REVIEW
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at a total cost of roughly $95 million. This excludes the 170 acres reclaimed for the Kai Tak airport and some 26 acres of private reclamation completed since October 1959. The most important reclamation work carried out since the war is that at Kwun Tong on the north eastern harbour frontage where 588 acres of new land is to be formed, two thirds of which is already complete; some 200 acres of this has been set aside for private commercial, in- dustrial and residential development; 160 acres for public buildings, including Government-aided housing, and another 220 acres for roads, services and open space. The total cost of this scheme, including earth works, seawalls, roads and drains, up to the end of the financial year 1962-3 was rather more than $50 million and the revenue due from land sales by this date $150 million. The main contract for the Kwai Chung Reclamation Scheme was let in 1963 and will provide some 500 acres of new land over the next five years.
Engineering services
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An adequate road framework is vital to an expanding city and roads, being seen and directly used, are normally of much greater interest to the public than underground services which tend to be taken for granted unless they do not exist or until they fail; the records of the Colony are dotted with accounts of new roads brought into use but little mention is made of sewers. The first road was Queen's Road following the line of the original seashore. By 1842 there were roads on the coast to Shau Kei Wan and a year or two later Stanley and Aberdeen had been connected with the city centre; thereafter each year saw some extension to open up new land for development. Roads are not only traffic links; they serve many other functions. Principally they provide an open frontage upon which buildings can abut and obtain light and air, the height and volume of the building being dependent on the street width. They also provide space for underground services, stormwater drains and sewers, electricity cables, gas and water mains, telephone and rediffusion cables and in recent years for salt- water pipe lines, and, in one rare case, an oil pipe line to supply the Queen Elizabeth Hospital from the harbour. This multitude of pipes and cables often takes up the whole width of the street; the area of supply of salt water in the City of Victoria has recently had to be limited to buildings near the new waterfront due to the