HONG KONG
PRELIMINARY PLANNING REPORT, 1948.
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PART I. SCOPE OF THE REPORT.
1. Planning proposals, whether for a whole country, a region, a town or a village are usually and naturally divided into short and long term: there are certain obvious reforms or reconstructions which should be put in hand at once and for which a limited fund of money may be made available: these proposals usually take the form of actual works to be done and are not concerned with that sort of planning which governs the lines of the natural growth of the community. Thus the Colonial Office under the Colonial Development & Welfare Scheme of 1945 allotted one million pounds to Hong Kong, which was to cover developments prepared over a period of ten years.
2. The present Report, however, was not to be limited in this way, and was intended to cover long term policies as well as short, including the direction to be given to private enterprise in order that its operations may fall into some general and agreed form of planned development. It is usually accepted that 50 years ahead is as far as any plan can be expected to foresee, and it may be taken that the short term will comprise the first ten years of this period: but under a Development Plan the works executed during this first stage will not be limited to Government and State-aided schemes. It should also be remarked at the outset that the most recent theory of planning does not assume a final and finite plan passed in all its details as a Town Planning Scheme (as was the case under the 1932 Town Planning Act), but a plan of Development' using the word in its strict sense and allowing for revision from time to time in the light of changing requirements and technical accomplishment.
3. This Report is necessarily limited to some general suggestions, an indication of general lines towards the making of such a Development Plan for the Colony, which may take 2 or 3 years for its completion. But during this time the works proposed under the first or short term period can go ahead, with the assured feeling that they are the initial stage of a long term policy. The general suggestions herewith which are based upon preliminary Surveys prepared by the Town Planning Office and are the results of some weeks' study of the site, many interviews, and scrutiny of proposals, must be fully tested by more intensive survey, especially into Housing Conditions, Office Floor area, Industrial Location, and Road Traffic sample Surveys may be sufficient for preliminary proposals, but final plans must be based upon complete information.
4. One of the most attractive features of a planning visit to Hong Kong is the wealth of ideas for improvement that is available. Most of them, it is true, deal with one or several cognate aspects: no list of these has been attempted or authors given or even acknowledgments made-for all possible proposals seem to have been made by some one or another at some time or other. In few places can so many eager brains have been at work. Perhaps it will not be invidious to single out two contributions of outstanding value: Mr. W. II. Owen's appendix to the Housing Commission's Report, 1935 and his Draft Ordinance; and Sir David Owen's report on the Port, (more particularly the physical proposals). But almost equally fertile and practical suggestions have been made for Roads, Air, Railways, Open Spaces, General Health & Welfare, Water Supply, Industrial Location, expansion of the Business Zone, Tunnels, and the New Territories.