LAND AND HOUSING
Urban Renewal and Improvement
93
In the Urban Renewal Pilot Scheme area, over 70 properties have been acquired by negotiation or resumption during the year at a cost of $8 million. The total number of properties so far acquired is now 160 and the first demolition is expected to take place in the near future. A further 205 properties remain to be acquired by negotiation or resumption and a programme to achieve this is continuing. There are some 13,000 occupants of old slum property which has to be demolished and those dispossessed are being offered government low-cost housing or resettlement accommodation.
The Urban Renewal District Zoning Plan, which covers some 250 acres in the Western and Sai Ying Pun districts of Hong Kong Island, was approved by the Governor in Council on March 7, 1972 and will eventually necessitate the acquisition of 652 properties to provide land for the construction of much needed amenities. While so far only nine of these have been acquired at a cost of $12 million, a large number of negotiations are proceeding to acquire more.
The Draft Wan Chai Environmental Improvement Plan, if approved as drafted, will eventually necessitate the acquisition of 174 properties and, where development is frustrated by it, negotiated surrender of property against payment of compensation may take place. The acquisition of 13 properties to provide land for public purposes in this category is currently being negotiated at an approximate cost of $7 million.
The Draft Yau Ma Tei Environmental Improvement Plan will, if approved, eventually necessitate the acquisition of 356 properties. Similar arrangements to those applicable to Wan Chai have been made to deal with property redevelopment which is frustrated by the Draft Plan, with the acquisition of eight such properties at present being negotiated at an approximate cost of $7 million.
Resumption
To enable a large number of projects to proceed the number of resumptions has increased in both the urban area and in the New Territories. In the urban areas many of the resumptions are for major new highways, which frequently involve the use of the procedure prescribed in the Streets (Alteration) Ordinance. As many highway proj- ects, such as elevated roads, affect land which is fully developed, compensation claims have become more sophisticated and time consuming both in negotiation and in Compensation Board proceedings.
New Towns
In order to accommodate Hong Kong's increasing population and to relieve overcrowding in existing urban areas, four large new towns are in various stages of development. Because of the lack of available flat land, designs for these new towns have been based upon general principles of cutting platforms into hill slopes for resi- dential land and using the excavated material to fill in nearby low-lying land and shallow seabed to form flat industrial land. The most advanced of these new towns is at Kwun Tong, to the east of the Kowloon peninsula, where 618 acres of land have been formed in this way since 1955 at a cost of some $89 million. The town is now