenience stores, small laboratories/studios) and the definitive list of building codes are not individually included here; the University's current Campus Map and building-opening-hours pages are authoritative.

---

# 6. Conclusion: a university folded into the city

If the geography of CityU's main campus could be summed up in a single phrase: it is a university "folded into the city". No hills, no lake, no walled expanse of territory. It compresses its academic functions into a few vast buildings on one side of Tat Chee Avenue, stacked above a shopping mall, pressed against an MTR station, ordered internally by colour-coded zones and connected to itself by footbridges and podiums. That arrangement gives it unrivalled convenience of transport and daily life, but it also makes its "campus-ness" closer to that of a metropolitan institution growing vertically and bound to the city's bloodstream than to the traditional self-contained "ivory tower".

---