6 April 1971
S W Gilbert Esq
Under Secretary New Towns Division
Director General's Research and Development
Organisation
Department of the Environment
Whitehall
London SW1
1. I think Pat Coates spoke to you some time ago about the possibibity of your Department advising me on how to set about briefing myself on the problems of town planning before going to Hong Kong as Governor.
2. Whatever I do will necessarily have to be very limited in time, as there are so many other fields with which I must gain a nodding acquaintance. But I think that even a very limited knowledge of modern theory and of where the best work is being done would be much better than nothing given the importance of the subject in Hong Kong.
3. What I would like to do if it did not cause too much trouble would be to take this in two stages:-
a..
b.
In the second half of June or first half of July spend two or three days being briefed on work in the United Kingdom.
In the second half of July or early August have a look at examples of the best work being done abroad in circumstances as comparable as possible to Hong Kong.
4. I will be in London on 3 and 4 May and would very much like to call on you, or whoever in your Department you would like to suggest, to discuss what might be done under a. and where I should go for b. I might add that I wrote some weeks ago to Professor James about b. but have not yet had a reply, but in any case I would
1.