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46. The Hong Kong Ordinances require a minimum clear height of 10′ 0′′ per floor in order to let light and air into inner cubicles. They also require a minimum floor space of 35 square feet and a minimum air space of 350 cubic feet per person. If light and air were directly accessible to all habitable parts and floor heights were reduced to 8′ 0′′ clear, a floor space of 44 square feet per person would provide air space of 352 cubic feet. With an improved plan this additional floor space per person could be provided without increasing the total floor area, as, in the present tenement a large amount of the floor space is taken up by passage way, necessitated by the long narrow plan. With floor heights reduced. considerable savings in building costs could be effected.
47. For ground floors the present minimum height is 11′ 0′′ clear. The height of a domestic building to the eaves must not exceed the width of the road on which it fronts. For a 50 foot road therefore, a building of four stories will not take full advantage of permissible building height, but a building of five floors will exceed it. The normal practice therefore is to make the ground floor 16 feet high and introduce a cockloft, or mezzanine floor, officially for storage purposes, but normally used as sceping quarters for assistants. This additional floor height also permits of pulleys and shafting for machinery being installed and the ground floors of dwelling houses being converted into factories. It is generally agreed amongst the authorities that cocklofts are undesirable, and the use of ground floors as factories is objection- able.
48. If floor heights of 8′ 0′′ clear be permitted, then with a ground floor 11′ 0′′ high a five storied building could be erected on a fifty foot road and the height to the top floor would be no greater than the present normal third floor. With a ground floor eleven feet high a cockloft could not be permitted, but to balance this, there would seem to be no valid objection to permitting the ground floor to cover the whole of the building lot, provided it be used for non domestic purposes only. With the 10' 0" scavenging lane now required by law, ample light would be obtainable.
It
49. The Hong Kong Ordinance places no restrictions on the number or sex of people occupying one room provided there is sufficient air and floor space. is possible that, so far as sex relationship is concerned, there is less liability towards promiscuousness when a large number of people occupy one room than there would be with the same number occupying a number of rooms. How far this would apply in Hong Kong is not known, but it is generally recognized in other countries that incest is more frequent in overcrowded areas than elsewhere. Open sex relation- ship may or may not be regarded with indifference by the Chinese lower classes, but it certainly does seem desirable that married couples should have privacy. The partitions in the normal tenement are merely screens which give visual but not aural privacy.
50. For an ordinary family it is highly desirable that parents should have a room to themselves and that there should be separate rooms for adult children of 、each sex. For a family of six therefore three rooms would normally be required. It is preferable that the living room should not be used for sleeping purposes but, to obtain the lowest possible rents, this double use cannot be avoided. Whilst the living room should be larger than the remainder, it is essential that it should not be so large. that, to make full use of it as a sleeping chamber, the mixing of sexes would result. Children under ten years of age normally count as half an adult. A room designed to accommodate three adults could therefore be used by the parents and two children under ten years old. In a family of six the remaining two children could have a room each or if both under ten or of the same sex could share a room and leave one vacant for letting off to a lodger. For the sake of economy the combined area of the three rooms should be as near as possible to the minimum area required by law for the whole family.
51. With the exception of the very latest type, the normal standard tenement has only one latrine, and that is on the ground floor and inaccessible to upper floor tenants. Even in the latest type only one latrine per floor is provided to serve ten or twelve adults, and many more in overcrowded houses. The addition of another latrine would only increase building costs and therefore rents, which are