Hong Kong's soaring population growth is an ever present problem made none the easier by the absence of a long term, all embracing development plan. The Government is now preparing such a plan, but even with it, as the author of the following article warns, the existing problems will prove well nigh intractable. He says that..
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HONG KONG'S HIGH DENSITY POPULATION AREAS
MAY BECOME 'SOCIALLY INTOLERABLE AND
ADMINISTRATIVELY DANGEROUS.'
C
ARE must be taken that Hong Kong's harbour area population did not become so high as to be socially intolerable and administra- tively dangerous. Mr. R.C. Clarke. Assistant Superintendent of Crown Lands (Planning). said recently.
Mr. Clarke said the Government was attacking the problem in several ways low cost housing, reclama- tion and transport surveys.
"And now it is entering on the preparation of an outline develop- ment plan for the Colony to guide development over the next 15 to 20
years.
"Without some such plan. it is becoming increasingly difficult for the authorities responsible for utility services and other community pur. poses to plan their forward expansion with confidence or ensure the most effective expenditure of funds. Even with it. the practical problems pre- sented by such excessive town densi ties will prove well nigh intractable." he said.
Mr. Clarke was speaking at a meeting of the Hong Kong Branch of the Town Planning Institute attend- ed by Professor C. D. Buchanan. author of a report on traffic and future development in Britain's towns and cities.
Professor Buchanan, President of the Town Planning Institute which is celebrating its golden jubilee
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spent several days in Hong Kong as guest of the Hong Kong branch.
"Planning problems in Hong Kong are basically questions of space." Mr. Clarke said.
"We are concerned with find- suitable relationship to physical. economic and social circumstances and ensuring that this land is put to the highest use. All other problems are subsidiary to those of employ- ment and housing. Our town plan- ning problems here are made more obvious by the concentration of development in a relatively small
by-
area
R. C. CLARKE, Assistant Superintendent of Crown Lands (Planning)
in a talk to members of the HONG KONG branch of the TOWN PLANNING INS- TITUTE, a non-governmental organisation.
the 12 square miles around the harbour. This concentration stems from the economic attraction of the harbour as a focus for a trading. and more recently also a manufacturing community. combined with a lack of adequate land else- where. serviced and accessible. at a time of mass immigration expansion. The main objective of the planners at this time is to divert further
growth to new planned areas without disrupting profitable enterprise.
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"Professor Myles Wright in recent article referred to the point in history where the 'worthwhileness and practicability of each remedy was judged by men who believed that all material progress depended on the steely application of laissez faire economics, where each room. each foot of ground had to pay its way." And recently a visitor de- scribed our basic philosophy, rather unjustly I think, as being one of forget the environment. let's get on with building. Such philosophy, if it exists. is forced on us by circum- stance; during the last 15 years with mortgage interest rates at 11% per month such hard headed realism may well have been vital to our well being. We do now soften the impact by the more modern techniques of zoning plans both for land use and. in lesser degree, for density, and by fully in- tegrated development plans for the creation of now towns. But the his- tory of the last 15 years during which the Abercromie outline was over-run by events and the first post- war Town Planning Office disbanded. combined with an appreciation of our precarious economic balance. places limits on the planners flights of fancy. Town Planning must there. fore be seen as something which has infiltrated by stealth into the inters- tices of our social philosophy. Gradually and increasingly, however, the need for planning is becoming accepted."
THE HONG KONG & FAR EAST BUILDER-VOLUME 18, NUMBER 6
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