January_1965 — Page 26

PLANNING IN

HONG KONG

W

E SHOULD Soon be living in a

a space city a city in space, according to a local press article. An exciting idea. We can picture our- selves floating in and out of glass palaces in silver space ships.

Sadly, however, for the next de- cade at least we have more prosaic matters to consider. We are con- cerned not with cities in space but with space in cities, not with three men in a capsule but three million people on the 15 square miles around Hong Kong Harbour - a density equivalent to accommodating the population of the world within circle of radius less than 75 miles.

a

It is of course this high popula- tion which makes Hong Kong what it is. We are perhaps too inclined to talk about the problem of people. Many countries suffer from under population which limits their ability to develop their physical resources.

Hong Kong, on the other hand is fortunate in its active. intelligent do- pulace. True, this high population presents us with problems but also with a challenge and an opportunity. It is this challenge and onnortunity which town planners among many others in Hong Kong seek to meet.

Land and People

Town planning deals with ques- tions of land and people

of peo- ple and space. It attempts to ensure the best or highest use, the most ef- ficient use of space to meet the great variety of human needs.

In a dynamic society like Hong Kong such needs are, of course, constantly growing and changing

as are the means of satisfying those needs. Hence town planning is an endeavour to relate changing social and economic elements to one an- other so as to form a desirable whole.

This unity is expressed in terms of comfortable, convenient and profit- able life profitable in the widest sense. Or of course in terms of a life of discomfort, lack of con- venience and social bankruptcy.

is

Space is required for all human pursuits space to live, to work, to play space for communication and for social services. Man naturally gregarious and there is a constant drift (one might almost say rush) to large urban conurbations, the management of which become more complex from year to year. The complexity is dependent largely on the form and intensity of develop- ment of land. Land use and land use standards are thus the prime consideration in all town and city planning.

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In this feature Mr. R. C. Clarke,

ARICS, outlines the problems facing the town planner in Hong Kong and suggests a few remedies

R.C. Clarke, Assistant Superintendent in the Planning Division of Hong Kong's Crown Lands and Survey Office

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The question of standards the area or the proportion of land allocated to this or that form or intensity of use is not just some- thing that the town planner or the administrator dreams up in a small back room, at least not in Hong Kong. In a free enterprise economy, these standards are decided largely by the community itself. They reflect the purchasing power and the sense of values of large numbers of individuals. They have a direct bearing on land values.

The planner must adjust himself to these standards which are different in different communities. If he does not he will be a frustrated old plan- ner before he is 40!

Argument

The planner does of course have some say. His job is to foresee and to express community needs concise- ly, provide for them in his plans and do his best to see that they are im-

plemented. To do this he must argue

his life is in fact one long argu- ment. He must keep his feet firmly on the ground and yet be responsive to the winds of change.

He may be likened to one of the disciples of Confucius, Tseng Shen, who had so great a respect for his parents that wherever he was his mother had only to bite her finger for him to feel pain. Whenever the public bites its finger the town plan- ner should feel pain!

What is the position in Hong Kong and how has it changed over the last decade? When Professor Abercrom- bie prepared his Planning Report in 1948 he was talking in terms of a Colony population of 1.5 million in- creasing to two million and residential densities of a maximum of 500 per

net acre.

The 1961 Census gave a population of 3.13 million. Today we have 3.7 million and we are thinking in 'terms of 7 million by the early 1980's.

Development schemes now provide for net densities exceeding several thousand persons to the acre. But the most important figures are those of overall population density. In 1961, 32 per cent of the population lived on the Island, 50 per cent in Kowloon and New Kowloon and only 13 per cent in the New Terri- tories. Gross overall densities in persons per acre at that time were thus 57 on the Island, 307 in Kow- loon, and just over 1 in the New Territories as a whole.

Redistribution

On the basis of those figures a paper given by a colleague and myself to the University Jubilee Con- gress in 1961 argued for the redistri- bution of the Kowloon population into the New Territories for the development of a large new town on Lantau to form a western boundary to the harbour.

"Space on pavements is becoming wholly inadequate for pedestrians"

Far East Architect & Builder January, 1965