REVIEW
27
out-of-date restrictions, both the rate and height of new build- ing have soared. Office blocks, apartment houses, blocks of small flats and hotels, up to 20 storeys high, have materialized with amazing speed on both sides of the harbour. The eastern suburbs of Victoria, in particular, have undergone intense development, often with imported capital. A deep coastal fringe, roughly from Quarry Bay to Causeway Bay, centred around North Point, is the scene of apparently never-ending construction. Here the big housing estates, private apart- ment blocks, hotels, cinemas and shops form what is virtually a new satellite town. A 'lung' is provided by the reclamation at Causeway Bay, now covered by a park, a swimming pool and playing fields.
Significantly, a greater share of private building capital is now invested in Kowloon than in Victoria. The easier sites, from Sham Shui Po to Lai Chi Kok and the flat central area of Kowloon along Boundary Street and Waterloo Road, were the first to be developed. Now urban Kowloon is climbing-as Victoria did in the previous century-up the foothills.
Factories are moving outwards from the dockyard centres, both east and west along the coast of the New Territories, where great reclamations act like lodestones to Kowloon's cramped industries. Re-deployment of industry on the main- land is now a well-established trend. For new or expanding industries, sheer lack of space in urban centres compels them to break new ground. For other manufacturers, the enhanced values of their present factory sites when sold for housing provide a strong incentive to move away. Perhaps the strongest inducement of all is that there is land already available at Tsuen Wan and Kwun Tong which is well suited for factory building. At Kwun Tong the first 50 acres recovered from the sea (out of a projected reclamation of some 140 acres) are entirely earmarked for factories and have already been largely purchased by industrialists. Be- hind the Kwun Tong factory zone, hills are being cut down