APPENDIX A.
A SUGGESTION ECONOMICALLY TO IMPROVE HOUSING IN TENEMENT
AREAS FROM A PUBLIC HEALTH VIEWPOINT, ESPECIALLY
IN REGARD TO TUBERCULOSIS
By Mr. R. S. W. Paterson, 0.B.E., M.C.
In Hong Kong there is a high incidence of tuberculosis amongst the Chinese population. One of the principal causes of this is congestion and overcrowding in housing. A large number of tenement dwellings which were built to regulations now long out of date in regard to the proportion of open space as against roofed-over area are still in existence. I state this without any spirit of oriticism against the progressively good work which has been done by the Building Ordinance Office, Public Works Department, in the past thirty years to improve the roofed-over open space areas, the angle of light, and depth of buildings.
2.
I think it is admitted that Hong Kong, and I mean by this the Oity of Victoria and Kowloon, is not a suitable place climatically for a person pre-disposed to tuberculosis. From the very nature of the siting and lay-out both of Victoria and Kowloon there should be a free and easy circulation of fresh air. The City of Viotoria even in its most congested places is not built in any appreciable depth but it is spread more in the nature of a ribbon along the sea front and backed by hillside. Depth of domestio development is not much more than a quarter of a mile. In the more densely populated areas of Kowloon, too, I think particularly of the Yaumati area, there is no great depth of dom- estic development and this area, too, as I stated previously lends itself to a free circulation of air.
3.
We have then these two bases on which to work, generally speaking a bad olimate and a reasonable natural lay-out. To exploit these for the betterment of public health there are/the town plan-from/ ning point of view two methods with its provision of public spaces of "Lungs", involving heavy expenditure in resumption costs, an expenditure which will either directly or indirectly be borne by the public purse and from which the future owners will inevitably benefit by the resultant enhanced land values. The other, not so often exploited method of working on a smaller scale, to my mind will attain in the circumstances peculiar to Hong Kong a satisfac- tory result. The method I advocate is to make each domestic building provide its own sufficient "lung". This method will, I think, be suitable and acceptable to Hong Kong both economically and commercially. In this I mean that the cost will not become a saddled burden on the community, but will be diffused over a long number of years, i.e.; when improvement is ultimately brought to fruition there is little doubt that vested interest will require and have a right to a reasonable economic return on the capital expended.
4.
Commercial interests in this Colony have long esta- blished themselves in areas particular to certain trades and it is well known that no matter how good the objective to be attained it is difficult to remove either by cajolery or otherwise these trades to other areas. This presents a problem to be overcome in all schemes of replanning of industrial areas and it is more acute here because of the cost and lack of facilities to permit easy
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