C.S.O. 2 in 567/29.
37
HONG
KONG.
REPORT OF THE PLAYING FIELDS COMMITTEE.
2
No. 1930
Your Excellency,
We, the Playing Fields Committee, have the honour to submit to Your Excellency our report as follows:
1. We were appointed a Committee on the 4th of May, 1929, with the following terms of reference:
"To review the provision at present existing for playing fields in Hong Kong and on the Mainland, to consider what provision is required for the future and to make recommendations to Government in the matter.
General.
2. We held our first meeting on the 14th of May, 1929, and after settling our method of procedure and arranging for visits to playing field areas we adjourned to give time for the collection of information and the preparation of plans. Owing first to the absence of the Chairman and subsequently to his engagement on more urgent public work it was not possible for the Committee to resume its deliberations until the 4th of November last. We have held nine meetings including two visits of inspection to present and g gested areas for playing fields in the Colony.
3. We took steps to ascertain the views of all interested parties by public advertise- ment in the English and Chinese newspapers, by a circular questionnaire addressed to Clubs, and by hearing evidence from persons who wished to appear before the Committee on behalf of their organisations or who were invited by the Committee to assist in elucidat- ing aspects of the various problems which were being considered.
4. We realize that the subject committed to our consideration is one of much immediate interest to the population of Victoria and Kowloon and of the utmost import- ance for the future. The necessity for adequate open spaces whether as 'lungs in areas over-crowded with buildings or as playing fields for the younger generation of town dwellers has been realized only in recent years, and this has been particularly the case in Hong Kong where the games spirit has been a recent and very rapid growth of modern times among the large Chinese population of the Colony. The inevitable result has been that the City of Victoria is to-day entirely inadequately supplied either with lungs' or with playing fields and even in modern Kowloon there are areas without suf- ficient 'lungs'. It is too late now to remedy the mistakes of the past in Victoria and in some parts of Kowloon except at prohibitive cost, but we are fortunately just in time to prevent similar mistakes in the undeveloped areas of Kowloon.
5. With the example of Victoria before us we have not hesitated to make gener- ous recommendations for Kowloon. We realize that much of the land recommended for reservation is or will be valuable building land, but we have made our recommendations advisedly in order to preserve oases in what may one day become a world of bricks and mortar. It was to such foresight and to such thought for the future that we owe the beauty of the London Squares and we should like to see Kowloon no less generously provided with open spaces. We have been impressed with the rapidity of the growth of Kowloon and we feel that a provision which may appear excessive to-day may possibly prove inadequate even within our own generation.