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HOUSING AND LAND
Local planning and development works in the new towns are under the control of the New Territories Development Department. Town planners are seconded from the Town Planning Office to the various new town development offices where they work with engineers, architects and other members of multi-disciplinary teams to prepare detailed departmental plans within the framework of the Hong Kong outline plan and the statutory outline zoning plans.
Private Building
1981 was another busy year for private building development in spite of bank interest rates remaining at record high levels. The high costs put the small speculative developers at greater disadvantage and large scale development projects gained in popularity. Driven by the demand and the rent controls on residential accommodation, developers tended to concentrate more on commercial buildings, as shown by the increase of 53 per cent over the 1980 figure in terms of proposed floor areas submitted for approval.
For private building development as a whole, the number of proposals submitted to the Buildings Ordinance Office of the Public Works Department for approval during the year was 1 030 compared with 949 in 1980. Occupation permits issued for completed buildings in 1981 numbered 603, providing a total usable floor area of 3 186 514 square metres, about a 22 per cent increase over the previous year. The total construction cost, excluding the value of the land, amounted to $7,248 million, representing an increase of 55 per cent.
The completion of the Hopewell Centre, the Sun Hung Kei Centre and the United Centre on Hong Kong Island, together with four hotels in the commercial development of the Tsim Sha Tsui East area, most of them with glass curtain wall facades, has further enhanced the view of Victoria Harbour. In the heart of Central District, the familiar shapes of the Hong Kong Club and the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank disappeared, to be replaced in due course by modern office buildings.
Activity on residential developments remained fairly constant. Sizeable projects under construction included the Provident Centre at Wharf Road, which will provide 3 500 domestic units when completed; two marina residential projects in Shum Wan and Sai Kung; a 47-tower block project of domestic flats with commercial complex in Sha Tin; Mayfair Garden on Tsing Yi Island and a 5 000-house project known as Fairview Park near Mai Po.
Industrial building consisted notably of shipyards under construction and completed on Tsing Yi Island. One of these has already received orders to build oil rigs for exploration in the South China Sea. There was also the Tai Po Industrial Estate, at various stages of realisation, the Castle Peak power station, and the cement plants at Castle Peak and Hung Hom.
The construction of the island line of the Mass Transit Railway gave rise to more than a dozen property developments associated with the Mass Transit Railway Corporation. The largest and perhaps most interesting was opposite Taikoo Shing, where a rocky hill over 100 metres high will be removed to provide room for a population of 30 000 with infrastructure and facilities sufficient to serve a satellite town.
To meet present-day requirements, a number of provisions in the Buildings Ordinance and Building Regulations were changed during the year. Among the more important amendments enacted were those designed to improve control over site formation works and to require a geotechnical assessment at building planning stage. Project engineers and architects have become more aware of the role which geotechnical engineering plays in contributing to the safety of building development.