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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
and other bodies, may be about 10,000 a year. This makes a total of 145,000 a year, that is, if all targets are attained, or approximately 1 million in the next ten years.
But is this enough? Last year our population increased by over 300,000, about 100,000 by natural increase and about 200,000 by immigration. I know last year was exceptional, but if we leave 1962 out and consider only the previous 10 years, the increase was about 50%. Applied to the next 10 years, this would give us an increase of 1-3/4 million, most of it from excess of births over deaths.
What this means is that if any real improvement is to be made, we shall have to take much more drastic and fundamental measures to encourage the building of more houses. According to the Annual Report, private enterprise has only provided accommodation for 85,000 people during the past seven years, only 12,000 a year, mostly for people in the upper income brackets.
Last year I suggested five ways of increasing the volume of building. These were:
(1) to provide a fast cheap modern transportation system, which would allow us to develop outlying areas where land is cheaper;
(2) to reclaim new land close to the urban areas, in order to overcome the reluctance of people working in the central districts of Hong Kong and Kowloon to live far from their work;
(3) to build for quantity instead of quality. This, I know, is heresy for most town planners, but I see no other alternative if we are to improve our slums;
(4) to allow higher buildings and so accommodate more people on the same amount of land; and, to my mind most important,
(5) to enlist private enterprise in a slum clearance programme using all the incentives necessary.
In these five directions, some progress can be reported over the past year. Government has agreed to a traffic survey, part of whose terms of reference would be to consider the need for and the feasibility of a new and faster transportation system.
The second encouraging fact is Government's decision to build 16 storey resettlement blocks in place of the old eight storey ones. The introduction of lifts into our cheapest form of housing is a major breakthrough, for the higher we go the cheaper will be the cost per flat, for no extra land is required and the extra length of lift shaft does not cost very much.
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Our problem in slum clearance is to increase the amount of light, air and ventilation. One way is to go up, getting your air vertically instead of horizontally. I would suggest that it is every bit as good, and no doubt very much fresher 320 feet high than it is at 50 feet. Let us think of densities, not so many per acre, but in terms of cubic measure, the number of cubic feet enjoyed by each person. A six storey building for example, with a ground density of 2,000 persons per acre, gives each person a certain volume of air. If you increase the number of storeys to 36, you can afford to double the ground densities, and still give each person three times as much cubic space. By building higher, each flat will be cheaper, less ground will be needed, more open space can be left around each block, and many more people will be housed. It appears to me that unless we are willing to accept more intensive development, hundreds of thousands of our people are doomed to remain indefinitely in small dark stuffy cubicles.
If it is agreed that the housing conditions of a very large proportion of our people living in slums is appalling, then a great deal more should be done about it. Government's efforts are restricted by the land they have available and the funds they can spare, and any large-scale improvement can only be expected if private enterprise can be persuaded to build, with their own money and their own sites, the sort of low cost housing which is most needed.
Now I must point out that at present very little encouragement is given to private enterprise to do so. It would not be allowed, by Government regulations, to build the type of housing which Government itself thinks is most needed for the low income family. At present the private developer builds the cheapest and smallest flats the Ordinances will allow. These are bought or rented by someone who then sets himself up as a principal tenant. The balconies are enclosed, the bedrooms split up, and four or more families move into a flat designed for one family only. These cubicles have little more light and air than there were previously in tenement floors and so new slums are born. Are born, partly at least because of Government's refusal to take any positive action to persuade the private developer, the man who at present owns most of the land occupied by the slums, not only to redevelop, but to redevelop specifically for the low income family.
How can this be done? This is a question which requires the closest possible study by experts, and all I can do is to suggest possible lines of approach. One of them I have already indicated, the relaxation of the Building Ordinances, the plot ratios and site coverage to allow the private developer to build the sort of flats which Government itself is building in its low cost housing estates. Another is to offer lower premiums upon renewal of leases, provided the owner agrees to build the sort of flats required.
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