per,
over the years. However, the proposals for Districts in both the New Territories and the urban area have implications for the Urban Council and consequential proposals affecting the Urban Council are therefore included in th though they are not an essential part of it. But it is believed they would make for a closer, relationship between the Urban Council and the population and provide Urban Council members with wider opportunities for service.
CHAPTER II
5.
g Kong's post war history has been dominated by an enormous and continuing influx of people. The crowding of an abnormally swollen population into an already confined urban area demanded Government's intervention through the planning and construction first of new estates on the fringes of the city and eventually of whole new towns at Tsuen Wan, and more recently, Tuen Mun, Sha Tin and Tai Po. The social dislocation involved in the movement and regrouping of this number of people has presented particular problems for the welding together of the population into cohesive and secure communities. 6. Under the mounting pressure of this influx of people the thrust of Govern- ment's centrally directed programmes has been concentrated on the rapid development of the infrastructure necessary for their employment, housing, security, transport, education, health, welfare and recreation. Initially this was in the urban area where the build-up of population was most acute, but more recently in the New Territories as well. The weakness inherent in this preoc- cupation has been uneven and inadequate monitoring of the effects and co- ordination of programmes at the district level and insufficient opportunity for the inhabitants of each district to make their views known. Physical develop- ment has often out-paced the development of institutions appropriate to administer an increasingly complex and dispersed society, or to encourage the evolution of coherent communities within it.
7. In the older urban area of Hong Kong and Kowloon the City District Officer scheme was established to provide people in each District with an identifiable Government representative to whom they could take their problems and to provide Government with a clearer understanding of the needs and aspirations of the population. Since its inception a complex apparatus for community involvement has developed around the City District Office. The success of the Keep Hong Kong Clean and Fight Crime Campaigns owed much to the cooperation of traditional organizations such as the Kaifongs, and to the formation of City District Committees whose appointed Unofficials have worked through locally-based Area Committees down to the building-based Mutual Aid Committees, to generate the cooperation, understanding and coordination necessary to produce results. From work on campaigns, the City District Com- mittees have developed in varying degrees to become points of contact and discussion of District affairs of a more general nature. This development was taken a stage further earlier in the year, by the setting up in Kwun Tong of a District Management Committee consisting of officials from the Departments principally concerned with the administration of the District. This was an experiment to see whether a nucleus of officials to coordinate and review the detailed administration of Government programmes in a District in the urban area could play as useful a role as it had done in the new towns of the New Territories. The Government is satisfied that the experiment is proving a success, and proposes to extend the system to other urban Districts as staff to do so becomes available.
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