28
HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT
to make sites for houses, shops, schools, cinemas and playing fields. As the factories rise, so too will the accompanying low-cost housing and the multi-storey resettlement blocks. A new self-sufficient township should soon appear situated across the bay from the older cities of Kowloon and Victoria.
Draft layout development plans of districts on both sides of the harbour are now being prepared by the Planning Division of the Crown Lands and Surveys Office of the Public Works Department. These plans are exhibited publicly so that anyone affected may send to the Town Planning Board a statement of objections and suggested amendments. The aim of the planners is to determine the use of land in each district to the best advantage, zoning certain sections mainly for residential building and others mainly for industrial purposes, and, at the same time, making provision for reserves for public purposes, such as parks, recreation grounds and open spaces.
Everywhere, the maximum use is being made of land. Many new and difficult sites are being exploited and much ingenuity displayed in adaptation of the old. For instance, blocks of quarters for employees of the Jockey Club have been built into a steep hillside so that the architect has been able to give access to the first four storeys from paths cut into the hill; again, one office block which straddles two streets at different levels in central Victoria has linked these levels by escalators, thus drawing pedestrians through a two- floor shopping arcade. The inherited fir-pole dimensions of building lots pose special problems because, even when two or three of the old 15-foot tenement lots are combined, the result is still a narrow facade. This is disguised in the new multi-storey buildings by bold use of colour, mosaic tiles and projecting fins and by emphasis on sills and lintels. Another difficulty is the unpredictable quality of old reclaimed sites. The man-moved soil, on which some of Victoria's heaviest buildings stand, is under constant pressure from the sea. At high tide the water rises to within seven feet of street level.